It’s been a few years since the OpenShot Kickstarter campaign end successfully, but progress on the ‘next generation’ version of OpenShot has been, for various practical reasons, a little slow.
But this year the open-source non-linear video editor has (thankfully) picked up pace in its new Qt clothing. Following the release of OpenShot 2.0 beta in the early part of the year came OpenShot 2.1, a release which did a lot of improve the overall stability of the app (though it has remained less than reliable in our testing).
But can the very latest release, OpenShot 2.2 released this week, live up to expectations? On paper — and in this promo video (whose logo animation looks a little VHS ’92) — it certainly looks to:
OpenShot 2.2 Features
Jonathan Thomas, OpenShot’s developer, accepts “things have taken way longer than I even imagined” but wants to focus on the positives, noting that with the release of OpenShot 2.2 “we’ve accomplished something that is exceedingly rare: a successful Kickstarter and a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor!”
Performance is greatly improved, and the video editor now supports optimised editing of HD videos, including 4K.
“A new caching engine was built from the ground up, and supports both memory and disk back-ends, depending on the user’s needs. This can be configured in the Preferences, under “Cache”. Also, opening huge projects (with hundreds of files / clips) has been optimized and is up to 10x faster,” says Thomas.
Elsewhere there are ‘keyframe enhancements‘, including new pre-set options for applying common animated transitions and effects, and a new set of title templates, including a familiar looking American cinema trailer rating design.
Other features/changes/fixes:
- Selection handles (in progress)
- Drag and drop a file directly on the timeline
- 2.5k and 4k video profiles added
- Improved error handling
- Downloads now hosted on Github
Download OpenShot 2.2
OpenShot 2.2 is available to download for free for Windows, macOS and Linux from the official OpenShot website.
An AppImage for 64-bit Linux desktops is also available to download.
For more information see our ‘How to install the latest OpenShot release on Ubuntu‘ article.