Shotcut

Shotcut runs on Windows, macOS and Linux from a single codebase, and binaries are built regularly for each of them, so most people editing video with it never go near the source.

Rather than reimplement the hard parts, it composes established libraries. Qt 6, version 6.4 at minimum, provides the application and interface layer, and the QML files describing that interface are read at run time rather than compiled in.

The dependency list says a good deal about what the editor can handle.

• MLT: the multimedia authoring framework doing the editing and rendering work underneath.
• FFmpeg: format and codec libraries, which is where the breadth of supported media comes from.
• Frei0r: the plugin collection supplying video effects.
• SDL: cross-platform audio playback.
• FFTW: the fast Fourier transform library, listed among the direct dependencies.

Building uses CMake, with the Ninja generator recommended, or Qt Creator for the quickest development run, though the project warns that compiling it should be left to beta testers and contributors who know what they are doing. Installing after a build is not optional, because the application looks for its QML files at run time and fails without them. The code is GPLv3, and translations are handled on Transifex, where new languages are welcome.