Shotcut for Mac
Free open-source video editor.
Free
In English
Version 24.06.26When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission
Shotcut overview
Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor.
Features:
- Supports oodles of audio and video formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg (or libav as-built)
- Supports many image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, SVG, TGA, TIFF, as well as image sequences
- No import required - native editing
- Frame-accurate seeking for many formats
- Multi-format timeline: mix and match resolutions and frame rates within a project
- Network stream playback (HTTP, HLS, RTMP, RTSP, MMS, UDP)
- Frei0r video generator plugins (e.g., color bars and plasma)
- Blackmagic Design SDI and HDMI for input and preview monitoring
- JACK transport sync
- Deinterlacing
- Detailed media properties panel
- Recent files panel
- Drag-and-drop files from file manager
- Save and load trimmed clip as MLT XML file
- Load and play complex MLT XML file as a clip
- Audio signal level meter
- Volume control
- Scrubbing and transport control
- Flexible UI through dock-able panels
- Encode/transcode to a variety of formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg (or libav as-built)
- Capture (record) SDI, HDMI, webcam (V4L2), JACK, PulseAudio, IP streams, X11 screen
- Stream (encode to IP) files and any capture source
- Batch encoding with job control
- Create, play, edit, save, load, encode, and stream MLT XML playlists
- Unlimited undo and redo for playlist edits including a history view
- Connect to Melted servers over MVCP TCP protocol
- Control the transport playback of Melted units
- Edit Melted playlists including suport for undo/redo
- OpenGL GPU-based image processing
- Multi-core parallel image processing when not using GPU (and frame-dropping is disabled)
- Video filters: blur, color grading, crop, glow, mirror, saturation, sharpen
- 3-way (shadows, mids, highlights) color wheels for color correction and grading
- Eye dropper tool to pick neutral color for white balancing
- Translated to Spanish, French, Czech, and German
What’s new in version 24.06.26
New Stuff
- Added SVT-AV1 encoder (faster non-hardware AV1 encoder).
- Added support for AVIF (AV1) images.
- Added a Drop Shadow video filter that uses the input alpha channel. (This means that it will not work as expected when used after a text filter on a video clip; rather, you must use a text clip on an upper track.)
- Added a Vibrance video filter. This is similar to Saturation, but Vibrance is sensitive to the current saturation instead of adjusting all values equally as in saturation. This is especially helpful to prevent affecting skin tones.
- Added the Mid-Side Matrix audio filter for processing these kinds of microphones into proper stereo sound.
- Added Keyframes > Scrub While Dragging.
- Added Playlist > menu > Columns.
- Added support for DJI LRF (MP4) files as a proxy.
Fixes and Changes
- Improved handling for some variable frame rate videos. Now, Properties tries to show the file's target frame rate and extends the variable detection logic to include strange average frame rate values (what previous versions showed in Properties).
- Changed Playlist Tiles view mode to show Date instead of In/Start.
- Fixed using graphics (text, image, etc.) on upper video track with GPU Effects.
- Fixed an off-by-one frame bug in the duration for Glaxnimate animations.
- Fixed Undo does not work for time filters.
- Fixed spamming (Undo) History when using the timeline fade controls.
- Fixed preview color with GPU Effecs is inaccurate.
- Fixed Timeline > Select None does not clear the Filters panel or VUI.
- Fixed single click does not reset a multi-selection.
- Fixed Export > Codec > Quality hint not updated after changing Rate control.
- Fixed Properties > Proxy > Make does not regenerate if already exists.
- Fixed changing Properties (except Speed) affects clips on other tracks with Ripple All Tracks turned on.
- Fixed drag from Source and drop to Source changes Playlist.
- Fixed Automatically Add Tracks changes the current video track, which can cause unexpected behavior with Properties > Speed change, for example.
- Fixed files generated automatically in the project folder (.stab, .rawr, etc.) are incorrectly generated in the app data's autosave folder in the app session immediately after Shotcut recovers an auto-saved project.
- Fixed changing Properties can delete a timeline clip.
- Fixed selected filter changes unexpectedly by changing tabs or clicking filter categories.
- Fixed Properties > Audio > Track > All.
- Fixed the project folder when running an autosave-recovered session.
- Fixed Settings > Timeline > Auto Add Tracks creates too many tracks when drop multiple clips to Timeline.
- Fixed new Settings > Time Format not used in several places.
- Fixed View > Application Log > Previous not working after the first time.
- Fixed Properties > menu > View Bitrate hiding the first second.
- Upgraded Qt to version 6.7 on macOS, Windows, and Flatpak.
- Upgraded dav1d to version 1.4.2.
- Upgraded FFmpeg to version 7.0.
- Upgraded OpenCV to version 4.9.0.
- Upgraded VMAF to version 3.0.0.
Shotcut for Mac
Free
In English
Version 24.06.26
What users say about Shotcut
Try our new feature and write a detailed review about Shotcut
What customer like
Value
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What needs improvements
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(27 Reviews of Shotcut)
Comments
User Ratings
Jul 25 2024
Version: 24.06.26
I've tried almost every video editor and find Shotcut the best of the free or low cost editors. I use the full featured DaVinci Resolve at times and while it can do everything, I'm not comfortable with its complexity. Shotcut, on the other hand, can easily do 95% of what I need. It's not as pretty as some of the other low cost or free video editors but it outshines all of them in performance and features.
Mar 6 2022
Version: 22.01.30
I used to be a pro video editor on Avid MediaComposer, decades ago, and amongst the free ones Shotcut is the first one I find that resembles a professional tool — and that works (OpenShot seems interesting but always freezes and crashes). It's a bit limited and stutters or doesn't always play additional audio tracks correctly until you reload the project, but hey, it's free! It's good enough for an occasional amateur job.
May 4 2021
Version: 21.05.01
The link above is for ARM64 ('Apple Silicon') version ONLY, useful on M1 Macs, which of course require macOS 11.x. --> Intel X86 Macs must use the link for 'shotcut-macos-unsigned-210501.dmg' @ https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut/releases/download/v21.05.01/shotcut-macos-unsigned-210501.dmg - - IOW: NO combined version is being offered at this time.
Feb 11 2021
Version: 21.01.29
This app seems quite useful even if you have some other video editing app... you could use it to convert videos to lots of different formats... including QuickTime Animation with an alpha channel and WebM with an alpha channel... for both of those, you just choose one of the included presets.
You could also make your own preset for ProRes with an alpha channel if you choose the ProRes preset, make sure "Advanced" is selected, go to "Other" and change the text in the box to these lines:
mlt_image_format=rgb24a
pix_fmt=yuva444p10le
vprofile=4444
vendor=apl0
movflags=+write_colr+faststart
Then, just save that as a preset.
It seems good for converting videos to HEVC and AV 1 too... it has the "Quality-based VBR" option were you can set the "Quality" and it changes it to CRF... HandBrake recommends something between 18-28 for HEVC (setting the "Quality" to something between 65% to 47% in Shotcut would set the CRF to that)... so the "Quality" set to 55% (CRF 23) will probably be a good balance for most videos and for more high quality videos you can raise it a bit or lower it a bit for lower quality videos... for lower resolution videos that would be upscaled, it would be a good idea to use somewhat higher quality settings than for 4k, if it's a high quality SD video.
If you want a "slow" preset for HEVC or H.264 (to encode it more slowly to get a somewhat higher quality), just change one of the existing presets (just change the "preset=medium" to "preset=slow" under "Other") and save it as a new one.
Also, you can edit WebM and even WMV directly in it, without having to convert it first.
The interface maybe seems kind of "clunky", like it often seem to be the case with apps that are ported from Linux... but it's a useful app.
So 5 stars for the usefulness... although the interface could probably be significantly improved... but at least it doesn't require XQuartz like Linux ports sometimes do... so it seems like a relatively decent Linux port.
Sep 15 2020
Version: 20.09.13
The following statement in your overview is no longer true, so you might think about removing it: "Note: Since the application is not signed, you need to Control-click the app icon and choose Open from the context menu the first time you run it."
