OPENSHOT: Video editing
Nick Peers reveals how easy it is to take your raw video footage and turn it into a polished movie.
Nick Peers reveals how easy it is to take your raw video footage and turn it into a polished movie with the best video editor that open source can muster.
Just how many photos and video clips have you accumulated over the years? Whether you’ve got dedicated equipment or just love snapping and filming on your phone, now is the time to do something creative with it. Openshot is a brilliant video editing tool that’s relatively simple to learn, yet packed with features that allow you to turn last holiday’s rough video footage into a polished movie you’ll be happy to share with others. In this tutorial we’ll introduce you to all the key elements you need.
You can install Openshot through the Software
Centre, but it may not be the latest version. Instead, head to www.openshot.org/download where you’ll find the latest version provided as a 64-bit Appimage. Save this to a suitable folder (maybe Appimages inside your Home folder?), then right-click it and choose Properties > Permissions, ticking ‘Allow executing file as program’. Now double-click the .appimage file. You’ll be prompted to create a desktop shortcut – click Yes and a shortcut will appear on the ‘All’ tab of the app finder.
It can take a little while to initialise, so be patient and when the main screen appears, you’re ready to proceed. Run through the quick-start tutorial that will quickly provide an orientation around the application window.
Collect and add your files
Step one is simply to drag and drop your video, picture and audio files to the Project Files pane. Openshot supports a wide range of formats – if it’s supported by
Ffmpeg, it’ll work in Openshot, which covers most bases. After dragging into the pane, use the Video, Audio and Image tabs to filter the view to show only those types of files, or use the Filter box to filter by keyword. Now is the perfect time to save your project for the first time – when you reload it in future, all files you’ve added to the Project Files pane will be restored.
You’re now ready to start putting your movie together. The Timeline pane at the bottom of the screen is where you drag your elements. Five tracks are set up by default, in descending order, with Track 5 at the top, and Track 1 at the bottom. Think of these as layers. Anything placed on Track 1 is your ‘background’, with all other elements appearing on top of it; Openshot’s support for track transparency means you can overlay all kinds of effects without hiding the original track. More on that later.
For now, we’re going to start with two simple tracks: one video stream containing your video clips (including any sound) and still images, and a separate audio stream for background music. So, let’s clean things up a little: right-click Track 5 and choose Remove, then repeat for Tracks 4 and 3 so only the first two tracks remain. Next, click the V button next to ‘Track 1’ and choose ‘Rename Track’, calling it ‘Video’. Repeat for ‘Track 2’, calling this ‘Audio’.
You’re now ready to start putting together your movie. Start by dragging your first clip or image from the Project Files pane into the Timeline. Drag it onto
the Video track and place it right at the start of the timeline. Your clip will appear as a draggable object, its length corresponding to the duration of the track. The play-head/ruler above the track helps indicate the length of each track as well as your overall movie.
If you’re working with short clips, you may want to adjust the magnification of the ruler; by default, 15-second intervals are denoted, which can be altered using the slider above the ruler. Drag the slider left to zoom in and reduce the intervals (5-10 seconds is usually enough), or drag it right to zoom out for an overview – typically, 720-second or 12-minute intervals is perfect for a two-hour movie. You can adjust the magnification as you edit your movie as required.
Transition clips
The Video Preview window above the timeline enables you to see how your editing is progressing, providing a rough view of your video and audio tracks, plus any additional effects applied. Use the playback controls underneath or adjust the playback position precisely using the play-head ruler. If the previews seem jerky, try reducing the quality of the preview via ‘Edit > Preferences > Profile’ to prioritise smoother playback.
Some clips may be perfectly formed, but chances are one or two will need trimming, while other, longer files might benefit from being split into separate clips. Why choose the latter option? One reason is to introduce fades or other transition effects within a single clip. The step-by-step guide on page 67 shows how to trim your clips. Once created, remove the original, unedited clip from your timeline (right-click it and choose ‘Remove Clip’) and drag the new, edited clip into its place.
Now add your second clip by dragging it into place on the timeline. Drag it so it bumps up to the clip or image on its left. Play back your movie and you’ll see one clip goes directly into the next. Sometimes this can appear a little jarring. To smooth the switch between each clip, drag the second clip left so it overlaps the first clip slightly – say for a couple of seconds.
Openshot will now automatically apply a fade effect – look for the semi-translucent blue object with a small V at the top appearing over your second clip – to ease the transition between scenes. Play back the clip and you should find clip one fades seamlessly into clip two. More on transition effects later.
You can now quickly stitch together a rough edit of your basic movie by dragging and dropping clips into position as outlined. Again, use the preview window to see how it’s progressing – you can use the play and forward/rewind buttons underneath it or click and drag the play-head (the red vertical line) on the timeline into your chosen position.
When you add photos, they will appear on screen for a default of 10 seconds per image. This may sound like a long time, so you can change this via the ‘Image Length (seconds)’ setting you’ll find under Edit > Preferences > General tab, or edit an individual photo’s time on-screen by clicking and dragging its right-hand edge on the timeline left or right to reduce or extend the length. Again, we recommend overlapping images to produce a more seamless switch between them using the Fade effect.
Adding effects
Image slideshows can appear rather static, even with the transition effects in place. One way to inject some more pizazz into them is to make use of Openshot’s various Animate effects. To access these for a particular image, simply right-click it to reveal a pop-up menu of options. Use the Rotate menu to correct the orientation of portrait photos, then have a good look at the options under Animate.
You can apply animated effects to the start or end of the clip or have them run for the entire duration it’s on-screen. Whichever option you choose, you have five selections: Zoom enables you to zoom into or out of the clip, while Center to Edge, Edge to Center and Edge to Edge enable you to move the clip to and from top, bottom, right or left edge of the screen and the centre. Random basically lets Openshot choose; you’d select this in a slideshow where you want to animate each clip, but don’t want to choose which effect to select.
One potential issue with rotated photos is that the top and bottom get chopped off. One solution is to employ ‘Animate > Start of Clip > Zoom > Zoom out
(100% to 75%)’, but another is to edit the clip’s properties: right-click it and choose Properties to bring up the Properties pane on the left. Click and drag the Location Y slider right to pull the image down, or left to pull it up. Alternatively, double-click inside and enter your figure manually – try -0.15 or 0.15.
While you’re here, you can experiment with other settings too – for example, the Scale X and Scale Y figures to crop in further. Make sure you set identical figures for both to preserve the aspect ratio.
When it comes to injecting effects into your video clips, use the Time option on the right-click menu to reveal a host of options for speeding up or slowing down the clip, plus running it backwards. You can speed it up to 16x its normal speed, or slow it down to 1/16th speed. You can also temporarily freeze (or freeze and zoom) the clip for up to 30 seconds – make sure you’ve positioned the play-head at the point you want this freeze to happen before applying the effect.
Advanced transitions
We’ve already seen how you can quickly create a basic fade effect between scenes or images by dragging one clip so it overlaps another. But Openshot offers an array of different transition effects – hundreds in fact – all lurking on the Transitions tab of the Project Files pane. One way to add these to your movie is to simply select one from the list and drag it on top of a movie clip on your timeline. Too much choice? Click the Common button to hide them all, aside from a handful of understated wipes, circles and the previously mentioned fade.
That’s all well and good, but what about the fade effect you created earlier? Thankfully, you can change its transition type without having to delete it and start again from scratch. Click the V button next to your first transition and choose Properties. Right-click the Source property (currently set to ‘fade.svg’) and expand the Transitions menu to reveal the common options mentioned earlier.
Select one of these, then watch a preview on the preview window. Still not your cup of tea? Right-clicking Source and opening the Transition menu again will now reveal all available transitions, split into 18 sub-menus, ordered alphabetically. Once you’ve selected a new effect, you can fine-tune it further with all the other available properties. Perhaps the most important one is End, which sets the duration of the effect. They’re 10 seconds by default, so try reducing this to 3-5 seconds and previewing the effect.
While it’s tempting to go overboard with these transitions, consistency and simplicity always pay dividends – so find an effect you like, take the time to set it up carefully, then apply it to the rest of your movie. To do this, first delete any other transition effects you’ve placed on the timeline (right-click the transition and choose ‘Remove Transition’). Now select your original, carefully configured transition and press Ctrl+c followed by Ctrl+v to duplicate it. Drag this new transition into position at the start of the following clip, then repeat for all the clips in your movie.
As a rule of thumb, one transition is fine, but you can bend this rule for longer movies by setting up a more elaborate effect (say a wipe) to signal the end of a major scene. You’ll be following in the footsteps of major filmmakers like George Lucas.
Add your audio track
If, as is likely, your video comes with its own audio track, this will be combined with it on Track 1. You can adjust its volume via the Properties pane – scroll down and experiment with the Volume setting. Set it to 0.5 or 0.7 to reduce the volume, or increase it to 2, 3 or even 4 if it’s too quiet. This should be enough for most, but it’s also possible to extract the audio as a separate clip if you want.
Right-click the clip and choose Separate Audio. You’ll see two options: a single chip combines all audio channels as one, while if your clip has more than one
audio channel (typically left and right) choose ‘Multiple Clips (each channel)’ instead. The audio clips will sit on top of the current video clip, so now is the time to drag them off to their own separate tracks. At this point you’ll need to create new tracks: click the green + button underneath Timeline and then rename the track accordingly. You’ll notice a black square has appeared over the top of your video – that originates from the audio track. Open the audio track’s properties and set its Scale property to ‘None’ to remove it. Once done, you can manipulate each audio track independently of the main video track.
You can also add additional audio tracks – say a piece of music – to play over your movie. Drag the music file to the Project Files pane if you’ve not done so already, then switch to the Audio tab and drag the file onto its own track. Preview your movie and you should hear the music track playing over the top of any audio in your original clips.
Again, you can adjust the volume of your music track manually using the Volume property, but manually tweaking different audio tracks can be fiddly, particularly in relation to other tracks. A semiautomated solution is available in the form of the ‘Volume Mixing’ property. For example, to give your soundtrack prominence over the background audio, set its ‘Volume Mixing’ property to ‘Reduce’, then select each video clip on Track 1 in turn and set its volume mixer to ‘Average’. If you’d prefer the music to be in the background, simply reverse the settings.
Finishing touches
Thanks to Openshot’s support for multiple tracks, you can also experiment with placing images, captions or video clips on top of other clips – just create a new track, drag your content onto it and watch as it blocks out the Video track completely. You can adjust its transparency using the overlaid element’s Alpha property (try 0.5 for a semi-transparent effect) or experiment with other settings, such as adjusting its size or position on-screen.
If you want to add text to your movie, in the form of a title, subtitles or explanatory captions, check out the box on adding titles (opposite page). Use the static title tool to generate captions – most come with transparent backgrounds, enabling you to lay them over the top of your video clips without blocking them out.
Once your movie is complete, choose File > Export Video. Most of the options here are self-explanatory; choose a file format (the universal MP4 with h.264 codec in most cases), video profile (frame rate and resolution size) and quality setting. For best results, try to match the initial resolution of your video clips; failing that, try a lower quality setting. Finally, click ‘Export Video’ and sit back. This can take some time to complete, even for a relatively short video, and will depend on the speed and spec of your PC. A progress bar and estimated time to completion will tell you how long you’ve got to wait, but the conversion rate will vary at certain points in your movie. In all likelihood you’ll need to make a cup of tea, coffee or something stronger for even a relatively short clip.
Product code: LXFDB0253
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