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Shotcut video editor is available as a snap (64bit only!), making it easier to install in multiple Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora, and so on.

Shotcut video editor Ubuntu

Shotcut is a free, open source Qt5 video editor developed on the MLT Multimedia Framework (it's developed by the same author as MLT), available for Linux, Windows and Mac. Under the hood, Shotcut uses FFmpeg, so it supports many audio, video and image formats, along with screen, webcam and audio capture.

The application doesn't require importing files, thanks to its native timeline editing. Other features worth mentioning are multitrack timeline with thumbnails and waveforms, 4k resolution support, video effects, as well as a flexible UI with dockable panels.

For a complete list of features, check out the Shotcut features page. If you're new to Shotcut, you may also want to check out its video tutorials.

While Shotcut had its first release back in 2011, it's still not available in official repositories. One of the reasons for this is probably that unless the dependencies the Shotcut developer uses for his builds, such as Movit, WebVfx, vid.stab, and FFmpeg - and not Libav -, are not included, then he doesn't give permission to brand the package as Shotcut.

A different name could be used, but even so, Shotcut is under heavy development, having a new release each month and requiring new dependencies, so it's quite complicated to update it through official repositories, at least in Debian and Ubuntu. 

This makes having a snap for Shotcut ideal, especially since you can easily revert to the previous version if some newer release is buggy.


Install Shotcut via snap (64bit only!)


Before proceeding with the Shotcut installation, make sure you have snapd installed (is installed by default in Ubuntu 16.04 and newer).

To install the Shotcut snap (64bit only), use the following command:
sudo snap install shotcut --classic

Later, when a new version is released, update Shotcut using the following command:
sudo snap refresh shotcut --classic

Note that the Shotcut snap package doesn't include a .desktop file, or at least, its menu / Dash entry doesn't show up in Ubuntu. To run it, open a terminal or press ALT + F2 and type "shotcut" (without the quotes).


To add Shotcut to the menu, you can use a tool like MenuLibre (available in the Ubuntu repositories):


Simply use "shotcut" as the executable (or "/snap/bin/shotcut" if you don't have /snap/bin in your PATH), enter the name, etc., and for the icon, use THIS.

Update: Shotcut does have a .desktop file, available under /snap/shotcut/3/Shotcut.desktop (thanks Philippe) but at least on my system, the application fails to start using it.

via Sorin Popescu @ Google+