Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Two buttons under the filter list copy a whole stack of filters and paste it somewhere else. The hack is the somewhere else: paste onto the track head instead of a clip, and one filter set governs every clip on that track — edit it once and all of them change together.
Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut filter, control and value names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.
The title promises a hack, so here it is in one line. Everyone knows you can copy filters from one clip and paste them onto another. What Ben says he only learned three months before recording is that the same paste button works when the track head is selected — and a filter on the track applies to every clip sitting on it.
Not one filter — the entire list, with every value each filter is holding. Three filters went across in this video and arrived identical.
A clip, a track head, or Master. Whatever is selected is what the panel is headed with, and that heading is the only confirmation you are aiming at the right thing.
Paste once onto Track: V1 and all seven clips render through the same grade. Clips dropped onto the track later inherit it too.
That is the real gain. Pasted clip by clip, changing your mind means repeating the change on every clip. On the track it is a single slider move.
[ a better way of doing it is copying this filter… and then wiping the filter out of this particular clip, going into the track, which I didn’t even know you can do ]
Ben Espanto · 5:29
YouTube carries only three chapter marks on this video — 0:00 Intro, 0:40 Tutorial, 6:30 Final Thoughts — and they stop at 6:30 while the video runs to 9:39. Every card below marked derived was read off the frames and is anchored to the frame index it came from. Click any screencap or timestamp to play that moment here in the card.
“I’m just a normal person with no video editing background who wanted to start making YouTube videos and maybe add semi-fancy effects.”
No editor is on screen for the first thirty-eight seconds. This is the standing channel intro, played over the shotcut.org home page and its feature tour. Nothing here is part of the technique.
“So in this tutorial, I’ll show you what I would do if I needed to copy-paste a filter or multiple sets of filters to more than one video clip.”
The published chapter list gives this whole span one word. It is nearly six minutes and it contains every step below, so the cards from here to 6:00 are read off the frames rather than off the chapter list.
“So right off the bat, I’m going to start out with two video clips that I took at the same day and it’s just me fishing on the dock.”
Both clips sit in the Playlist panel: #1 GH029297.MP4, Duration: 00:08:51:13, and #2 GH039297.MP4, Duration: 00:08:41:14. Two different source lengths, which matters later.
“I’m going to splice that and I’m going to remove all the extra.”
Both clips are dragged onto the single video track V1, split, and the surplus removed so each shows about ten seconds. Everything in this tutorial happens on one track.
“And so I would usually start with white balance. And so let me choose white balance on the filter.”
The Filters panel is headed with the clip’s own filename, GH029297.MP4. White Balance exposes Neutral color with an eyedropper and Color temperature sitting at 6500 deg.
“And then I’m going to add filter color grading.”
The + button opens the chooser, with a search box and Favorite / Video / Audio tabs. Every filter in this tutorial is a Video filter.
“I’m going to drop the shadows down and erase the highlights. And then maybe drop the, or actually raise the mid-tones.”
Three wheels: Shadows (Lift) at R −31.0 % / G −31.0 % / B −31.0 % and Midtones (Gamma) at 33.3 % on all three channels. Highlights (Gain) is off the left of this crop; it reads 17.9 % on all three channels ten seconds earlier, at 2:40.
“And let’s just, I’m just going to choose the default, 50%, 50%.”
Amount 50.0 % and Size 50.0 %, untouched. Note the four buttons under the filter list: add, remove, copy, paste — and that the paste button is greyed out, because nothing has been copied yet.
“You select this button, copy the filters, and then you go over to this next clip.”
The tooltip on the third button reads exactly Copy the filters. It takes the entire list — White Balance, Color Grading, Sharpen — with every value each one is holding. There is no keyboard shortcut for this anywhere in the video; it is the button or nothing.
“And you select this button, paste all the filters. And what it essentially does is it copies all the filters and all the settings from the previous clip onto the next clip.”
The fourth button’s tooltip reads Paste filters — Ben says “paste all the filters”, the app says Paste filters. The panel is now headed GH039297.MP4 and carries the same three filters. It was pasted into an empty list; the video never shows what happens when the target already has filters of its own.
“So what happens if you’re editing multiple, multiples of say over 15 video clips or even more? You could argue you can still copy paste and copy paste, but that’s not an efficient way or efficient use of your time.”
The paste has landed: GH039297.MP4 now carries the same three filters as the first clip. Ben draws the line himself here — two to five clips, paste them one at a time and move on. Past roughly fifteen, the cost is not the pasting; it is every later change having to be repeated fifteen times.
“So now I have six clips in there.”
The timeline is padded out to seven clips end to end on V1 — GH029297.MP4 followed by six copies of GH039297.MP4 — so the problem is visible at a glance. The panel is headed GH039297.MP4 with an empty list: none of the copies carries a filter.
“and then wiping the filter out of this particular clip, going into the track, which I didn’t even know you can do.”
After copying, the filters are removed from GH029297.MP4 with the − button, one at a time, leaving the list empty. The clipboard keeps what was copied. Skip this and the first clip ends up graded twice — once by itself and once by the track.
“So now I’ve selected the track here.”
Clicking the track head changes the panel heading from a filename to Track: V1. The list is empty and the paste button is live while the copy button is greyed — there is nothing on the track to copy yet. This heading is the only confirmation that you are aiming at the track.
“And what happens is the filter gets applied to every single video within that track.”
The same three filters, pasted once, now sit on the track rather than on any clip. Every clip on V1 renders through them, including clips added later. This is the part of the video the title is calling a hack.
“So now if you go here, you can see it’s at a set color. Here you go here, it’s at the same color setting here, here, here and here.”
The playhead is dragged clip to clip and the grade holds on all seven. The Filters panel reads Nothing selected because nothing is selected — the grade is coming from the track underneath.
“Whereas here, all you have to do is say I’m going to change the color grading and I want to change, I want to brighten it a little bit.”
Editing the track’s own Color Grading restyles all six clips at once. Shadows (Lift) has moved from −31.0 % at 2:50 to −9.5 % here; Midtones (Gamma) is unchanged at 33.3 %. Pasted onto twenty-five clips instead, that is twenty-five edits.
“I put all the files from one camera on one track and then I can apply a master filter to that particular track... and that’s how I match the color profiles through color grading between the two cameras.”
No interface action here — he is talking over the finished timeline. The Filters panel happens to be showing Master, the project output, which is a third possible target. He never pastes anything into it in this video.
“So let me know what you think of this filter tip and if you have any other suggestions on what types of tutorials you want me to make.”
End card and subscribe prompt. Nothing further is demonstrated after 8:56.
Every control name and number below was read off the screen. Where the video does not answer a question, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
The technique keys off the track, so grouping matters more than order. Ben’s own use case is two action cameras with different colour profiles: all the files from camera one on one track, all the files from camera two on a second track.
The two sources are different lengths in the Playlist panel — 00:08:51:13 and 00:08:41:14 — and both were trimmed to roughly ten seconds on the timeline. Nothing about the copy cared.
Select a clip, open Filters, and add filters with the + button. In this video that is three video filters, in this order.
The panel is headed with the clip’s filename while a clip is selected. Watch that heading — it is how you know what you are about to edit.
The third of the four small buttons under the filter list. Its tooltip reads exactly Copy the filters, plural — it lifts the entire list and all of its settings onto an internal clipboard, not just the highlighted filter.
Select the next clip, press Paste filters, done. Ben’s own guidance: for a handful of clips this is the right answer and the track route is overkill.
Both pastes in this video land in an empty filter list. What happens when the target already has its own filters — replaced, merged or appended — is never shown.
With the stack already copied, remove each filter from the clip using the − button until the list is empty. The clipboard keeps what you copied.
Do not skip this. Leave the filters on the clip and add them to the track as well, and that one clip gets the grade applied twice while every other clip gets it once.
Click the head of the track itself — the block at the left end of the track, not any clip on it. The Filters panel heading changes from a filename to Track: V1. That heading is your only confirmation. Then press Paste filters.
Every clip on that track now renders through the pasted stack, and so will any clip you drop onto the track afterwards.
With the track still selected, edit the filter directly. In the video Color Grading on the track is brightened and all seven clips follow in the same instant.
Three routes exist for reusing filters in Shotcut and this video demonstrates two of them. These are the boundaries as the frames actually show them — nothing here is inferred from the audio.
The stopwatch keyframe button is visible next to Amount and Size and beside each Color Grading wheel, but it is never pressed. Every filter copied here holds a single static value, so this video does not answer whether keyframed values survive a copy, or how they behave when the target clip is a different length.
The Filters panel addresses exactly one selection: one clip, one track head, or Master. No multi-clip selection is ever made. Pasting onto the track is the workaround for “apply to many”, not a bulk-paste feature.
Each filter shows a Preset dropdown with its own + and − buttons, so filter settings can clearly be saved and recalled. It is never opened or used in this video, and where saved presets are stored on disk is never shown. Treat presets as a separate route this tutorial does not teach.
Selecting Master heads the panel with that word and offers the same four buttons, so a filter set could be pasted onto the whole project output. In this video the Master list stays empty from 7:40 onward and nothing is ever pasted there.
Read directly off the frames. Where a value changed on screen, both readings are given with the moment each was taken.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | Never shown on screen | No Help → About Shotcut dialog appears anywhere in this video. The description states V20.04.12. |
| Copy control | Copy the filters | Third button under the filter list |
| Paste control | Paste filters | Fourth button under the filter list |
| Add / remove controls | + · − | First and second buttons under the filter list |
| Keyboard shortcuts | None demonstrated | Every copy and paste in this video is a button click |
| Source clip 1 | GH029297.MP4 · 00:08:51:13 | Playlist |
| Source clip 2 | GH039297.MP4 · 00:08:41:14 | Playlist |
| Timeline | One video track, V1, seven clips | Timeline |
| Filter 1 | White Balance | Video filter |
| Neutral color | Picked from the image with the eyedropper | White Balance |
| Color temperature | 6500 deg | White Balance |
| Filter 2 | Color Grading | Video filter |
| Shadows (Lift), at 2:50 | R −31.0 % · G −31.0 % · B −31.0 % | Color Grading, on the clip |
| Midtones (Gamma) | R 33.3 % · G 33.3 % · B 33.3 % | Color Grading |
| Highlights (Gain), at 2:40 | R 17.9 % · G 17.9 % · B 17.9 % | Color Grading |
| Shadows (Lift), at 7:20 | R −9.5 % · G −9.5 % · B −9.5 % | Color Grading, now on Track: V1 |
| Filter 3 | Sharpen | Video filter |
| Amount | 50.0 % | Sharpen, left on the default |
| Size | 50.0 % | Sharpen, left on the default |
| Paste target that makes this a hack | Track: V1 | The track head, not a clip |
| Other possible target | Master | Shown from 7:40, never pasted into |
| Preset control | Present on each filter, never used | Preset dropdown with its own + and − |
| Keyframe control | Stopwatch button present, never pressed | Beside Amount, Size and each Color Grading wheel |
| Target | Panel heading reads | Applies to | Used in this video |
|---|---|---|---|
| A clip | GH029297.MP4 | That one clip | Yes — the source, and one paste target |
| A track head | Track: V1 | Every clip on that track, including ones added later | Yes — this is the hack |
| The project output | Master | Everything in the project | Shown only; nothing pasted |
Frame timings on this page follow the extraction grid: frame N is the moment at (N − 1) × 10 seconds, so frame 037 is 6:00. The published chapter list stops at 6:30 although the video continues to 9:39.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is. No number on this page was taken from the transcript — every value came from the pixels. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.
I’m just a normal person with no video editing background who wanted to start making YouTube
videos and maybe add semi-fancy effects.
I don’t really plan on making major motion pictures or commercials, so I was looking
for a free, easy-to-learn video editing software.
Luckily, I stumbled on Shotcut, a free, open-source video editing program that has
the potential to replicate similar effects that an Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve
can, but with a simpler, leaner interface.
It just takes imagination, so let’s learn together.
So in this tutorial, I’ll show you what I would do if I needed to copy-paste a filter
or multiple sets of filters to more than one video clip.
So right off the bat, I’m going to start out with two video clips that I took at the same
day and it’s just me fishing on the dock.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to drag this first video onto the timeline,
and what I want to do is I just want to shorten it so that you can see just a quick snippet
of that particular clip.
I’m going to splice that and I’m going to remove all the extra.
I’m then going to grab the second clip and put it on the same track within my timeline.
Again, I’m going to trim it to about 10 seconds, splice it, and remove the extra.
So what I’m going to do in this one is I’m just going to focus on this first clip.
So I’m going to play that so you can see what it looks like.
Again, just me fishing on a dock.
And what I would usually do with my workflow is apply a filter to color grade it.
And so I would usually start with white balance.
And so let me choose white balance on the filter.
I’m then going to select an area where I think should be a neutral color.
And there I’ll set my white balance there.
And then I’m going to add filter color grading.
I’m going to drop the shadows down and erase the highlights.
And then maybe drop the, or actually raise the mid-tones.
And so let’s leave it that.
And so this is what it looks like without the color grading and that’s with.
And let me add another filter, let’s say to sharpen.
And let’s just, I’m just going to choose the default, 50%, 50%.
So that’s what it looks like with the filter.
And the second clip is what it looks like without a filter.
And so typically, if you don’t have that many video clips, all you need to do is go
to the filter section here.
You select this button, copy the filters, and then you go over to this next clip.
And you select this button, paste all the filters.
And what it essentially does is it copies all the filters and all the settings from
the previous clip onto the next clip.
And it works well and it’s easy.
If you only have two, maybe up to five clips, you can just copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste.
So what happens if you’re editing multiple, multiples of say over 15 video clips or even more?
You could argue you can still copy paste and copy paste, but that’s not an efficient way
or efficient use of your time.
And so what I would do is this thing that I basically just learned about three months ago,
I didn’t even know you could do it.
So first and foremost, I’m going to remove all the filters from this particular clip.
So let’s remove it.
And I’m just going to leave this set here.
So at this point, only the first clip has all the filters applied.
And the second clip doesn’t have any filters whatsoever.
Rather than applying it on the particular clip, especially when you have multiple clips,
and just as an example, what I’ll do is I’ll go ahead and paste half a dozen clips.
So now I have six clips in there.
So theoretically what I can do is I can select this button here and copy all the filters
and paste here, paste here, paste here, paste here and paste here.
Right.
But I found that a better way of doing it is copying this filter, once again, clicking that button right there
and then wiping the filter out of this particular clip, going into the track,
which I didn’t even know you can do.
So now I’ve selected the track here.
And then going into the filter interface again and pasting the filter there.
And what happens is the filter gets applied to every single video within that track.
So now if you go here, you can see it’s at a set color.
Here you go here, it’s at the same color setting here, here, here and here.
So if you have 25 video clips rather than copy pasting 25 times,
what you could do is you can just apply it into this, the track setting
and it then creates a universal setting for every single video within that track.
What’s good about it is, if you did it the long way and you just copy pasted on every single one of the 25 clips,
if you decided, hmm, maybe I’m going to drop the color, I’m going to drop the intensity a little bit,
you would have to make that change to every single one of those video clips.
Whereas here, all you have to do is say I’m going to change the color grading
and I want to change, I want to brighten it a little bit.
The brightness adjustment that you just made essentially was applied to every single video within that track.
Isn’t that cool?
And I literally just found out about this thing maybe three months ago.
So prior to that I was doing what everyone else was doing, I was copy pasting on every single clip
and if I ever had to make a change I’d have to do it to every single one.
So this trick is perfect for someone like me because when I go and record my fishing videos
I usually carry two cameras of two different brands
and what happens is because they’re from two different camera makers,
their color profiles are a little different and so what I do is once I finish and I extract all the MP4 files,
what I do is I put all the files from one camera on one track
and then I can apply a master filter to that particular track
and then I put all the files from the second camera on the second track
and then put all the camera filters and adjustments on that particular track
and that’s how I match the color profiles through color grading between the two cameras
and so this hack which I learned three months ago definitely helped me out
and definitely made my color grading process a lot faster
and hopefully it’s going to help you as well.
So let me know what you think of this filter tip
and if you have any other suggestions on what types of tutorials you want me to make
just go ahead and make a comment below and I’ll go ahead and make it
and you haven’t yet please don’t forget to subscribe to the channel
it goes a long way to help me out
and it encourages me to make a lot more of these tutorial videos
so please subscribe
and again use the comment section below
let me know what you think of this tutorial
and let me know if you have any other suggestions
so until next time
