October not only brought us the release of two more major Linux distributions. Shotcut and Audacity released new versions. The first one is a non-linear video editor, the second one is one of the oldest free software audio editors.
In recent years the quality of free software has improved considerably, however, with the possible exception of Blender, open source tools for multimedia production do not have the quality of their proprietary paid counterparts. Although they are comparable to free proprietary tools.
Shotcut and Audacity released new versions
Shotcut 24.10
Shotcut is as we said, a non-linear video editor, This term is used to differentiate them from the editors that were used in the old days of video cassette or tape support. It refers to the fact that to get to a certain fragment of a video you had to go through the previous ones. It uses the Qt graphical libraries which makes it ideal for use with the KDE and LxQt desktops.
Like many other software projects, Shotcut also adds an AI-based feature. This is the transcription of voice to subtitles based on OpenAI's Whisper (The creators of chatGPT). The included version is basic, but if you have the hardware resources you can download a more complete one. Unfortunately, only Apple GPUs can be used, so on Linux you will have to let the CPU do all the work.
Regarding working with videos, transitions have been improved.. Ripple Delete allows you to restore all of the clips used in the transition, Lift fills the transition gap with adjacent clips and extends the duration of the transition when an adjacent clip is moved instead of separating it and leaving a gap.
Additionally, an option for numeric keywords is added to the GPS Text video filter, a “Show project in folder” option is added to the File menu, and a “Delete” action is added to the Projects context menu, as well as support for the latest FFmpeg 7.1 multimedia framework.
Other minor changes include changing the view from “Recent Projects” to “Projects,” adding support for auto-hiding the filter and Reframe video button if GPU effects are enabled, and removing the Export > Video > Resample button.
Shotcut can be downloaded from on the web o format Flatpak
Audacity 3.7
In this case we are talking about an open source digital audio recording and editing software.The version we are dealing with is an update that fixes errors, since all efforts are focused on the next one that will be numbered 4.0. Apparently, in the one we have in our hands, compatibility with Linux systems is improved by solving problems with the Appimage package in Linux Mint and Arcl Linux and the compilation from source code in the latter.
Other improvements include enhanced contrast in the light theme, improved handling of non-standard characters when saving to the cloud, and much-needed speedup of program startup on systems with numerous audio devices. Import of Opus files using the libopus library is also optimized, and the "Unhealthy" option in MP3 exports is renamed to "Excessive."
Additionally, several bug fixes from previous versions have been implemented, improving database compression, multiple display, VST preset path on macOS, stereo track cancellation during operations, and audio fragment pasting when the “editing clips may move other clips” option is enabled. Finally, the bug that caused an unexpected shutdown when closing a project after enabling and disabling an effects stack in real time has been eliminated. Finally, Audacity 3.7 changes the name of the “Split Cut/Delete” option to “Cut/Delete and Leave Space” and prevents adding, deleting, replacing, and reordering effects.
You can download Audacity from this article