At NovaFuture, we love talking about the open-source tools we actually use and enjoy. And when it comes to video editing on Linux, Shotcut is our favorite pick. But nobody is perfect, so if you are on Windows or macOS, good news: Shotcut works there too. If you have never tried it before, you might want to check out our introduction article about this free software.

To kick off our brand-new interview series, we had the great pleasure of talking with Dan Dennedy, the co-creator of Shotcut. And even if video editing isn’t really your thing, stay with us anyway. The main story here is a human adventure about building a great open-source alternative. On top of that, Dan shares the wealth of experience he has gathered over the years. He also talks about the massive technological shift brought by AI and gives valuable advice for anyone looking to get started in open source. Trust us, it’s inspiring and absolutely worth your time.

An Interview About Shotcut, Open Source, and the Human Story Behind It

NovaFuture: Hello Dan, for NovaFuture readers, can you tell us a little about the Shotcut team? And also about the background of its members?

Dan Dennedy: There is really only two of us, Brian Matherly and Dan Dennedy plus the occasional contributor. Otherwise, there are some forum regulars (frequent participants) and many people who work on the lower layers of the software, of course. Both Brian and I are in the United States, college educated in computer science, and have worked at professional video hardware/software companies. We both also share a background of making videos for our family and community (in real life).

NovaFuture: What’s the Shotcut origin story?

Dan Dennedy: In the late 90s I had pivoted from working with video tech to IT and web development professionally and was getting bored with that. Meanwhile, Linux became an interesting option, and I had a miniDV camcorder. So, around 2000 as a hobby I returned to C/C++ and exploring multimedia on GNU/Linux desktop. Initially, I was focused on FireWire, DV (dvgrab), and a little video editor for Linux named Kino. That work led to the sponsored development of MLT, which Kdenlive adopted. Eventually, both MLT and myself went cross-platform. Qt 5 was new, and I was very impressed with the Qt Creator IDE I started to use across platforms. Plus, I needed a better way to test MLT cross-platform and dog-food the MLT API from a clean perspective. This was around 2010. By then there were already many of what I call “category-killer” free, open source, cross-platform apps but not for multi-track video editing. Thus was born Shotcut. There were other factors that fed into that decision, but I think this is the primary story arc.

NovaFuture: Wow! What a journey! And it’s pretty amazing that you’re such a small team. From the outside, it really feels like there are a lot of developers behind it. Now, I’m going to ask you the question everyone’s wondering about: do you manage to make a living from this, or do you have other jobs on the side? I’m asking because quite a few young, talented developers are thinking about their future. Many are still hesitating between joining or starting meaningful open-source projects, or working for large commercial companies that aren’t exactly rewarding on a human level.

Dan Dennedy: It is not a living. It could possibly be a living if there were a few changes: one person gets all the revenue, lives in an affordable place, not saving for retirement, and maybe is more aggressive with marketing and selling add-ons. We both have full time jobs with benefits, and Shotcut is the part-time hobby and side job! I used to take short term part-time contracts on MLT in the 2000s. While I appreciated the opportunity and compensation, eventually I wanted to make my own things with MLT. There is revenue from ads on the web site and sales in the Microsoft Store that we share (along with the government).

As for advice to others, I would say you can work on something as a side project, but be prepared to work on that for a while until you can turn it into full time and your primary job. Unless, of course, you have some arrangement where you can jump into it and not be dependent. For example, you might be living with someone else or have a wealthy family supporting you. My point is that you can do both, but pace yourself. You can do the open source thing as a fun hobby for a long time! But beware about starting something you eventually hope to make money from when you are already employed, especially if it is in the same line of work, for example, software engineering. Most tech companies require an invention assignment agreement. However, MLT was started while I was unemployed, and I got an exemption from my employer for Shotcut. When signing an invention assignment, I disclose existing projects.

NovaFuture: To give you some context, I’m French. And compared to what you’re describing, I can see that here in Europe, many open-source projects are very well supported by governments, often with fairly generous grants. There are also quite a few open-source projects that manage to be creative in generating revenue while fully respecting the open-source philosophy. As far as I know, it’s not the same model in the United States, where it’s more about volunteer work and, for the lucky ones, corporate sponsorship. This brings me to my question: do you think that collectively we should be thinking about a fair system that would allow open-source software and services to sustain themselves financially? And maybe you already have some solutions in mind?

Dan Dennedy: I do not necessarily think government should be responsible to provide a “fair system.” Shotcut is somewhat fortunate to make decent revenue from its source because it is directly user-facing, and video editing is a very common need. However, there are plenty of examples of people working on lower level pieces without much compensation if at all. There have been times when I have made donations to other projects on behalf of Shotcut including monthly donations to Glaxnimate ever since it was integrated. I do not have any great ideas unfortunately for how everyone who wants to be compensated for participation.

I do think there are a lot of engineers who are employed and using and contributing to open source software. These engineers who are using the open source on their jobs should try to persuade management that it is important to contribute code. However, there is more than just engineering. For example, Brian and I both do documentation and support but I also maintain builds, servers, and social media. Those roles and more are, I believe, more difficult to get help especially under employment.

NovaFuture: With AI, the web and software are going through major changes. And I have to say, it’s a paradigm shift happening at an incredibly fast pace. It’s really not easy to keep up with the speed of it all. On your side, what’s your relationship with AI? And in the future, do you plan to integrate it into Shotcut in any way? I’m talking about an open-source AI model, of course.

Dan Dennedy: Yeah, AI is and has been at this point for a while where it seems equally intriguing and beneficial as well as disappointing! I think the disappointment comes from it being so close to proving good and trustworthy results at least 99% of the time. As long as it is not there… I think in certain circumstances we really need more precise ways to specify the request in a way the AI can verify its results against it.

I have been using it to help with some coding tasks occasionally for a couple of years, but the results have been very hit-or-miss. However, a lot of that has been to get help with some ambitious experiments. I recently used it successfully to get help with a couple of new features in areas where I have less experience: python and Chrome WebTools Protocol.

Today, Shotcut has one AI function in the form of speech-to-text. It uses OpenAI’s Whisper models, which are open weights (MIT), and Whisper.cpp for the engine, which is open source (MIT). I am working on speech-to-text now, which uses the Kokoro open weights models (Apache) and a GPLv3 Python engine. That is too complicated to integrate into Shotcut builds currently. So, this will be an experiment to see how difficult it is for people to use if all they need to do is install Docker.

I plan to add some AI into the forum as well. It will not be an automatic reply for every post as I worry that can hinder discussion and the human touch. But it might be something to facilitate search or that I can use to generate more useful and less terse replies. I think this could be integrated into the Shotcut UI to ask a question and get answers. And now that we have speech-to-text that can be a verbal or text question. I think the benefit of this over a general chatbot is that we can automatically have it prioritize the documentation and secondarily the forum over all other sources on the Web.

The maker of Whisper.cpp also makes llama.cpp, and now we have a model downloader. I asked an AI chatbot for some ideas about what we could do with a llama model. It had a number of interesting ideas, but I have not yet verified they are all actually possible or realistic with respect to results and performance to give any solid plans there. I am working on a new feature to generate highly stylized text clips using HTML, SVG, and CSS. I believe llama would do a good job to generate that code from a simple human description.

NovaFuture: Since you mentioned the forum, I have to say it really took me back to the good old days when independent, topic-focused forums were everywhere. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Shotcut has a lively community on a self-hosted forum. That’s rare these days, when so many open-source projects unfortunately depend entirely on commercial platforms like Reddit for their support and for building a community. Was that a deliberate choice by the Shotcut team? And if so, what’s the philosophy behind it, and what’s the benefit for the users?

Dan Dennedy: I am glad you like it! It was actually born out of an attempt to make money before advertising proved fruitful. I was thinking the software is free, but I could charge a membership fee for technical support or as a benefit for making a donation. Initially, I was only trying to make enough money to get the hobby to pay for itself: server hosting plus development and test computers. That was not doing well, partly I guess because Shotcut was not yet popular. Then, I added advertising to the web site, and that took quite a while to be fruitful as well. Eventually, though it dwarfed the membership revenue, and I decided to make the forum free and extend a little advertising into the forum. The forum has different levels of membership it calls “trust levels,” and I can hide the ads for a high level. Existing paid members received that. Others have been able to earn that privilege through a high level of participation. Now, this is the place where you can talk to the developers and they receive a financial benefit in addition to the feedback.

Now, I am old and setup my very first rich web discussion forum way back in 1995 using something called Lotus Domino in a pre-release–way ahead of its time! So, it was a natural thing for me. I was also lucky to have found the great open source forum project Discourse that was easy for me to setup and host. That made it an easier decision instead of relying on a service. I think Discourse has nice rich text and multimedia support.

I dislike that some forums have too many categories, and you need to visit them separately. This does have categories that I have tried to limit and default views that span categories. Using categories I made channels for very useful things like “Tutorial“, “Resources“, and “Made with Shotcut“. When making the Kino video editor, I had setup something called DocBook Wiki, which was a system to create formal documentation online like a Wiki along with a comments system. The downside to it was that it did not support Unicode. Now, I not only figured out how to do the same thing in Discourse but also a way to generate a PDF for that category, which you can get through Shotcut – How To Articles, which is where the standard keyboard shortcut for help within in app F1 takes you.

NovaFuture: If you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to yourself when you first started developing Shotcut, what would it be?

Dan Dennedy: Remember to try to be kind. I regret that I have replied like a jerk or in a very snarky manner in the forum and elsewhere. Better to not reply than be rude. Quite often it is not the direct receiver of the reply who reads the message and is turned off.

NovaFuture: If Shotcut were a person, how would you describe them? I’m curious about their personality and their values.

Dan Dennedy: Hmm, that is a bit difficult question for me. I do not think much about this. I suppose to me Shotcut is like the child athlete whose parents got them into the sport at a young, has a good amount of experience now, and is on the verge of becoming a professional athlete. The parents in this case are Kino and MLT. What does that say about personality and values? It is largely a craft and mental activity to me as I am curious about multimedia in our culture and the arts and also to see what I can figure out and accomplish. There is definitely some value in sharing the results in the same open source manner that facilitated its creation: an elegant mutually beneficial cycle.

NovaFuture: How do you imagine the future of Shotcut in 5 years?

Dan Dennedy: I do not do a lot of planning. We operate mainly by inspiration to reduce stress and stay motivated. There is a Shotcut – Road Map that is mostly not in an order except for maybe the top few at any point in time. It is mainly like a checklist of obvious things we could do plus there is the Suggestion category in the forum. Because of AI it is a bit hard to say. Some would say that is caving to the hype. Maybe 🙂 but for a lot of people who dabble in video editing it is quite difficult and time consuming.

I expect Shotcut to largely be the same desktop-oriented tool but more professional, better performance, and more convenient. There are no plans to change the business model. Basically, I think any big ideas that involve other platforms (e.g. mobile, tablet, VR, etc.) or business models would go through a new, different product.

NovaFuture: Our readers are well aware of the challenges involved in maintaining an open-source software project. With that in mind, how can they help the Shotcut project? Financially of course — if you could share the link to your support page. But maybe you also need volunteers for specific tasks, such as coding or translation?

Dan Dennedy: There is a donate button on the Download page, and Brian gets that. The Web site has a Shotcut – How to Contribute page in the How To section. Development is difficult because of the many dependencies, close ties with MLT, and it being C++. It can seem difficult to get all of the dependencies, but actually on a bleeding edge or rolling Linux distribution you might be fine. And that includes msys2 on Windows and MacPorts or HomeBrew on macOS. Otherwise, we can use the most help with translations. Many of them are not 100% and keep slipping further behind. Many of those ebb and flow.

Another area that would help a lot is forum participation to help answer questions. It actually takes quite a bit of our time. Accessibility for the deaf, dumb, or blind is an area where we can use volunteer help since that requires quite a specialized knowledge, and our specialty is more in video.

NovaFuture: Before we close this exciting interview, is there one last thing you’d like to share — maybe a reason why our readers should pick Shotcut instead of going with proprietary software?

Dan Dennedy: Shotcut is a powerful tool hidden behind a somewhat simple UI. It tries to be convenient by providing a lot of features in a cross-platform manner that is easy to download, install, and start using. The first time experience does not make you fuss with setup activities neither for the software or your project. You can simply open it and start dropping files on the timeline if you want. However, not all of the advanced features are so convenient as that can complicate the UI. Imagine a UI where every button is visible at all times! I asked an AI to draw something like that:

Yeah, so nothing like that. It also has decent performance and stability both lending to that convenience and power. There is a helpful and sharing community in our official forum and on YouTube. And there are a lot of resources to help including some things listed on our web site and forum (supplemental media resources, tutorials, guides, etc.)

We look forward to helping to create a beautiful imaginative future. May telling your stories, sharing ideas, and replaying memories be ever more convenient and accessible.

Thanks to Shotcut and What Comes Next?

This brings our interview to an end, and we warmly thank Dan for taking the time to share his experience. We also want to give a big thank you to Brian Matherly and to everyone involved in this amazing project. We will keep following Shotcut’s journey, and we invite you to spread the word: when it comes to video editing, there is no need to waste money on expensive proprietary software when such a great open-source alternative exists.

Before wrapping up, I want to emphasize one last thing: open-source alternatives deserve way better than being skimmed over or mistreated on clickbait websites packed with ads. So if you’d like to see more content like this on NovaFuture, take 20 seconds to support us by buying us a few coffees on Buy Me a Coffee. It will help us keep growing this project with more resources. And of course, don’t forget to share this article widely on your networks. To make it easy, you’ll find quick share buttons right below. We’re counting on you to spread the word 😉

And finally, since this is just the beginning of our interview series, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this format. Come share your feedback with us in the “Idea Box” section of the NovaFuture forum, and don’t hesitate to suggest improvements to help us shape this new section. Thanks in advance for being part of it!