In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Shotcut on Ubuntu Desktop. Shotcut is free and open source video editing tool and in simple term it is awesome! We have been using the Shotcut since 3 months for video editing and we really like this video editing software. Shotcut is developed in MLT Multimedia Framework and uses the ffmpeg.

Yesterday, we have written about installation of OpenShot so we have decided to write about every good video editing software which will benefit you. Hence, ShotCut is here.

Installation of Shotcut is pretty easy and hardly take a few steps to complete. You can install Shotcut in Linux, MacOS and Windows either in 32 or 64 bit operating system.

Shotcut has many awesome features, we strongly believe you should visit its feature page of its official website to gather more information. And this is how we can justify this post as well!

Install Shotcut on Ubuntu

As said pretty easy, first install the dependency and extract the tarball and ready to work. Lets start now.

Open the terminal in your desktop. And follow the given below commands in terminal.

1. Install dependencies and other packages to get maximum features from Shotcut.

sudo apt update 
sudo apt install ffmpeg libsox2 libsdl1.2debian libjack0

This is optional package.

sudo apt install swh-plugins

2. Download the tarball.

We always suggest to download latest tarball package from official website. At the time of writing this post Shotcut has released the version 17.01 .

wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut/releases/download/v17.02/shotcut-linux-x86_64-170205.tar.bz2

Once it is downloaded, move this file to your home directory.

mv shotcut-linux-x86_64-170205.tar.bz2 ~

And change to your home directory.

cd ~

3. Extract the downloaded Shotcut tarball.

tar -xvjf shotcut-linux-x86_64-170205.tar.bz2

After extraction new folder called Shotcut will be created which has many Shotcut related files and directories.

Now you have two options either directly run the Shotcut from relative path or making the default Shotcut command in system.

(a) From relative path just run this command. Shotcut dashboard will be opened.

./Shotcut/Shotcut.app/shotcut

(b) Lets make shotcut command, it helps you just type ‘shotcut’ command in terminal. In short, we are creating symlink for shotcut.

sudo ln -s ~/Shotcut/Shotcut.app/shotcut /usr/bin/shotcut

Once it is done, just run the command shotcut in terminal, shotcut dashboard will be opened.

Create Shotcut Desktop launcher

Create a new file called “Shotcut.desktop” in your Desktop.

vi ~/Desktop/Shotcut.desktop

And now in file paste the given below content.

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Shotcut
GenericName=Video Editor
Comment=Video Editor
Terminal=false
Exec=shotcut
Icon=applications-multimedia

Give executable permission to file “Shotcut.desktop”

chmod +x ~/Desktop/Shotcut.desktop

Now see at your desktop “Shotcut Desktop launcher” will be there, double click on the Shotcut icon and you will see the Shotcut get opened.

Enjoy editing videos in Shotcut. You can learn use case of shortcut from project’s tutorial page.