Download OpenShot Video Editor 2.5.0

Version 2.5.0 of OpenShot Video Editor has become available. OpenShot Video Editor is an open source video editor for Linux and is also available for Windows and macOS since version 2.0. The program is made with Python, GTK and the MLT Framework, and is comparable to Windows Movie Maker or Apple’s iMovie. The main improvements made in this release are listed below.

Hardware encoding and decoding support

Perhaps one of the most exciting changes in OpenShot 2.5.0 is our experimental support for hardware acceleration. You will see some new options available if you have a supported encoder/decoder. Many graphics cards come with the ability to encode and decode video data without using the CPU. This can result in a huge performance improvement on some systems, but also depends on the input and output formats, and many other factors. For example, if you are using only MP4/H.264 input files, and your graphics card is supported, it can help OpenShot decode the pixel data from the video, and on the flip side, encode the pixel data back into a video. This can increase performance by up to 30-40%, just depending on all the various factors. A huge thanks to Peter M for his dedication and help with this one!

Keyframe performance improvements (magnitudes faster)

Often on projects which contain long clips or many clips, the performance of our keyframe system would slow down. Usually the delay was only on first accessing the keyframe, but when many clips are involved, it would sometimes slow down a bunch as a user would jump around the timeline. We have completely rewritten the keyframe system to deliver real-time interpolated values, and no longer cache the entire value set. A big thanks to Daniel Jour for all his great engineering on this one! Our new system can generate almost 100,000 interpolated values ​​before our old system would return even 1 value.

Export and Import of EDL and XML (Premiere and Final Cut Pro)

For the first time ever, OpenShot can import and export data in widely supported formats. Our EDL support works with many video editors, and supports the basic timeline data (files, clips, some keyframes, transitions, etc…). XML format is supported in Final Cut Pro, but also many other products support this format. It also contains the basic timeline data (files, clips, some keyframes, and multiple tracks). The XML format is more advanced by far, and supports more features from OpenShot. This has been a highly requested feature for many years. I’m happy to finally deliver on it!

Thumbnail generation much improved (uses local HTTP server)

Previous versions of OpenShot had a very fragile thumbnail system. If a folder got moved or renamed, it was likely many broken thumbnails would appear. This has now been fixed in a few ways. Project’s now have unique asset folders, and thumbnails are now generated using a local HTTP server, check multiple folder locations, and can regenerate missing ones.

Blender 2.8+ Support

Blender 2.8 was a huge and impressive release. We now support the new *.blend format, and most of our animated titles have been fixed or recreated from scratch. We also have some improved logic around version detection and EXE detection.

New ability to recover previous saves and improved auto-backup

One of the scariest types of issues a user can encounter is losing huge amounts of data, by perhaps deleting everything from their timeline (on accident), and then auto-save running. Now, before every save, a copy of the entire *.osp project is copied into a recovery folder. We only store a limited amount of recovery files, but now users will be able to easily grab an older version and copy it back to the original save folder location. While not perfect, this will hopefully prevent massive data losses, and give users more options to recover previous versions of a project… even when the undo/redo system and auto-save system fails them.

SVG compatibility and improvements

We have fixed many issues around SVG support, transparency issues, font issues, and included a much newer version of resvg library in our official releases. Updated title thumbnails, and better support of SVG, especially on OS X and older Linux distros.

Preview window improvements (dimensions divisible by 2)

When resizing the preview window in OpenShot, often a user will choose an invalid window size, one that is not divisible by their project output size (ie 1920×1080). We now verify (and adjust if needed) the final preview window size to always be divisible by 2 (both width and height). This prevents flickering lines and bars on the sides of preview/playback.

Export improvements

When exporting a video, we no longer modify the project’s keyframe data. This was done to scale keyframes up and down, when exporting to different frame rates. But a side effect was it would modify keyframe data and potentially lose data (scaling down and back up). This no longer happens, and project data is now safe when exporting.

Disable metrics until opt-in (privacy improvements)

On the first launch of OpenShot, we no longer automatically send metric data until a user has opted in to share metrics with us. The metric requests are queued up, and will go nowhere unless a user gives permission. Metrics are very useful though, and help us see how OpenShot is being used. They are already anonymized, and contain no IP or location data. But they tell us important details, such as version info, library versions, what errors have occurred, etc… All things that help us find bugs and ultimately improve the quality of OpenShot.

Tons of CMake and build improvements

Thanks to @ferdnyc for all the help and support improving our build system, CMake, Travis CI, GitLab CI, and much more! We’ve updated many dependencies, but mostly, our build system is simpler, more bullet-proof, and more modern.

Cross-platform improvements (fixed lots of small differences between OSes)

We now have a much more rigorous testing suite for OpenShot, and all 3 OSes have reached the same support and features, and all OSes are now passing our release testing plan. This is part of a bigger plan to make OpenShot more transparent, more documented on GitHub, and easier for new contributors to join us. A big thanks to everyone who helped test OpenShot 2.5.0.