It is because of this the developer decided to do a crowd-funding campaign. The goal of this campaign (which ran three years ago) was to get funding so that he and his team could turn this video editor into a viable choice for non-linear editing on Linux, Mac and Windows, complete with new, advanced features, tweaks, improvements and lots of other good things. Currently, the new version is in public beta. Here’s how to get it installed and working on your Linux distribution.
Installation
Though the OpenShot video is readily available in most Linux distributions’ software repositories, the beta is not. If you’re looking to install it to your system, you’ll need to get it from the developer’s website via the source package or add it via PPA (for Ubuntu users).
Ubuntu PPA
Installing the Open Shot beta is simple. Just open a terminal window and enter the command below to add the repository to your system.
Once the PPA has been added to your system, you’ll need to update Ubuntu’s software sources to reflect the changes that have been made. Finally, it’s time to install the OpenShot 2.0 beta.
From Source
If you’re not using Ubuntu but still want to try OpenShot 2.0 beta, you’ll have to build it from source. Download the latest .tar.gz file from this URL and extract it. Once extracted, open a terminal window, and then enter the following commands:
Now that you’re inside the extracted directory, it’s time to install the dependencies. Search your package manager for libopenshot, libopenshot-audio and ffmpeg. Once you’ve found them (the packages may have differing names), install them. With the dependencies installed, it’s time to install OpenShot. Once the command has been run, you’ll be able to run the program either by running openshot-qt, or by searching for it in your Applications menu.
What’s New Since Version 1.0
Cross-platform
OpenShot 2.0 has been a long time in the making – 3 years to be exact. There have been many new features since then. The first most compelling change to the video editor is that it is now available for use on non-Linux platforms. Though it’s not in a stable state, the OpenShot video editor can now be used on Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
If you’re looking to download either the Windows 7/8/10 version or the Mac OS X 10.9/10.10/10.11 version, just click on this link. After that, find the drop-down menu labeled “Choose a version,” and select either the Mac or Windows version to start the download.
New Features
Besides being newly cross-platform, there are other compelling features that have been added to OpenShot 2.0. There are several new, exciting features. Some say that these additions take OpenShot from a casual editor with not much to offer to a compelling video production-ready tool.
2.0 adds things like keyframe editing, support for custom SVG titles, real-time preview support, a split-clip tool, new autosave engine, animated GIF support, better timeline effects, video tagging support and many, many other compelling features as well. Obviously, since this editor is in beta, new features may not be added yet.
Conclusion
Video editing on Linux is iffy at best. Sure, there are tools available, but they’re all hit-or-miss. That’s why OpenShot 2.0 makes me optimistic. Each beta release adds really compelling features – features any video editing tool needs to be competent and competitive. I hope that when the release of this program is finalized, it’ll be even better than it is now. Here’s to hoping! Do you edit videos on Linux? What’s your editor of choice? Tell us below!
