OpenShot 4.0 release notes / what's new

OpenShot 4.0 is a major update that transforms the open-source video editor into a comprehensive production suite by integrating recording, professional color grading, and local machine learning tools. The release focuses on removing workflow bottlenecks by allowing users to capture and edit media within a single interface and improving the underlying engine for faster rendering.

Professional Color Grading with New Color View

OpenShot 4.0 introduces a dedicated Color View, providing a centralized workspace for color correction and creative grading. This view integrates a large video preview with clip properties, color wheels, and live video scopes to ensure accuracy regardless of monitor calibration.

Color Grade Effect and Precision Tools

The new Color Grade effect combines basic correction and advanced grading into a single tool:

  • Correction Controls: Adjustable exposure, contrast, temperature, tint, highlights, shadows, saturation, and vibrance.
  • Color Wheels: Separate wheels for global adjustments, shadows, midtones, and highlights for targeted tonal shifts.
  • Curves: Four editable curves for the full image and individual RGB channels, supporting smooth Bézier adjustments.
  • LUT Support: Integration of industry-standard .cube LUT files with an intensity control for blending.

All parameters within the Color Grade effect are keyframable, allowing for dynamic lighting corrections or stylized transitions over time.

Live Video Scopes and Region Analysis

To eliminate reliance on misleading monitor displays, OpenShot 4.0 includes four professional video scopes:

  • Luma Waveform, Histogram, RGB Parade, and Vectorscope.
  • Region Tool: Users can draw a bounding box over specific areas (e.g., a face or the sky) to analyze only that portion of the frame.
  • Skin-Tone Reference: The Vectorscope includes a dedicated reference line to maintain natural skin tones.

Integrated Recording View

The new Recording View allows users to capture audio and video directly into a project, eliminating the need for external capture software and manual import workflows.

  • Multi-Source Capture: Users can simultaneously record a microphone, desktop screen, webcam, and system audio. Each source is saved as a separate media file and timeline clip, allowing for independent editing of audio levels or cropping the webcam.
  • Automated Layouts: When combining screen and webcam recordings, OpenShot can automatically generate a rounded picture-in-picture layout.
  • Voice-Over Workflow: A dedicated "Record" option in the audio menu allows users to record voice-overs directly onto a specific clip track.
  • Platform Support: The tool supports native recording paths for Windows, macOS, Linux X11, and Linux Wayland (via PipeWire).

Local AI-Powered Object Masking

OpenShot 4.0 implements Object Masking using locally run machine learning models, removing the need for cloud subscriptions or data uploads.

  • Local Execution: The software utilizes ONNX-format models (including YOLO, EfficientSAM, and Cutie) that run on the user's hardware via libopenshot and OpenCV.
  • Interactive Masking: Users identify subjects using positive and negative points; the software then generates and tracks the mask throughout the clip.
  • Integration: Generated masks can be used as sources for other effects, such as Blur, Pixelate, or Color Grade, to isolate subjects or modify backgrounds.
  • Object Detection: Updated support for YOLOv5 ONNX models allows for better segmentation masks and improved control over tracked object labels and transformations.

Performance and Timeline Architecture

OpenShot 4.0 replaces its previous web-based timeline components with a fully native Qt timeline, resulting in a more responsive editing experience.

Native Timeline Improvements

  • Interaction: Smoother zooming, clearer clip and transition names, and more consistent thumbnail spacing based on source aspect ratios.
  • Direct Timecode Editing: The ruler's timecode can now be edited directly to move the playhead.
  • Keyframe Management: Enhanced menus for interpolation and better handling of animated data for color wheels and curves.

Engine Benchmarks

Performance optimizations in the libopenshot engine have led to significant speed increases in specific workloads compared to version 3.5.1:

  • Blur Effect: 61.8% faster.
  • Sharpen Effect: 12.8% faster.
  • Timeline Rendering: 3.4% to 5.1% improvement (including transforms).

Additional Features and Modernization

  • 10 New Effects: Includes Audio Visualization (waveforms, radial patterns, VU meters), Beat Sync (audio-reactive color layers), Film Grain (with 35mm and 16mm presets), Denoise Image, Shadow, Glow, Displacement Map, and a Timer effect.
  • Modernized Foundation: Expanded Qt 6 and PySide6 support improves compatibility with modern Linux distributions and establishes a foundation for future Android support.
  • Export Presets: Updated presets for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and LinkedIn.
  • Library Milestones: Both libopenshot and libopenshot-audio have reached version 1.0.0.

Community Perspectives

While the release is praised for its UI improvements and the integration of local AI, some users in the community have raised concerns regarding the software's current state:

"I've supported OpenShot financially in the past, but I'm currently leaning towards LosslessCut and Shortcut. Most people want a video editor to splice and concatenate video files without any loss or transcoding."

Other users noted potential stability issues on specific hardware (e.g., M1 Macs) and requested further improvements to the caption editing workflow, which has been a long-standing pain point for some users.

Sources

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