Hello, welcome to this complete tutorial on OpenShot, a free and open
source video editor for Windows, MacOS and Linux absolutely great for
beginners!
In just 9 minutes we are going to see all of its features, even if
you start from zero.
When you first open OpenShot, its easy interface appears, made up of
several panels and the main project timeline at the bottom in seconds. You
can close any panel and reopen it from the View tab, under Docks.
You can also change the entire interface from View, Views. In this video we
will be using the Simple View.
OpenShot starts with a new project completely empty. To add videos, images,
and sound files, you can browse for them with the Import Files button on
top, or drag and drop these files directly onto the timeline. All imported
files are listed inside the Project Files panel, grouped by type.
The timeline is the place you arrange and edit your files, shown as clips
within rows called Tracks. By default, there are five tracks available, but
you can click on the arrow button on the left to add, rename or remove
tracks as needed.
Hold down the CTRL (or CMD) key and use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out
around the red marker on the timeline. You can also scroll in time with the
ALT (or the Option) key.
Each track can collect visual and audio clips, showing their file name and
visual thumbnails. You can also right-click on any clip and go to Display,
Show Waveform, to check the audio volume level over time.
With OpenShot you may not be able to record audio from your microphone. To
do this you may need to use other free software like Audacity, uploading
the recording when it is done into OpenShot.
Visit our channel to learn more about Audacity!
The Video Preview panel displays your timeline content under the red
marker.
Click on the timeline to place the marker in time and drag it to check
several frames together. You can playback in real time with audio with the
player below the preview.
From Choose Profile in the top left corner you can change your preview and
project settings, such as video size and frame rate up to 16K UHD and
60fps.
Make sure to relax these options to improve the playback performance with
respect to your computer specification.
To edit any clip, click on it to select it first. Drag it to move it in
time or to a different track. The default length of the timeline is five
minutes, but it gets extended as you move clips.
When dragging videos with audio both frames and audio are moved together.
You can make them independent by right-clicking and going to Separate
Audio.
Pay attention on where you place your clips on the timeline. Clips placed
on the top video track are shown in front of other clips at lower Tracks.
To trim any clip content, click and drag from its edges. You can also
right-click on the clip and go to Time to adjust the clip length by
changing its playback speed instead of cutting its content. This may change
the audio pitch that can't be properly adjusted within OpenShot.
You can remove any selected clip with the Backspace key. Undo any action
with CTRL (or CMD) and Z.
To split any clip into two parts place the red marker and hit the S key.
To make corrections on the clip right-click on it and go to Properties. On
the left apply visual and audio corrections, adjusting opacity with Alpha
and setting clip placement, rotation, and size with Scale. Set these values
by clicking and dragging or edit the clip directly on the preview.
Click and drag the clip to move and place it or drag from its nodes to
scale and rotate.
To remove black bars you can scale the clip on the preview or simply use
the Scale option on the left. Whereas adjust any audio level with Volume.
These properties can be changed in time with markers called keyframes.
These save one or more properties where they are placed in time.
By default, OpenShot adds one keyframe at the beginning of the clip, with
all default property values saved. You can edit this keyframe to change
any property through the entire clip length.
To change any property over time, place the red marker on the clip and edit
the property. This creates a second keyframe so that the property goes from
the first keyframe saved to the second one, as shown in green color on the
left. You can add more keyframes to create more complex envelopes.
To edit any keyframe, simply select it and change its values from the left.
You can also right-click on these to change the envelope or remove the
keyframe altogether.
With OpenShot, you can easily apply visual and audio transitions to
introduce and end your clips smoothly. To add a fade transition, just
right-click on a clip and go to Fade, changing opacity or volume gradually.
You can also open the Transition panel and drag and drop any visual
transition onto your timeline, and trim it to adjust its speed as you need.
You can right-click on it and go to Reverse Transition to correct the
transition towards the ending part of the clip.
You can apply visual effects to your clips to make them look cooler and
more professional!
Open the Effects panel and drag and drop an effect onto any clip. You can
adjust its properties by choosing the effect from the Selection panel,
while checking the preview.
To remove the effect, right-click on the effect icon and go to Remove.
You can also add text to your videos by going to the Title tab and then to
Title. Select the proper text template and adjust its appearance on the
right. Set text content, font, style, size, and even the color for the font
and the background.
When you apply you create a new text clip under Project Files that you can
drag and drop onto the timeline. Overlap the other clips to get text in
front and edit the text clip as seen in this video.
To save your project go to file saved project as. This gets saved in a .osp
file format that can be reopened from File, Open Project.
When you are ready to render your timeline video, go to Export Video above.
Here, set the file name and destination folder for your video and the basic
profile to start from. At the bottom select video format, resolution,
aspect ratio, and quality.
If you need more advanced options, switch to the Advanced tab. This allows
you to export video and audio together or separately, as well as defining
the first and the last frame to export. OpenShot will never add any
watermark over your videos!
Thank you very much for watching this tutorial! If you found this video
helpful, don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more content like
this and visit our website for more tips and tricks!