Advanced, yet easy-to-use video editing application with transitions, effects and support for 4K and HD video formats.
OpenShot Video Editor is a free and versatile video editing program that can create and edit a number of different types of high definition video formats and apply different effects and transitions easily.
The application has a beautiful user interface that was obviously designed with productivity and ease-of-use in mind taking some obvious queues from some commercial video editing suites. Though not as complicated as applications like Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, OpenShot can edit and mix videos based on layers called tracks.
For each clip loaded into this video editing application, you can drag-and-drop sections of videos or entire video clips into the interface's Project Files. From here, adding these clips to a new track is as simple as dragging it.
The video preview area displays the current frame of the video project, depending on which track is selected. While editing videos in tracks, you can easily add an effect to the clip by opening the effects panel. Things like blur, brightness and contrast, crop, color shift, negative, pixelate and wave are some of the built-in effects. Dragging them to the track will add an icon to the layer which can be edited by right-clicking and hitting Properties.
Beautiful transitions, effects, frame adjustments and animated titles
Perfecting video projects with fine-tuning the image is one area where OpenShot shines. You can change the saturation, brightness, contrast, blur, alpha (transparency), width, height and more under filter properties.
The transitions that OpenShot Video Editor include are pretty cool. Easily apply circle in and out, fade, wipe left to right (or right to left), blinds, distortions, fish eyes and a whole slew of different effects to video tracks transitioning between frames and separate videos.
A really awesome feature that comes with this program is the ability to add animated titles. This feature is powered by Blender and has a few really nice looking presets to choose from. You can configure and customize a few options in title effects such as the text, bevel depth, font and text size. Installation of Blender is required however.
Edit and create 4K, HD 1080p / 720p videos
In terms of what types of video and audio files OpenShot Video Editor supports: It's a long list. You can open virtually any type of file not limited to MP4, MKV, FLV, AVI, MOV, WebM (VP9), AVCHD (libx264), HEVC (libx265) and many others. We saw no issues including MP3 files, OGG, Vorbis and AAC files and the ability to edit audio tracks is pretty good.
Exporting videos includes many different options, not least of which one which allows you to export between start and end frames which can be useful for testing which encoder works best for your project. It can export AVI, MKV, WebM, MP4 and others using various codecs which take advantage of CPU optimization. A few video profile presets may also be used which target for a certain FPS and resolution anywhere from 4K UHD, HD 1080p, HD 720p and mobile formats.
Conclusion
When it comes to stability, this program was excellent and didn't use as much in terms of system resources as one would expect. It got all tasks done in record time, making it a favorite.
All in all, OpenShot Video Editor is a lovely freeware video editing utility that just breezes through projects while offering a user interface that has a very low learning curve. It's fast, free and fully capable of creating some really good looking video files in many open formats.
Features of OpenShot Video Editor
- Integrates with Vimeo and YouTube.
- 3D Animations: Animate 3D title text and shapes.
- Audio Mixing: Mix multiple audio tracks together.
- Drag & Drop: Drag and drop files directly into the timeline.
- Formats: Supports a wide variety of video, audio and image formats.
- Keyframe Animations: Create keyframe animations of video properties.
- Multi-Track: Add as many layers as you want to your timeline.
- Real-Time Previews: Preview your audio and video in real-time.
- Slow Motion: Slow down or speed up your videos.
- Timeline: Powerful timeline for video and audio editing.
- Titles & Backgrounds: Create titles and backgrounds for your videos.
- Video Blending: Blend multiple clips together using the Chroma Key filter.
- Video Effects: Add video effects, transitions and titles to your videos.
- Video Trimming: Easily trim, snap and cut your video and audio files.
Compatibility and License
OpenShot Video Editor is a free application released under the GPLv3 license on Windows from audio and video editors. With software released under the open source GPLv3 license, anybody can download, install, run and distribute the software with little in terms of restrictions. The latest version we have is 3.1.1 and is available to download here.
OpenShot Studios LLC accepts donations for the continued development of this free software.
What version of Windows can OpenShot Video Editor run on?
OpenShot Video Editor can be used on a computer running Windows 11 or Windows 10. Previous versions of the OS shouldn't be a problem with Windows 8 and Windows 7 having been tested. It comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads.
Other operating systems: The latest OpenShot Video Editor version from 2024 is also available for Android and Mac. These are often available from the app store.
Filed under:
- OpenShot Video Editor Download
- Free Audio and Video Editors
- Open source and GPL software
- Video Production Software
