OpenShot Video Editor Review 2024

OpenShot is a free-to-use, open-source video editing tool with no bells and whistles. However, as far as functionality and features are concerned, it doesn’t disappoint.

If you are someone who has just embarked on your video editing journey, we don’t recommend that you move to the heavyweights.

Not saying that you shouldn’t use them, but, before you climb up that ladder, and invest your hard-earned money, you can start your journey with free and open-source tools. OpenShot Video Editor is one such video editing utility you can install on your Windows PC.

Here we’ll dive deeper into the various aspects of OpenShot – the features, pricing, performance, etc. So that, eventually you can decide whether to use it or give it a pass.

System Requirements

• Windows Compatibility – Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 (64-bit)
• Processor –

Minimum cores: 2 (recommended: 6+ cores)

Minimum threads: 4 (recommended: 6+ threads)

Minimum turbo clock speed: 2.7 Ghz (recommended: 3.4+ Ghz)

• RAM – 4 GB minimum (16 GB recommended)
• Hard Disk Space – 1GB minimum (50 GB recommended)

How To Use OpenShot Video Editor on Windows 11/10 PC

This section discusses how you can get started with OpenShot Video Editor on your Windows computer-

Step 1 – Download OpenShot video editing software on your computer and run the installation file.

Step 2 – Let’s start with adding a few video clips, audio, and image files. For this click on the + icon underneath the menus. Go to the location on your computer, from where you wish to import the clips.

Step 3 – The interface also lets you see each of the file types individually. For instance, you can access audio files, images, etc individually by clicking on the appropriate tab.

Step 4 – Next, we’ll head to the timeline because that’s where you edit your clips. Here, you can add as many tracks as you want and then arrange files accordingly. To add tracks, right-click on the track name and select Add Track Above/ Add Track Below based on where you want to add the tracks.

If it’s the first time you have installed and downloaded the OpenShot video editor on your Windows PC, you will get a tutorial pop-up. You can go through each of these and get a quick navigation of the interface.

The top of the interface houses very menu items such as the file, edit, title, view, and help.

Just below the menu bar, you can find buttons for starting new projects, opening projects, undoing/redoing, choosing a profile (resolution) for your project, importing files, or exporting videos.

Beneath the buttons, you have the Project files area where you are going to house all your video clips, audio files as well as image files.

Below the Project Files area, you have the timeline where you will perform actual tasks. This is where you are going to place all your image files, audio, and others and lay things in the order you want them to appear.

Towards the right-hand side of the Project Files area, you can see the preview pane or the Video Preview section. Whatever changes you make on the timeline, the subsequent result in the video can be seen in the preview. Here, you can use the play, rewind and fast-forward buttons to control the playback of the preview.

Each of the elements of the interface is customizable and you can arrange them based on your requirements and workflow.

1. Key Frame Animation

OpenShot for Windows facilitates keyframe animation where you can add any number of keyframes for smooth transitions and effects. More specifically, by the way of these effects and transitions, you can show a change in parameters like scale, position, opacity, and others. What we liked is that OpenShot offers curve-based keyframe animation. It has a keyframe interpolation mode that determines how animated values are calculated.

2. Add Any Number of Tracks and Layers

With OpenShot you can layer your tracks for smooth video editing. You can add videos, images, audio tracks, and much more. Since the video editor supports many audio, video, and image formats, you can layer as many tracks spanning various file formats. Furthermore, you can reorder the tracks and move them up and down, lock them if required, and change the transparency of individual tracks.

3. Add Chroma Key

Many times, we use a green screen or blue screen in post-production so that we can later key the green screen out and transport the actors to another environment. In this regard, one of the highlights of OpenShot is that, despite being free and open source, the software lets key out the green screen, thanks to its Chroma Key feature. You adjust the Chroma key properties (color and fuzz) and add multiple Chroma key effects onto a single clip.

4. Audio Mixing and Editing

OpenShot offers a variety of audio editing features. To begin with, if you are not happy with the existing audio of your video clip, you can detach it and then import the audio that you’d like to sync with the audio. Once you have added the audio, you can drag the start and the end, in order to match the audio to that of the video clip. One more aspect that we liked is that you can right-click on the audio and display it in the waveform format.

5. Drag and Drop Functionality

In order to add files to the timeline, OpenShot offers multiple ways, thanks to integration with your Windows desktop. You can head to the drive location from where you want to add files or you can simply drag and drop the files directly into the timeline.

6. Wide Range of Transitions

OpenShot comes loaded with over 400 transitions. You can change the sharpness and quickness of these transitions and gradually fade or wipe between two clips. These are represented by blue and rounded rectangles on the timeline. The transitions are created as you overlap two clips. To add a transition manually, you can drag uit onto the timeline from the Transitions panel.

7. Time-mapping

Ever felt like slowing down clips or increasing their speed? You can achieve this with the Time-mapping and speed change feature of OpenShot. Not just that, you can even reverse the direction of the video or change the speed and direction of the video clip manually.

OpenShot is a decent-performing video editor. That said, bugs do tend to creep in sometimes. On a personal front, we did face occasional lagging or the software froze at times, or it suddenly quit abruptly. But, that’s not a very common occurrence. Also, while it handles large files quite efficiently, we did find that it becomes slow when handling 4K videos.

Updates are regularly released for the OpenShot video editor so that it functions smoothly. Through these updates, developers ensure that bugs are fixed which further resolves any crashes or glitches you might encounter.  Also, various new features and performance improvements are released via these updates.

For instance, with the latest update, new themes, and various performance enhancements were introduced. With the latest update, you can now remove unwanted gaps between clips. The latest update has also brought support for Blender 4.1 for improved Blender animations.

OpenShot software for Windows is a free and open-source software.

OpenShot doesn’t have a dedicated phone support or email support team. However, in case you are stuck with a feature or wish to know how a feature works, you can always refer to a wealth of online tutorials and guides. Plus, you may also find exhaustive answers to your queries in the forum as well.

Is OpenShot Worth It?

For beginner to intermediate users, OpenShot packs in decent amount of features. The interface is simplistic and offers a low learning curve. With each passing update, there are improvements, however, you may have to make terms with crashes and bugs that appear sometimes. Barring that, we recommend downloading and testing out the OpenShot video editor on your Windows computer.

Have already tested it out? Do share your experience with us in the comments section below. And, if you already have a favorite and free video editor, do share your choice with us in the comments section below. For more such content keep reading Top10PC. You can also find us on  Facebook, Flipboard, and Pinterest.

Frequently Asked Question

Q1. Is OpenShot completely free?

Yes, OpenShot is a free and open-source software. You don’t have to spend a penny and you can enjoy all the features of this video editing software on your PC for free. And, since it is open-source, the software code is readily available online. If you are an advanced user, you can download the code, tweak and create modifications.

Q2. Does OpenShot put watermark on exported videos?

Many users have a notion that since OpenShot is free, they might get a watermark on their exported video. Even though it is free it doesn’t place any watermark on the exported videos. However, you can always add your customized watermark to show that the video is your intellectual property.

Q3. Is OpenShot safe for PCs?

At the outset, we’d urge users to download OpenShot on their computer from the official website. We’d also highly recommend that you keep an eye of upgrades that OpenShot releases regularly to roll out performance improvements, new features, etc. On a personal front, when we downloaded the software from its official website, it wasn’t flagged off as a malicious threat by any of the Antivirus tools.