Blog

Top highlights

• Big speed-up across the board: ~32% faster overall in internal benchmarks (197,011 → 133,239 “lower is better”).
• New Effects:
• Sharpen (detail enhancement; includes High Pass mode)
• Color Map (LUT) (color grading via .cube LUT files; supports 1D & 3D LUTs)
• Spherical Projection (flatten/convert 360°/180° footage; fisheye options + improved quality)
• Lens Flare (classic flare look; based on FlareFX-style filter)
• Outline (edge/line styling with improved antialiasing)

Performance improvements

• Faster libopenshot core (benchmarks vs prior release; bigger is better):
  • Mask effect: +63%
  • Crop effect: +39.8%
  • Clip rendering: +37.8%
  • FFmpeg Reader: +30.0%
  • Timeline (with transforms): +29.5%
  • Brightness: +24.1%
  • FFmpeg Writer: +21.3%
  • Timeline: +20.5%
  • Saturation: +20.3%
  • Frame Mapper: +14.9%
• Faster exports (~23% improvement) by integrating the caching thread into the Export dialog (reduces CPU contention and improves throughput).
• Faster waveforms for long audio + time-curved clips (less decoding work; better handling during timeline edits).
• Faster FFmpeg decoding (aligned buffers / SIMD-friendly handling).

Cropping (interactive)

Demo: Interactive cropping in the preview!

• Interactive Crop handles in the video preview (crop what you see, directly on the canvas).
• Crop context menu + improved crop/transform handle synchronization (better origin handling, fewer surprises when resizing).

Timing Mode (drag to re-time)

• Timing toggle button (re-time by dragging clip edges, similar to trimming).
• More consistent frame-accurate behavior while re-timing (project FPS precision).

Keyframes & snapping

Demo: Dragging keyframes is now super easy!

• Draggable keyframes on the timeline (with live preview while dragging).
• Snapping improvements:
  • Keyframes participate in snapping targets (especially during trims)
  • Better snap tolerance during trims/re-timing
  • Avoid “snap to self” edge cases (prevents odd lock-ups)

Experimental Timeline (Preferences → Experimental)

Demo: The Experimental Timeline in action!

• Smoother scrolling/zooming on large timelines (reduced geometry rebuilds).
• Markers, waveforms, keyframe rendering, improved snapping, and more track visuals.
• Thumbnail handling improvements for trimming and preview reliability.
• New Keyframe panel and in-timeline keyframe editing

Editing & workflow

• Repeat / Loop / Ping-Pong options added to the Time context menu (supports trims + Timing mode).
• Multi-selection editing improvements:
  • Transform multiple clips together (location/scale/rotation/skew, etc.)
  • Property dock supports multi-select navigation (jump between selected items cleanly)
• Copy/Paste files into Project Files from the OS clipboard (assets auto-saved into the project asset folder).

Import / Export compatibility

• Final Cut Pro XML (v4/v5 xmeml) improvements:
  • Better spec compliance (DTD support; cleaned up nonstandard attributes)
  • Improved import order (video tracks first, audio tracks after)
  • Motion + keyframes round-trip (trim, alpha, volume, position, scale, rotation — with some limitations)
• EDL import/export improved (more standards-friendly, plus OpenShot details as comments).
• Timecode alignment updated to match common standards (00:00:00:00 framing behavior).

Media handling & accuracy

• Duration strategy modes in FFmpegReader (more consistent handling across tricky media).
• Stronger consistency between frame counts and durations (duration and video_length now match in meaning; unknown durations handled more predictably).
• Animated GIF import via FFmpeg (supports animation + alpha; fixes duration/video_length accuracy).
• Better H.265 playback on Apple devices (adds hvc1 tagging where needed).
• Audio direction fixes for reversed/time-curved clips (more reliable audio when time runs backward or changes direction).

Developer tools

• New Benchmark tool in libopenshot (easier performance testing and version comparisons).

Stability & reliability

• Undo/Redo reliability fixes (transaction grouping survives save/reload; fewer selection-related crashes).
• Crash prevention in common editing actions (deleting tracks/transitions, “Save Frame As…”, waveform extraction edge cases).

Packaging & platform support

• AppImage improvements to work better on newer distros (dependency fixes and environment hardening for modern Linux systems).
• Ongoing cross-platform maintenance across Linux/macOS/Windows (build and compatibility updates).

Infrastructure & automations

• SQS-based autoscaling build infrastructure (builders run only when needed; reduces ongoing infrastructure cost).
• Additional CI/release automation improvements (more reliable asset handling and deployment flow).

Credits, translations, and community

• Updated supporter credits and acknowledgements.
• Translation updates (many languages refreshed; more completed translations).
• Special thanks to Raffi for community support, testing, issue advocacy, and helping drive quality forward.