A major new update to the OpenShot video editor is now available to download — and brace yourself cos it’s packing a tonne of improvements.
OpenShot is, of course, one of the best known Linux video editors — and it’s also one of the best loved. Its simple, straightforward interface makes it relatively easy to use, even by those with little video editing experience.
Add to that a decent set of effects and transitions, a halfway decent title tool, ‘green screen’ compositing and key frame animations and you’ve got a well rounded bit of video editing software.
And the latest release takes things even further.
OpenShot 2.5.0 Features
OpenShot 2.5.0 is the latest stable release of the Open Shot video editor for Windows, macOS and Linux and to say it’s “packed” full of features is a bit of an understatement!
Hardware Acceleration
The headline change is the introduction of ‘experimental’ hardware acceleration.
Yes, despite being a media-intensive application OpenShot uses software decoding and encoding during edits. The switch to GPU processing will yield up to 30-40% faster performance when working MP4/H.264 videos.
For now the feature isn’ considered stable and you have to enable it manually. And since not every graphics card out there supports video encoding and decoding, you might not have access to it at all.
Open Final Cut Pro & Premiere Pro Files
Among other OpenShot 2.5 feature is import and export support for .xml and .edl files.
This is a particularly big advancement as it means, for the first time ever, OpenShot can open and save to Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro compatible files (though naturally not all features are supported).
As this supports basic timeline data like video and audio files, clips, tracks, and keyframes it could, in theory, make collaborative and cross-platform workflows a little tighter.
Save File Recovery
OpenShot has been “affectionately” nicknamed OpenShut and CrashShot due to its somewhat …temperamental nature.
Anyone working on important edits or big projects will be reassured to know that the open source video editor now keeps a small backup of recent save points. This allows folks to revert to a previous save point should something calamitous happen with auto-save enabled.
Other changes
if you like working with keyframes — ideal for adding animation to projects — then you’ll be pleased to know that OpenShot 2.5.0 features major keyframe improvements.
The rewritten keyframe system is able to deliver ‘real-time interpolated values’ at a crazy fast rate compared the old system — up to 10,000 values in the time it used to take to generate 1!
OpenShot features Blender integration so, with the big Blender 2.8 release now out, it’s upping its support to the latest and greatest version.
Other changes:
- Better SVG handling
- Improved Thumbnail generation
- Preview window resizing tweak
- Cross-platform improvements
You can learn more about this release on the OpenShot blog.
Install OpenShot 2.5 on Ubuntu
You can install an older version of OpenShot on Ubuntu from the Ubuntu Software app.
But if you want to install the latest OpenShot video editor release on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or a different Ubuntu-based Linux distro you will need to take a different route.
The new OpenShot 2.5.0 release is available to download for Windows, macOS and Linux from the OpenShot website. The Linux build is provided in the form of a run-anywhere .appimage file (which is 64-bit only).
Alternatively, you may be able to get this and future updates automatically on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and related distros if you add the OpenShot Stable PPA.
1. First add the OpenShot PPA to your software sources by running the following command in a new terminal window:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/ppa
2. Next, run this command to install OpenShot editor:
sudo apt install openshot-qt
That’s it! OpenShot video editor is now installed, ready to be used. Launch the app from your preferred app menu or Linux application launcher.