Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Two opposite workflows in one tutorial. Going out, the Export panel writes every frame of a marked selection to a numbered PNG. Coming back, a single Image sequence checkbox turns that whole folder into one clip. Neither direction ever touches the timeline.
Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut panel, control and value names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.
This tutorial teaches two techniques that are mirror images of each other. They share an interface and one critical dropdown, and this page keeps them apart, because almost none of the settings carry across.
Mark an in and an out point on the source clip, then export with a stills preset instead of a video one. Shotcut writes one image file per frame, numbered in order, into a folder you choose.
Open only the first image of a numbered run, then tick Image sequence in Properties. The preview stops being one picture and becomes the whole folder, playing as a clip.
Both directions run entirely through the Source player and Export. The timeline stays empty in every frame of this tutorial — which is exactly why the From dropdown matters as much as it does.
Nothing is graded, masked or keyed here. This is file plumbing: a format choice, a source choice, a destination, and one checkbox. That is the whole lesson.
[ because we’re pulling it from this screen here, I need to make sure that this thing says source ]
Ben Espanto · 4:20
Click any screencap or timestamp to play that chapter from its exact second, right here in the card. Quotes are transcribed verbatim from the audio. Where a stretch has no editor on screen, the caption says so.
“There are times when you need to extract each individual frame as an image in a video. And there are other times when you need to combine individual frames into a video.”
The opening two minutes are talking head, channel b-roll and a 2,000-subscriber thank-you — no editor on screen until 2:00, when the Help → About Shotcut dialog is opened to name the build. This screencap is that dialog: Shotcut version 21.02.27. Everything below was recorded on it.
“So what I want to do is I want to take each individual frame and save it as an image, like a PNG or a JPEG, however many frames these are.”
The whole extraction happens in the Export panel. The preset tree is scrolled to the stills group — BMP, DPX, JPEG, PNG, PPM, TGA, TIFF — with PNG selected. Note the From box at 4:20: it still reads Playlist. That is the trap, and it gets fixed six seconds later.
“One use case that comes to mind is when you need to make edits to each individual frame in a photo editor to create an effect like the mask wipe transition.”
No Shotcut interface appears anywhere in this stretch — it is spoken entirely over street b-roll, of which this Times Square frame at 6:20 is typical. Photo-editor retouching, freeze frames, and dropping every other frame for a time-lapse are the three uses named.
“All you have to do is go to properties and click image sequence. Check that box. All of a sudden you see the preview in the window now shows the entire sequence.”
One checkbox does the whole reverse direction. With still-00001.png open in the Source player, Properties shows Image sequence ticked, Repeat at 1 frames per picture, and Duration jumping to 00:00:01:18 — the full 42-picture run, not one still.
“But sometimes you also would need to put frames together when you took time lapse photos or frame bursts from a GoPro.”
Shotcut stays on screen here but nothing new is demonstrated — the final-stills.mp4 result has already played and this is the spoken wrap-up. Time-lapse stills, GoPro frame bursts, motion capture and claymation are the applications named for the reverse direction.
“I just wanted to remind you that if you haven’t yet go visit my channel. I’m sure you’ll find tons of Shotcut related videos.”
Derived card — the supplied chapter list stops at 8:33 while the video runs to 10:38. The end card walks the Ben Espanto channel page. Nothing here is tutorial content.
“Visit my Shotcut tips and tricks playlist and learn all the tips and tricks I’ve learned during my journey toward video editing.”
Derived card. The outro moves from the channel home to the Shotcut Tips and Tricks playlist, then to the subscribe card that closes the video at 10:38.
Every value below was read off the pixels of the video, never off the narration. Steps 01 to 05 pull stills out of a video; steps 06 to 09 put stills back together into one.
Open the source video into the Playlist, then scrub the Source player and press I for the in point and O for the out point. Only the marked span is exported, so the frame count is entirely yours to choose.
The player status bar reads “Preview scaling is ON at 360p”. That is a playback-performance setting only; the exported stills still come out at full resolution.
Click Export and scroll the Presets tree to the bottom. Below legacy and lossless sits a group called stills, holding BMP, DPX, JPEG, PNG, PPM, TGA and TIFF. The video picks PNG.
The From dropdown under Export Help decides what actually gets exported. Here it sits on Playlist, because the clip was added to the Playlist — but the in and out points were marked in the Source player, so Playlist would export the whole clip and throw the selection away. Change it to Source before exporting.
Check it on every single export, not once. When the second export is set up at 8:02 for the reverse direction, the very first words are “export from source” and the field is verified again before anything is saved.
Click Export File. In the dialog, pick or create the destination folder, type a single base name, and leave Save as type on image2 (*.png). You are naming a series, not a file: the base name gets a five-digit counter appended to every frame.
The Jobs panel logs the whole run as a single entry, C:\Users\dasro\Desktop\Stills\still.png, and finishes in under a second for a selection this short.
The 42-frame selection produces 42 PNG files, still-00001 through still-00042, each 1920 × 1080 and between roughly 1,446 KB and 1,888 KB. From here they are ordinary images — retouch them in a photo editor, throw every other one away for a time-lapse, or leave them alone.
When you rebuild images into video, the frame rate comes from the project, not from the images — a still has no rate of its own. The video starts a new project at HD 1080p 23.98 fps.
The New Project screen spells the default out in its own help text: “If the first file is not a video clip (for example, image or audio), then it will be 1920x1080p 25 fps.” Open a folder of stills into an Automatic project and you get 25 fps whether you wanted it or not. Pick the video mode first.
Open File, navigate to the folder, and select the single lowest-numbered file — still-00001.png. Do not multi-select and do not open the folder. Shotcut finds the rest of the series itself from the numbering.
The preview loads one still. Open Properties and tick Image sequence. The clip immediately becomes the whole folder. Repeat underneath sets how many frames each picture is held for; at 1 frames per picture the 42 images run as 42 frames and Duration reads 00:00:01:18. Raise it to slow the animation down.
The per-picture hold lives in Properties on the clip itself, beside the Set Default button — not under the Settings menu. No Settings menu is opened anywhere in this tutorial; the only project-level choice made is Video mode on the New Project screen in step 06.
The image-sequence clip never goes onto the timeline. Open Export, confirm From reads Source again, leave the stock default preset alone — its own help text says it makes an H.264/AAC MP4 — then Export File, name it, and let the Jobs panel run.
Read directly off the frames of the video. The two directions are tabulated separately because almost nothing carries across between them.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 21.02.27 | Help → About Shotcut |
| Source clip | Pexels Videos 2880.mp4 | Playlist |
| Source duration | 00:00:15:17 | Playlist |
| Project video mode | HD 1080p 23.98 fps | New Project screen |
| Proxy / preview scaling | Preview scaling is ON at 360p | Player status bar |
| Timeline contents | Empty — never used in either direction | Timeline |
| Filters applied | None | — |
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| In point | 00:00:05:08 | Source player, I key |
| Selected duration | 00:00:01:18 | Source player, O key |
| Preset group | stills | Export → Presets |
| Preset chosen | PNG | Export → Presets → stills |
| Other stills presets offered | BMP, DPX, JPEG, PPM, TGA, TIFF | Export → Presets → stills |
| From | Playlist → Source | Export Help — must be changed |
| Format | image2 | Export → Advanced |
| Resolution | 1920 × 1080 | Advanced → Video |
| Aspect ratio | 16 : 9 | Advanced → Video |
| Frames/sec | 23.976024 | Advanced → Video |
| Scan mode | Progressive | Advanced → Video |
| Deinterlacer | YADIF - temporal + spatial (best) | Advanced → Video |
| Interpolation | Bilinear (good) | Advanced → Video |
| Use preview scaling / Parallel processing | Unchecked / Checked | Advanced → Video |
| Destination folder | C:\Users\dasro\Desktop\Stills | Export File dialog |
| File name | still | Export File dialog |
| Save as type | image2 (*.png) | Export File dialog |
| Files produced | 42 × PNG, still-00001 … still-00042 | Destination folder |
| Output resolution | 1920 × 1080 each | Properties on the result |
| File size range | 1,446 KB – 1,888 KB | Explorer, Size column |
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| File opened | still-00001.png | Open File — first of the run only |
| Resolution | 1920x1080 | Properties |
| Image sequence | Checked | Properties — this is the whole trick |
| Repeat | 1 frames per picture | Properties |
| Duration after ticking | 00:00:01:18 | Properties |
| Pixel aspect ratio | 1 : 1 | Properties |
| Default-duration control | Set Default | Properties, beside Duration |
| From, second export | Source | Export Help — re-confirmed at 8:02 |
| Export preset | Stock default (H.264/AAC MP4) | Export → Presets |
| File name | final-stills | Export File dialog |
| Save as type | mp4 (*.mp4) | Export File dialog |
| Job path | C:\Users\dasro\Desktop\Stills\final-stills.mp4 | Jobs panel |
Two controls carry all the risk. From decides whether your in and out points are honoured at all — it opened on Playlist here and had to be moved to Source, and it is worth re-checking on every export. Repeat decides how fast the rebuilt animation runs: 1 frames per picture is as fast as the project rate allows, and every increment past that holds each picture on screen for longer.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product name Whisper mangled has been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.
There are times when you need to extract each individual frame as an image in a video.
And there are other times when you need to combine individual frames into a video.
In this tutorial, I will show you both and provide use cases of possible applications
to these tips.
So stay tuned.
I’m just a normal person with no video editing background.
I wanted to start making YouTube videos and maybe cool transitions and effects.
I don’t really plan on being a professional video editor, 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 can do many of
the tricks you can do on more enterprise video editors like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve,
but with a much simpler and leaner interface, thus dramatically shortening the learning curve.
It just takes using your imagination.
So let’s learn together.
This week, my channel reached a milestone of 2,000 subscribers.
I just wanted to take the time to acknowledge this milestone and thank all of you who have
helped me get to this point.
I love all your comments and support, and I hope you continue to stay tuned
as I try to answer more of your questions about video editing and Shotcut.
If you’ve ever commented on a video, hopefully you know that I try to respond to every single comment,
so keep them coming and let me know anything else you’d like to see.
Once again, I thank you for watching and supporting.
Before I get started with the actual tutorial, I want to show you what version of Shotcut I’m working with.
So in this particular tutorial, I am using Shotcut version 21.02.27.
First, let me show you how to extract all the individual frames from the video.
Okay, so first let’s start with the source video, which I’ve already loaded on the playlist.
And this is what this is, right?
And this is the video that we’re going to extract a series of frames.
And so what I want to do is I just want to select a segment of this video, which begins
maybe right there. So the starting point of the segment,
I can cut by just pressing I on the keyboard. And then I’m going to let this thing play,
and I want it to end maybe right there, which then I can also indicate the end point
of what I want to cut by pressing O. So now this is the only thing that’s chosen in that entire video.
And so what I want to do is I want to take each individual frame
and save it as an image, like a PNG or a JPEG, however many frames these are.
And so once you’ve chosen your endpoint and your endpoint, all you have to do is export.
So if you click the export button, the only difference is that I’m going to open this up
a little bit here, drag this all the way to the bottom. Instead of exporting it as a video,
you’re going to export it as a still, as it says right there. And under the stills category,
you can choose what the file type is. And in this example, I’m just going to happen to choose
the PNG file type. So I’m going to click PNG right there. And in this drop down here,
because we’re pulling it from this screen here, I need to make sure that this thing says source.
Once that’s done, all we have to do is export the file.
And it’s going to ask you, where do you want it to export? So I happened to have created a
folder called stills. And let’s name this file, let’s name this still.
And let’s save. A new export job will show up as Shotcut breaks your clip up into images.
Let’s wait for it to finish.
Once that’s done, I can go into the folder called stills. And you’re going to see
that it’s actually converted every single one of those frames into an individual image.
You can now take these individual stills, bring it into a photo editing program like photoshop
and manipulate it any way you want. And that’s it. So in this instance,
it looks like it’s created 42 different individual images for me.
Pretty quick and simple. Now, when would you ever need to extract multiple frames from a video?
One use case that comes to mind is when you need to make edits to each individual frame
in a photo editor to create an effect like the mask wipe transition,
which I will create another video about in a future tutorial. So fear not,
but that’s not what this tutorial is about. Sometimes you want to freeze frame a point in
time to create emphasis on a particular scene. There are also times when you actually want to
eliminate every other frame, then put them back together to create a time lapse effect.
I’m sure there are other use cases out there. Please feel free to comment below
on any use cases I might have missed. Not that we know how to extract each individual frame,
let’s learn how to put them back together as a video.
Putting the images back together into a video is even easier than breaking them up.
Using the files that we’ve already created in the stills folder, all you have to do is open
the very first image in that sequence. So we’re going to go to open file. I’m going to go into
the stills folder and I’m going to choose the first one of the series. Click open.
On the preview screen it’s going to load just the first image. All you have to do is go to
properties and click image sequence. Check that box. All of a sudden you see the preview
in the window now shows the entire sequence. So what it’s doing is it puts all the images together
into a video. And all you have to do from there is go to export.
Export from source. Export file. And let’s call this final.
Stills.
Again it’s going to load up the jobs window. And that’s it.
And this is what the final video looks like once all the stills have been put back together.
So we already know one use case, which is putting back the images together
after we’ve extracted them. But sometimes you also would need to put frames together
when you took time lapse photos or frame bursts from a GoPro.
You might also be an animator, motion capture or claymation artist. So you would need to combine
each photo together to form a video. Again the possibilities are endless. I can’t even begin
to know all the other use cases for this trick. In any case I hope these steps were useful.
I know they will be for me in the future. Until I did this video I didn’t even remember
how to do these things. I also wanted to thank everyone who’s commented on my videos.
I want you to know that I read every single one of them, so thank you for supporting my
channel and keep suggesting tutorials. So until my next video, take care.
I just wanted to remind you that if you haven’t yet go visit my channel.
I’m sure you’ll find tons of Shotcut related videos. And don’t forget to subscribe so that
you know when I drop a new Shotcut related tutorial. Every video on my channel was done
on Shotcut. So aside from examples of what Shotcut can do, you can also visit my playlist of tips
and tutorials. All geared toward the beginner. Visit my Shotcut tips and tricks playlist
and learn all the tips and tricks I’ve learned during my journey toward video editing.
So once again, please subscribe and I’ll see you next time.
