These are pretty standard fare, such as ‘Compressor’, ‘Expander’, ‘Distortion’, and ‘Delay’, but they weren’t available before, and having them finally included can only be seen as a bonus. You’ll also find nine new audio editing effects. You’ll then be able to connect another object to that data and make it move in sync with the tracked one. The latter allows you to isolate an object on the screen, which OpenShot will then track over the course of the clip. As always with such tools, what you get out is highly dependent on what you put in. If however, the shot was too jittery, there’s only so much any computer algorithm can do. We found it works pretty well, but obviously the end result will always depend on the quality of the original footage: if the clip is already pretty stable, the analysis will improve and smooth out the motion with aplomb. The former analyses your clip and smooths out its motion. OpenShot’s two new video effects are Stabilization and Tracker.
Thankfully, OpenShot 2.6.1 has a handful of new ones which provide useful tools – although unlikely to compete with the best VFX software (and if your productions demand high-quality visual effects, pair the free video editor with Adobe After Effects or the best After Effects alternatives to bring spectacles to the screen). We were disappointed with the low number of effects that were present in the previous version. It seems the cursor is the only way to do this, although there is a handy keyboard shortcut to jump from one created keyframe to another. Usually, the keyboard’s arrow keys let you do this, but not in OpenShot. We had difficulty in finding a way to move along the timeline frame by frame. You’ll also find that the clips’ transformation tools are much easier to use than they were before, thereby improving the software’s animation abilities, although these can still be confusing at time.
This removes any potential guesswork, is a great timesaver, and in our experimentation, it worked flawlessly. There are many uses for this feature, including resizing a clip so it matches the duration of another above, or below it. As you drag one towards another, you’ll see it ‘snap’ as it gets close enough, kinda like a magnet snapping to another.
It’s a feature that’s on by default, and helps you position clips next to each other, without them overlapping one another. InterfaceĮvery keyframed parameter turns green, and you can easily jump between keyframes with a simple keyboard shortcut (Image credit: OpenShot) Some people might be reluctant to work with a daily build as opposed to an official release, but if you use a Mac, this is the only way, for now, to get a version that works with your computer. We had heard that this issue had been solved a few months back, and the latest build we tried (dated June 22 2022), launched perfectly.
However, you’re able to download and install Daily Builds. This is particularly damning since version 2.6.1 was released on the 6th of September 2021.
Does OpenShot’s new developments finally deliver on the promise it showed two years ago? Mac issuesįirst, a caveat: although OpenShot is a multi-platform piece of software, capable of running on Windows, Macs and Linux, the latest official version doesn’t actually work with Macs right now. Ultimately, during our time with the editor app, we felt it “shows potential but it hasn’t really received the number of updates we would’ve expected after two years.”īut that was then. However, in our opinion, it wasn’t yet ready for prime time. When we last reviewed OpenShot – the open-source, free video editing software – we thought it showed promise.