Shotcut tutorial · companion page
A keyframe is one setting pinned to one moment. Put two of them on the same field and Shotcut fills in every frame between. Three worked examples here — a zoom, a blur and a volume fade — all built from that one idea.
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.
Nothing about keyframing is special to any one filter. You pin a value at a moment, pin a different value at a different moment, and the editor works out every frame in between. That is the whole mechanism, and everything else on this page is an application of it.
“It moves from the first setting to the next setting.” One keyframe on its own changes nothing visible. It takes two before anything animates, because a single pin has nothing to travel towards.
Every keyframable field in Shotcut carries a small stopwatch button. If the stopwatch is there, the field can be animated. Click it and Shotcut turns keyframing on for that field, writes the first keyframe at the playhead, and opens the Keyframes panel.
The Keyframes panel shares the bottom of the window with the Timeline panel — two tabs, same space. Each keyframed field gets its own lane with a line running left to right; the markers on that line are the keyframes.
The third example on the page keyframes Gain / Volume on a music track. Nothing about the method changes — same stopwatch, same panel, same markers. Only the units change, from per cent to dB.
[ that’s basically what a keyframe is, is it moves from the first setting to the next setting ]
Ben Espanto · 3:46
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. Four chapters come from the video’s own chapter list; the three marked derived were read off the frames, because the published list stops at 10:07 while the video runs to 15:02.
“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 on screen for the first 0:40 — this stretch is the channel intro running over the shotcut.org home page. Nothing to follow along with yet.
“What I’m going to do is I’m going to cut it down to about 15 seconds because that’s probably the only clip we’re going to need for this example.”
Before any keyframe exists there is housekeeping: the clip GH019323-speed.mp4 (full length 00:00:57:03) is dropped on V1, muted, split, and trimmed down to a 15-second working piece. The player total now reads 00:00:15:00.
“Whenever you load a filter, every time this icon shows up, which is a stopwatch icon, that means that filter is keyframable.”
The filter Rotate and Scale is added, and the stopwatch beside Scale is clicked at 00:00:00. That single click does three things at once: it turns keyframing on for that one field, it writes the first keyframe at the playhead, and it opens the Keyframes panel at the bottom of the window. Scale then runs 100.0 % to 300.0 % across the fifteen seconds. YouTube’s own chapter list runs Using Filters from 0:40 to 6:10; this card is a split added here because the work on screen changes completely at this point.
“Instead of it being at 20, I want it to be at zero because I want it to start with zero blur.”
Same clip, different filter. Blur: Gaussian has a single keyframable field, Amount, which defaults to 20.0. Four keyframes are built along it — 0 at the start, 60 at 00:00:05, 20 at 00:00:10 and back to 0 at the end — so the shot blurs in, eases off, and clears again.
“In this last keyframe example, I’m going to do something a little different. Instead of using a video filter, I’m going to use an audio filter.”
Right-click the video track → Add Audio Track, then drag Unstoppable.mp3 (00:03:03:22) onto A1, splice it to match the video length, and right-click again → Make Tracks Taller so the keyframe line is easy to hit. Still no keyframes at this point — this is setup.
“I want to use keyframes to make the volume of this audio track trail off from 100% to 0%, or whatever decibel we want it to be.”
The audio clip gets the Gain / Volume filter, whose one field is Level, measured in dB rather than per cent. The stopwatch is clicked with the playhead at 00:00:10, which pins 0.0 dB there; a second keyframe at the end is dragged to the floor of the track, and a third is added between them and lifted to steepen the drop. YouTube’s chapter list stops at 10:07, so this card is derived from the frames.
“If I went a little bit too fast and I clicked something and you missed something and you want to know exactly what I did, what I clicked, did I right click, just go ahead and post it on the comments.”
End card over the editor. Nothing is built here — it is the call to action and the invitation to request the next tutorial. Derived from the frames; the published chapter list ends at 10:07.
Every number below was read off the screen in the video. Where a value was never shown, it is not stated — there are no recommended-sounding guesses on this page.
Long clips make keyframing harder to see, not easier. In the video the source is GH019323-speed.mp4, full duration 00:00:57:03, trimmed down on the timeline to a 00:00:15:00 working piece: position the playhead, Split at Playhead, then delete the tail.
The clip is muted for this exercise so the audio does not distract — the sound comes back in step 07 when a separate music track is added.
Select the clip, open Filters, press the + button under the filter list, and type into the search box. The chooser has three tabs — Favorite, Video and Audio — and searching looks across them. Typing rotate brings up Rotate and Scale.
Rotate and Scale shows four fields: Rotation, Scale, X offset and Y offset. To the right of each are two small buttons. The circular arrow resets the field to its default. The stopwatch is the keyframe switch. If a field has no stopwatch, that field cannot be animated.
The stopwatch is grey when keyframing is off for that field and lit blue when it is on. That colour is the only signal, so it is worth learning to look for.
Order matters here and it is the step beginners skip. Move the playhead to where you want the animation to start — 00:00:00 in the video — set the field to its starting value, and only then click the stopwatch next to Scale. One click does three things:
it turns keyframing on for Scale · it writes the first keyframe at the playhead · it opens the Keyframes panel at the bottom of the window.
Clicking the stopwatch a second time turns keyframing back off for that field and discards its keyframes. It is a toggle, not an add button.
With keyframing on, you never press a second button to make a keyframe. Move the playhead and change the value, and Shotcut writes a keyframe there for you. Playhead to the end of the clip, set Scale to 300.0 %, and the zoom is built.
While the playhead sits between two keyframes the field shows the interpolated value, not a value you typed. Readings such as 186.4 %, 409.1 % and 695.7 % appear in the panel through this section — those are Shotcut reporting the in-between, and they change as the playhead moves.
The Keyframes panel is a tab beside Timeline at the bottom of the window. The upper lane is named for the filter (Rotate and Scale) and carries two buttons: seek previous keyframe and seek next keyframe. Beneath it, each keyframed field gets its own lane — here Scale — with four buttons: seek previous, the stopwatch, a trash can, and seek next.
The marker shape is the interpolation type, and it is the thing beginners miss. A diamond means Linear — a straight, even ramp to the next keyframe. A square means Discrete, also called hold: the value stays put and then jumps, with no travel at all. A circle means Smooth — the value eases in and out instead of arriving at constant speed. You change one by right-clicking the marker and picking the type from the menu.
Every keyframe in this tutorial is a diamond. Linear is the Shotcut default and the video never switches away from it, so the square and circle shapes are described here for recognition rather than because they appear on screen.
Anywhere along the lane, put the playhead where you want a new keyframe and either click the stopwatch in that lane or change the value in the filter panel. To remove one, right-click its marker and choose remove, or select it and use the trash can.
The video deliberately overdoes it — peaks past 600 % appear — then walks it all back: “your keyframe has to make sense”. The extras are removed one by one until only the first keyframe is left, and the simple 100.0 % to 300.0 % ramp is rebuilt.
A keyframe you cannot see is a keyframe you cannot fix. If the markers are cramped, make the track taller (right-click a track → Make Tracks Taller) before you start nudging them.
Add Blur: Gaussian to the same clip. It has one keyframable field, Amount, which arrives at 20.0. Playhead to the start, type 0, click the stopwatch — the clip now begins with no blur — then move along the clip and set the values you want.
The Amount field carries no unit on screen. The narration is careful about this: “I don’t know if it’s 20% blur, but it’s just the setting is 20.”
Right-click the video track → Add Audio Track, drag Unstoppable.mp3 onto A1, and splice it to the length of the video. Select the music clip, open Filters, and add Gain / Volume — its one field is Level, in dB.
Playhead to 00:00:10, click the stopwatch — that pins 0.0 dB, full level, at the ten-second mark. Playhead to the end, drag the line to the floor of the lane, and the track fades from ten seconds to silence. A third keyframe added between them and lifted makes the drop steeper.
Before the first keyframe the value simply holds. That is why the Level line is flat from 00:00:00 to 00:00:10 in the panel — nothing is animating yet, and that is correct.
Read directly off the frames of the video. If you have never keyframed before, the three tables below are enough to rebuild all three examples exactly as they were recorded.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | V20.04.12 | Stated in the video description — no About Shotcut dialog appears on screen |
| Source clip | GH019323-speed.mp4 | Playlist, item #1 |
| Source duration | 00:00:57:03 | Playlist |
| Working length on the timeline | 00:00:15:00 | Player total, after the split |
| Music clip | Unstoppable.mp3 | Playlist, item #2 |
| Music duration | 00:03:03:22 | Playlist |
| Track stack, final | V1 video / A1 Unstoppable.mp3 | Timeline |
| Example | Filter | Keyframed field | Keyframes | Marker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoom | Rotate and Scale | Scale | 00:00:00 · 100.0 % → end · 300.0 % | Diamond (Linear) |
| Blur in and out | Blur: Gaussian | Amount | 00:00:00 · 0 → 00:00:05 · 60 → 00:00:10 · 20 → end · 0 | Diamond (Linear) |
| Music fade-out | Gain / Volume | Level | 00:00:10 · 0.0 dB → end · floor of the lane | Diamond (Linear) |
| Fields left untouched | Rotate and Scale | Rotation / X offset / Y offset | 0.0 deg / 0 / 0 — no keyframes | — |
| Control | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Stopwatch | Beside a field in the filter panel | Toggles keyframing on for that field and writes the first keyframe at the playhead. Grey = off, blue = on. Clicking again turns it off and discards that field’s keyframes. |
| Circular arrow | Beside a field in the filter panel | Resets the field to its default value. Nothing to do with keyframes. |
| Stopwatch | In a field’s lane, Keyframes panel | Adds a keyframe at the playhead, or removes the one already there. |
| Trash can | In a field’s lane, Keyframes panel | Deletes the selected keyframe. |
| Seek previous / seek next | Filter lane and field lane | Jumps the playhead to the keyframe before or after it. The only reliable way to land exactly on a keyframe. |
| Right-click a marker | On the value line | Menu with remove and the interpolation types. Used in the video only to remove keyframes. |
| Changing a value with keyframing on | Filter panel | Writes a keyframe at the playhead automatically. No button needed. |
| Shape | Type | What the value does | Seen in this video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | Linear | Travels to the next keyframe at a constant rate. The Shotcut default. | Yes — every keyframe in all three examples |
| Square | Discrete | Holds its value, then jumps at the next keyframe. No travel at all. | No |
| Circle | Smooth | Eases in and out rather than arriving at a constant speed. | No |
The interpolation type is set by right-clicking a marker on the value line and choosing the type. This tutorial never changes it, so all three examples run on Linear and every marker on screen is a diamond. The mapping is listed here because the shape is the only place Shotcut shows you which type a keyframe is using.
Readings such as 186.4 %, 409.1 %, 695.7 % or −37.6 dB appear in the filter panel throughout the video. Those are interpolated in-between values under a moving playhead, not settings that were typed — the keyframed values are the ones in the tables above.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product and filter names Whisper mangled have been corrected. 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.
Okay, let’s start with my favorite filters.
First, let’s grab this video here.
Let me fish in a dock.
Let’s play it a little bit just so you can see.
I’m going to turn off the sound.
I’m going to mute it because you don’t really need it.
Let’s play it.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to cut it down to about 15 seconds because that’s probably
the only clip we’re going to need for this example.
Let’s move it down a little bit more right there.
Split it.
Cut the extra.
Extend it just to make it look bigger.
It’s easier to see.
So I’m going to select this clip.
And what I’m going to do is I’m going to apply a filter called Rotate and Scale.
You just start typing Rotate and it should show up.
So this is when the keyframes come in.
So whenever you load a filter, every time this icon shows up, which is
a stopwatch icon, that means that filter is keyframable.
So whenever these icons are present, that means that you can keyframe it.
So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to keyframe this video.
First and foremost, what I’m going to do is I’m going to position it.
So if it’s positioned away from the very beginning, what I’m going to do is
I’m going to position it to the very beginning.
And that’s where I want to position where my first keyframe is.
Once it’s in that position, you click the keyframe icon.
It’s then going to load up the keyframe interface.
And it’s already positioned in the first position.
And if you can look at here, under Scale, it’s at 100%.
And what I want to do is I want to zoom this from 100% all the way till the very end here.
And I want it to be, by the time it gets to the end, 300%.
And so once I did that, what it did is it created an initial keyframe at 100.
And then it gradually moves from 100 to all the way to this last keyframe at 300%.
So let’s see what that looks like.
As you can see, it slowly zooms it in from 100 to 300.
And that’s basically what a keyframe is, is it moves from the first setting to the next setting.
And so let’s say I go here to this position and I add another keyframe.
And instead of it being 196.9, I want it to zoom in to, let’s see what this thing says, zoom to 500%.
So I went from 100% here to five times the zoom at 500%.
And then from here, it’s going to go from 500% down to 300%.
So let’s see what that looks like.
So the zoom is a lot faster because it has to zoom all the way to 500%.
And then once it hits the 500%, it then slopes back down to 300%.
And you could add as many keyframes as you want.
So we’ll say here I’m going to click the keyframe icon again right there.
I can either raise it or drop it.
And that’s pretty much how a keyframe works.
I’m going to add another one here.
I’m going to say raise it again.
So here it’s going to look a lot more dramatic from 100% all the way to,
it looks like it’s going to be over 600% and then it’s going to drop down again.
But I mean, your keyframe has to make sense.
So let me get rid of all these different keyframes.
Remove, click that, remove, click that, right click, remove, remove that.
So all we have here is the key.
So we are now at just 100%.
I’m going to go to the very end.
And again, I want to just slowly increase the size from 100 to 300.
So it’s a little bit more gradual, a little bit more realistic.
And that’s how you keyframe the rotate and scale filter.
So now using the same video clip, instead of using the rotate and scale,
we’re going to go to filter and now we’re going to use a filter called Gaussian blur.
So I’m just going to type in blur there.
This one is called blur colon Gaussian.
And once again, if you notice here, this icon over here, there is a keyframe icon,
which means that this is a keyframeable filter.
So once again, what I’d like to do is position my cursor all the way to the very beginning
where I want the keyframe to begin.
I then click the keyframe icon.
Instead of it being at 20, I want it to be at zero because I want it to start with zero blur.
What I want to happen is by the time I get to, let’s say, 10 seconds over here.
Move it a little bit one more by the time we get to 10 seconds.
It has gone from no blur all the way to a Gaussian blur setting of 60, which looks like this.
And so once again, it looks like this in the beginning with no blur.
And then by the time we get to this part here, it would be at 60, 60 points blur.
So let’s play that and see what it looks like.
So right now it’s slowly blurring all the way until the 10 second mark.
And now it’s blurred at 60.
So if I were going to move this keyframe all the way over here to the five second mark
and add the five second mark, let’s see.
It looks like it’s at 67.6 Gaussian blur.
Let’s just drop that down to 60 once again from the beginning of the keyframe at zero blur.
It’s going to gradually work its way to my second keyframe at 60%.
And from 60%, what I can do, move it all the way to that point.
What I can do is I can add another keyframe, let’s say here.
And I then want to click the keyframe button to add a keyframe.
And then from, let’s say from 60, we want it to drop to 20.
So I’m going to set that setting to 20.
So let’s play that now, starting from zero, going to 10, 30, 40 to 60.
And then it’s gradually unblurring again up to 20.
I don’t know if it’s 20% blur, but it’s just the setting is 20.
If I want it to gradually go back to no blur, I can go to the very end.
Click the keyframe icon to add another keyframe right there.
Instead of it being 20 up here, I’m going to set it to zero.
So once again, if we come from this closest keyframe, it’s going to go from 20,
all the way down to back to 0% blur.
And so that’s how you use keyframes with the Gaussian blur filter.
So in this last keyframe example, I’m going to do something a little different.
Instead of using a video filter, I’m going to use an audio filter.
So I still have that same video clip loaded up on its own track.
And what I’m going to do is I’m going to right click this track and I’m going to do add.
I’m going to choose add audio track so that there’s an audio track at the bottom.
I have a music file, an MP3.
I’m going to drag it over to that audio track.
Let’s play it so you can hear what it sounds like.
So obviously it’s an audio track.
I’m going to go all the way to the end of this video track to match the length.
And I’m going to splice it.
And then I’m going to cut this part out so that we can just play around with this specific track right here.
I’m going to right click one of the tracks and I’m going to choose make tracks taller.
Just to make a little taller is a little easier to see.
And so at this point, I don’t have any keyframes and so the sound should be equal all the way across.
So that’s what it sounds like.
What I want to do is I want to use keyframes to make the volume of this audio track trail off from 100% to 0%
or whatever decibel we want it to be.
So first and foremost, I want to choose the audio clip MP3.
I’m going to go back to filter and this time around, I’m just going to choose the filter called volume.
So right now we are at 100% volume.
And what I want to do is at the 10 second mark right there close enough.
What I want to do is I want to add a keyframe to this.
And once again, when you look at the gain volume filter, once again, we have that icon there,
meaning that this filter is also keyframeable.
So right off the bat, I’m going to click the keyframe.
It’s going to load up the keyframe interface again.
It’s already added the keyframe right there.
That’s where I want it to begin.
I then want to go to the very end, add another keyframe,
and then I’m going to drop it all the way down to 0.
And so what happens is it’s going to play the song all the way up to this point here at 100% volume,
and then it’ll slowly start dropping it down to 0% volume.
So let’s play it right now.
So there you go.
And once again, what I can do is to make the drop off a little steeper,
what I can do is I can position it here a little bit halfway,
choose the keyframe icon, add another keyframe, raise that a little bit higher,
and then this is what it sounds like.
And so not only can you keyframe video filters,
you can also keyframe audio filters,
and that’s how you keyframe the Gain / Volume and any other audio filters out there.
So if you have any other questions, just go ahead and post it on the comment section.
If I went a little bit too fast and I clicked something and you missed something
and you want to know exactly what I did, what I clicked, did I right click,
just go ahead and post it on the comments.
Please remember to subscribe to this channel, like it, share it with everyone,
and also if you have any other suggestions on what other tutorial you’d like to see,
please go ahead and put it in the comments and I will make sure that I make that video.
So thank you for watching.
