A new version of the open source video editor OpenShot is now available for download — the first update to the app since July.
Among plenty of other changes OpenShot 2.4.3 adds support for creating animated masks and transitions using images and videos. This adds a real creative flexibility to the editor, allowing creative types to construct more imaginative content.
For more detail on this update, and to learn how to upgrade to OpenShot 2.4.3 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and the latest Linux Mint, keep on reading!
OpenShot 2.4.3 Released
OpenShot’s simple UI and straight-forward set makes it the ideal app for beginners. It allows you to construct basic video edits quickly using a wide variety of video and image formats. And when you’re finished the app makes it easy to share your creations on sites like YouTube.
OpenShot 2.4.3 includes a number of key improvements to masking and transitions, which can now be modified at any time.
Furthermore (as we spoiled at the start of this post) it’s now possible to create a mask or transition using an image or video that has sufficient “grayscale”. The possibilities this opens up are plentiful. You can find a slew of royalty-free videos ideal for masking on sites like YouTube.
Stability when editing and managing effects is also said to be improved in this release, owing to some natty new threading tweaks.
For more precise editing you can now nudge videos clips (when a clip is selected) by holding down the Shift key and tapping either the Left or Right directional arrow keys until the clip positions itself correctly.
A minor new feature that helps speed up the time it takes to create a video thumbnail for use on social media is the ‘save frame’ button. Clicking this button will save a .PNG snapshot of whatever frame is currently the playhead (and visible in the preview player), perfect for importing into GIMP or Pinta to add some callout text!
Talking of social media, new video presets for Instagram and Twitter are included, and additional frame rates are available to select in the YouTube HD and Vimeo HD presets.
The default project type has been updated to 720p at 30fps with an audio sample rate 44.1 kHz.
Other changes in OpenShot 2.4.3 include:
- More reliable exporting
- Fixes for zooming and undo/redo
- Improved Title filename duplication
- Track names show in “Add To Timeline” window
- Waveform display rendering improved
- Timeline tidy ups
- Support for FFmpeg 3 & 4 support
- Better FPS, video length and bitrate calculation
Upgrade to OpenShot 2.4.3 on Ubuntu/Linux Mint
You can install or upgrade to OpenShot 2.4.3 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Linux Mint 19 by adding the official OpenShot stable PPA to your software sources.
The fastest way to do this is via the command line:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/ppa
After adding this PPA your system will automatically fetch a list of the latest packages. Once this job finishes run:
sudo apt install openshot-qt
Not into repos? No worries, as an official OpenShot 2.4.3 AppImage is also available to download from the project website:
- (via: OpenShot)