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Shortcuts with Shotcut
by Alan German
A Catalan
tradition in Barcelona is for local citizens to dance the
Sardana in front of the cathedral around noon on Sundays.
I came back from the city with a number of video clips on
my digital camera of this dancing. As it happened, I had
recorded two particular videos, one a slow section, the
other fast, where the dance was being done to the same
piece of music. My thought was to combine the two videos
by clipping individual segments to provide a more-or-less
natural break between the two at the point where the
musical tempo changed.
Note, in the stills from the videos, that between the end
of the slow section (left image) and the start of the
fast section (right), that the camera view has changed
somewhat. In addition, the dancers raise their hands
above their heads as the faster section of the dance
commences. What I needed to combine the two shots was
some video editing software that would allow me to clip
the videos and join them together with a reasonably
seamless transition.
Of course,
my first thought was to find a free (and even better
– open-source) software package to achieve these
goals. My first foray into video editing was using a
package recommended in an on-line review. As indicated by
the review, the software proved to be quite intuitive,
simple to use, and hence seemingly perfect for my
neophyte purposes! However, it quickly became apparent
that the “free” version of the program was
actually a limited-use free trial and so it was not a
viable option for the long term.
More research on the Internet identified Microsoft’s
Movie Maker as a potential candidate, with a number of
glowing reviews of this program’s power and
simplicity. Then a further search found that development
of this software had been abandoned by Microsoft and the
download link discontinued. Sigh.
Two more products proved to be just too difficult to use
but, eventually, I came across a review of Shotcut –
an open-source, cross-platform, video editor. This
package was said to have tremendous power, and lots of
video tutorials on-line to provide a reasonably easy
learning curve. Now, all of that sounded too good to
miss.
Shotcut’s modus operandi isn’t readily apparent
just by starting the program. Sure, it’s easy to
open a video file – but then what? There is a forest
of controls and on-screen options. This is where those
on-line video tutorials fit in!
Opening my
first video file brought it into the preview area where I
could use standard video player controls to view the
content. In order to select the video clip that I
required I simply had to move the start and end markers,
by dragging them horizontally, along the timeline in the
preview area (top-right of the program’s window). A
frame counter, with forward and back arrows, enables any
single frame to be identified and displayed, making it
fairly easy to set up the clip length exactly.
Once I had my clip selected, I pressed the Copy icon in
the menu of the timeline window at the bottom of the
screen, followed by the Paste icon, in order to place a
copy of the selected clip into the edit area (the lower
portion of the program’s window). I then opened the
second video file and repeated the process to produce a
second clip in the edit area, to the right of the first
clip.
By default, the two clips are placed immediately adjacent
to each other. To create a transition, I simply had to
drag the second video clip to the left so that it
overlapped the first video clip. The minimum amount of
overlap that I seemed able to create (about 30 frames, or
one second of playback) seemed to give a fairly smooth
transition. No doubt professional video editors would
wince at this methodology but, what the heck, this is my
video, and it’s my first ever video edit!
By default, the edited product has the same properties
– video format (e.g. MP4), resolution (640x480 px),
and frame rate (30 fps) – as the original video
files from the camera. However, a vast array of options
for exporting the video with different parameters is
supported by Shotcut. For my purposes, simply selecting
Save, browsing to a folder on my hard drive, and creating
a new file name allowed me to safely store my
newly-created masterpiece!
Working on some other videos with Shotcut, I found the
above-noted process to be ideal for simple cropping of
video files. This allowed me to eliminate the frequent
shaky start to videos, presumably as a result of pressing
down rapidly, and much too hard, on the camera’s
Record button. Similarly, I found combining clips with a
smooth transition to be ideal for instances where, in my
non-videographer’s wisdom, I had zoomed the
telephoto feature of the camera’s lens during a
recording, resulting in transitional footage that was
both shaky and out of focus. The fix was simple –
copy clips from both before and after the zoom sequence
and merge. The edited product looked almost professional
by comparison with the original!
No doubt, if the Internet reviews are borne out, Shotcut
has a myriad of other features, both simple and advanced,
that will allow users to create superb videos. For my
part, I’m just happy that fairly simple techniques
can produce vastly improved footage for a rank amateur.
Bottom Line:
Shotcut (Open-source)
Version 17.06.01
Meltytech, LLC
https://www.shotcutapp.com/
Originally published: December, 2017
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