Shotcut tutorial · companion page
A Shotcut project file can be dropped into another Shotcut project as though it were a video clip. That single fact is the whole tutorial: a long edit stops being one enormous timeline and becomes several small files you assemble at the end.
Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut menu, filter and control names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.
Read this before any keystroke matters. Everything else in the tutorial follows from it, and none of it makes sense without it.
Every Shotcut project is written to a .mlt file — the program’s own format, described in the video as proprietary to Shotcut. Because Shotcut owns that format, Shotcut can read one back and play it.
A .mlt file brought into another project sits in the timeline like an .mp4 or a .png: it can be trimmed, overlapped into a transition, and given filters. In the timeline it even carries its own filename, Chapter01.mlt.
Saving a part takes seconds however long its timeline is. There is no intermediate render between parts, so no waiting and no generation loss — only the master gets exported.
A mistake lives inside one small file. You reopen that part, fix it, and the rest is untouched — which is the “avoid losing work” half of the title.
[ if you save an .mlt file, Shotcut can treat that file as an image or video on its timeline as if it’s editing an .mp4 file ]
Ben Espanto · 2:15
Click any screencap or timestamp to play that section from its exact second, right here in the card. Quotes are transcribed from the audio; every number and filename is read off the picture, never off the words.
These are called sections on this page on purpose. In the video, a “chapter” is one of Ben’s .mlt part files — a different thing entirely, and the thing being taught.
“If you have a timeline that’s about two hours long and you have all those two hours in one file, sometimes it’s just too daunting to look at and I wouldn’t even know where to start that day.”
The productivity argument, and the whole reason for the technique. The example timeline on screen is a real project reading 00:14:23:12, wall-to-wall with small clips. Cut that into fifteen-minute parts and a work session becomes one finishable piece. The About Shotcut dialog appears at 0:48 and gives the build: 20.11.28.
“It means that if you save an .mlt file, Shotcut can treat that file as an image or video on its timeline as if it’s editing an .mp4 file.”
No interface is on screen through this stretch — it is a title card over b-roll while the idea is explained. The claim is the load-bearing one: a saved project can be dragged into another timeline and given filters, transitions and cuts like any clip, and several of them can share one timeline. Because no export is involved, saving a part takes seconds rather than the hours a render of a long timeline can take.
“So, I’m going to drag two videos into the timeline, so this is the first video, and then this is going to be the second one.”
Two clips from the playlist go onto V1 and the second is dragged onto the first to make a transition. One clip sits at a mismatched aspect ratio and shows black bars, so it gets a per-clip fix: with chapterexample2.mp4 selected, rota typed into the filter search returns Size, Position & Rotate, and the clip is scaled up until the bars are gone. Note the panel header names a file here — this filter belongs to one clip.
“So I’m going to add a color grade to this, to the entire track, and I’m going to choose this one here, and I’m going to drop the shadows a little bit.”
Selecting the track head instead of a clip changes the Filters header to Track: V1, and Color Grading added there covers both clips and the transition between them. Highlights (Gain) reads R 0.0 %, G −24.0 %, B −49.7 % for the sunset look; Shadows (Lift) was legible a few seconds earlier at R −27.4 %, G −45.7 %, B −61.6 %. The part is then saved as Chapter01 — saved, not exported.
“I’m going to drag the second video into the first one to create a transition… just so we can tell the difference between the first MLT file and the second MLT file.”
The same moves on the other two clips, deliberately graded a different way so the two parts are distinguishable later: Highlights (Gain) at R −8.2 %, G −28.2 %, B 0.0 %. The window title now reads Chapter02.mlt - Shotcut and the status bar confirms Saved C:/
“And so first we go to File, Open MLT XML as a clip… I’m going to drag it right into the timeline, right there.”
This is the mechanism the whole tutorial rests on, and it is a menu command, not a drag from Explorer: File → Open MLT XML As Clip… in a brand-new empty project. The picker is titled Open File and filters to MLT XML (*.mlt). The chosen part loads into the player as a source and is then dragged onto the timeline, where it becomes a clip labelled Chapter01.mlt. Repeat for Chapter02. Once both are down the master reads 00:01:16:08, overlapping them into a transition shortens it to 00:01:08:01, and a Color Grading filter on Track: V1 of the master tints both parts and the transition at once. Saved as Chapter-Combined.mlt — the one file that gets exported.
“What I do is I break the project up into separate chapters… if I happen to mess up, I don’t risk ruining my entire project.”
An explainer graphic rather than an interface shot: five numbered parts that come together at the end. The working rule is that a mistake is contained — find the one part that has it, fix that file, leave the rest alone. Last-minute universal changes such as equalising colour go in the master, and only then does anything get exported to .mp4. Rendering each part and joining the results with the FFmpeg concatenate method is named as an alternative at 12:00 and set aside as needing some code.
“Just be careful when you move these files. If you move them, make sure you open the original MLT chapter and reconnect the associated files and save. Otherwise, you’ll get the notorious invalid screen.”
The pay-off: anything you reuse — an intro, a lower third, an outro — can live as its own .mlt and be dropped into every future project. The caveat is stated once and it is the important one. A .mlt holds paths to the files it uses, so moving them breaks the links; the stated fix is to open the original part, reconnect its files, and save it again. No dialog or error message is demonstrated on screen for this — only this title card.
“Here’s my end screen chapter.”
Not in the auto-generated chapter list, but the last minute of the video is a distinct piece: the channel tour and the Shotcut Tips and Tricks playlist. The aside is the best possible demonstration of the technique — the outro you are watching is one of the reusable parts he has just described, dropped into this project like any other.
Every filename, menu path and number below was read off the screen in the video. Where the video does not answer a question, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
Chapter the work by how you want to sit down to it, not by story structure. The video’s example is a two-hour timeline cut into fifteen-minute pieces, so a session becomes “finish this fifteen minutes” rather than “face the whole thing”.
Nothing special happens here. Drag your clips into the timeline, trim them, overlap one onto the next to make a transition — whatever the part needs. In the video the demo part is two clips from a four-clip playlist.
One clip sat at a different aspect ratio and showed black bars at the top of the frame. The fix was a per-clip filter: with the clip selected, type rota into the filter search and add Size, Position & Rotate, then scale it up until the bars are gone.
Click the track head in the timeline rather than a clip. The Filters panel header changes from a filename to Track: V1, and anything you add there applies to everything on that track — both clips and the transition between them.
This is the distinction that makes the whole workflow pay off later. A track filter is stored in the project file, so when that project is used as a clip somewhere else, the look travels with it.
File → Save As. The dialog is titled Save XML and the type is MLT XML (*.mlt). Give it a name that says which part it is; the video uses Chapter01. It writes in seconds regardless of timeline length.
Keep the parts together in a single folder. In the video everything — the source clips and every .mlt — lives in C:\
Same moves, different clips, deliberately a different look so the two parts are told apart on screen later. Part two gets its own track-level Color Grading pushed toward blue-violet, then Save As → Chapter02.
After the save the window title reads Chapter02.mlt - Shotcut and the player status bar confirms Saved C:/
This is the move the whole tutorial exists for. In a new, empty project go to File → Open MLT XML As Clip…. The picker that opens is titled Open File and its type filter is MLT XML (*.mlt). Choose a part; it loads into the player as a source, exactly like opening an .mp4.
There is no drag-and-drop shortcut shown for this. The video goes through the File menu both times, once per part.
From the player, drag the loaded part down onto the track. It lands as a clip labelled with its own filename — Chapter01.mlt, then Chapter02.mlt. Repeat Open MLT XML As Clip… for the second part.
Total at this point: 00:01:16:08. The colour looks of both parts are already present — part one is warm, part two is violet — because each part’s track filter is baked into its own project file.
Drag the second part left so it overlaps the first and Shotcut builds a transition between two project files, the same as it would between two clips. The timeline shortens from 00:01:16:08 to 00:01:08:01.
Select the master timeline’s track head and add Color Grading there. The tint lands on both parts and on the transition between them — a genuinely global change, applied on top of each part’s own grade rather than replacing it. Save as Chapter-Combined, then File → Export Video.
Only the master is exported, and the exported file is given the same name as the project. There is a second route to joining finished pieces — render each part to video and concatenate them with FFmpeg — which the video raises and then sets aside as needing a little code.
A .mlt is a text file full of paths to other files. Move those files and the links break. The video’s instruction is explicit: open the original part’s .mlt, reconnect the associated files, and save it again. Skip that and you get what he calls the notorious invalid screen.
Not covered in the video: whether editing and re-saving a part afterwards updates the master automatically, or whether the master must be reopened or the part re-imported. The tutorial never edits a part after assembling the master, so this page will not guess at the answer.
Also not covered: renaming. Only moving files is discussed. Given that the fix for a move is to reopen the part and reconnect, treat a rename with the same caution and keep every part in one folder.
Read directly off the frames. Filenames, menu paths, durations and percentages come from the picture; nothing here was taken from the spoken audio.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 20.11.28 | Help → About Shotcut |
| Copyright line in the dialog | 2011–2020 Meltytech, LLC | About Shotcut |
| Import a project as a clip | File → Open MLT XML As Clip… | Main menu bar |
| Import dialog title / filter | Open File · MLT XML (*.mlt) | File picker |
| Save dialog title / type | Save XML · MLT XML (*.mlt) | File → Save As |
| Export dialog title | Export File | File → Export Video |
| Working folder | C:\ | Both file dialogs |
| Default projects folder | C:\Users\dasro\Videos | New Project panel |
| New project video mode | HD 1080p 23.98 fps | New Project panel |
| Preview scaling | ON at 540p | Player status bar |
| Per-clip fix for the odd clip | Size, Position & Rotate | Filters, search rota |
| Track selected in Filters | Track: V1 | Filters panel header |
| Whole-track look | Color Grading | Applied on Track: V1 |
| File | Role | Contents | Timeline length |
|---|---|---|---|
| chapterexample1.mp4 | Source clip | Pier at sunset | 00:00:13:04 |
| chapterexample2.mp4 | Source clip | Beach, two walkers | 00:00:26:18 |
| chapterexample3.mp4 | Source clip | Mountain fly-over | 00:00:16:23 |
| chapterexample4.mp4 | Source clip | Boots in snow | 00:00:19:18 |
| Chapter01.mlt | Part one | Clips 1 and 2, one transition, warm track grade | 00:00:36:21 |
| Chapter02.mlt | Part two | Clips 3 and 4, one transition, violet track grade | 00:00:34:04 |
| Chapter-Combined.mlt | Master | Both parts as clips, one transition, green track grade | 00:01:08:01 |
Before the two parts were overlapped into a transition the master ran 00:01:16:08; the overlap is what shortens it to 00:01:08:01. The long project shown as an example of a daunting timeline reads 00:14:23:12.
| Applied to | Shadows (Lift) | Midtones (Gamma) | Highlights (Gain) | Read at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter01.mlt, Track: V1 | R −27.4 % · G −45.7 % · B −61.6 % | R 0.0 % · G 0.0 % · B 0.0 % | R 0.0 % · G −24.0 % · B −49.7 % | 5:00 / 5:13 |
| Chapter02.mlt, Track: V1 | not visible — panel scrolled | R 0.0 % · G 0.0 % · B 0.0 % | R −8.2 % · G −28.2 % · B 0.0 % | 7:20 |
| Chapter-Combined.mlt, Track: V1 | not visible — panel scrolled | R 0.0 % · G 0.0 % · B 0.0 % | R −48.0 % · G 0.0 % · B −45.6 % | 9:56 |
The Color Grading panel is wider than the docked Filters pane, so the Shadows (Lift) wheel scrolls out of view once the panel is nudged. The part-one shadow figures were legible at 5:00; where a cell says the panel was scrolled, the numbers were genuinely not on screen and have not been inferred.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product and file-format names the transcriber mangled have been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.
In this video, I’m going to show you how I personally streamline my video editing using
chaptering.
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.
So to get started, just like my other tutorials, I am using Shotcut version 20.11.28.
And so make sure you have at least that version to make sure that my tips will work with
your Shotcut.
One thing I love about chaptering is it helps me be more productive, even when I’m not in
the mood to be productive.
If you have a timeline that’s about two hours long and you have all those two hours in
one file, sometimes it’s just too daunting to look at and I wouldn’t even know where
to start that day.
But if I had my work broken down into chapters of, say, 15 minutes a piece, I can
tell myself just get this 15 minute piece done, or 10 minutes, or five minutes, whichever
way you want your work to be cut up.
Shotcut saves its native files to a .mlt format that’s proprietary to Shotcut.
Because it is Shotcut’s own file type, Shotcut itself can play this and manipulate this
any way it wants to.
What does this all mean?
It means that if you save an .mlt file, Shotcut can treat that file as an image or video on
its timeline as if it’s editing an .mp4 file.
You can drag an .mlt file into your timeline and add filters, transitions, breaks, just
like you can with an .mp4 or .png file.
Now, that’s powerful because you don’t need to export your timeline to an .mp4 format which
can sometimes take hours.
No matter how long and how extensive your timeline is, it just takes seconds to save
as an .mlt, and you can immediately use that .mlt in another Shotcut timeline.
In fact, you can use multiple .mlt’s in one timeline, and I’m now going to demonstrate
how this works.
OK, so first let’s create two working files.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to create two .mlt files and pretend like those
are two different chapters.
So, I’m going to drag two videos into the timeline, so this is the first video, and then this
is going to be the second one.
Let’s bump this up a little bit because it looks like there’s some black bars at
the very top, so my aspect ratio is not correct, or it’s not consistent.
So let me go into Size, Position, and Rotate.
Let me just bump that up in size.
That should be good enough.
So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to do some standard edits on here, so let’s do
a transition, so I’m going to drag the second one into it.
So now we’ve created a transition like that.
And then why don’t we add a color grade?
So I’m going to add a color grade to this, to the entire track, and I’m going to choose
this one here, and I’m going to drop the shadows a little bit.
And let’s say, let’s make it a little orangey, and then I’m going to go to the highlights as
well, add some orange to that too, just so you know which files I’m working with.
So let’s see what that looks like.
Okay, so aside from transitioning the two clips, what I did is I kind of added a little sunset
look to that, and that should be enough.
So I’m going to save that, and let’s call that Chapter 1.
So that’s the first chapter.
I’m going to remove everything from this track, and we’re going to try to do another MLT file.
So on my playlist, I’m going to drag the other two that I didn’t use.
So that’s one, and this is the second one.
It looks like I had a filter on it.
For now, I’m going to remove that filter.
So this is the first file, and then this is the second file.
In this one, I’m going to do something pretty similar.
I’m going to drag the second video into the first one to create a transition.
And so the transition looks like this.
And just to make it look different than the first MLT file on this one,
I’m also going to add a filter.
Also going to add a color grade on this one, and this one, I’m going to make it a little bluer.
Just so we can tell the difference between the first MLT file and the second MLT file.
And so that should be enough, and I’m going to also save this one.
And I’m going to call this one Chapter 2.
So now I have two MLT files, and you notice I did not export either one of them.
I just saved them as an MLT file, and that’s it.
So I just created a fresh new Shotcut file.
And what I’m going to do is I’m going to import the two MLT files that I just created,
and I’m going to edit it as if they were just video files.
And so first we go to File, Open MLT XML as a clip.
I’m going to go back to Chapter 1, which is what I call the first MLT file,
which is going to be previewing on my screen right now.
I’m going to drag it right into the timeline, right there.
I’m going to open another one.
Again, Open MLT XML as clip.
I’m going to grab the one called Chapter 2, that one.
I’m going to drag it right into my timeline as well.
And if you remember, again, I’ve transitioned.
I’ve created all these different effects on it.
I made it look like as if it was sunset.
And this is the second file.
And I just want to remind you that these are not MP4 files.
In fact, these are MLTs.
It even says the name right there, Chapter 2 MLT, and then Chapter 1 MLT.
And I’m going to show you that I’m going to edit these files as if they were MP4 files.
So just like MP4 files or PNG files, you can grab them like the second clip
and drag them into the first clip and watch.
It creates a transition.
Just like that.
And just like the other ones, I can go and select this clip
or select the entire clip.
With that, I can go to filters, add a filter.
Let’s also add color grading to this one.
And now let’s say I’m going to add a greenish hue to it, just like that.
And so if I play it, you notice that the whole thing kind of has a greenish hue to it,
including the transition, including the second file.
And so once I’ve combined all my chapters into this master MLT file,
all I have to do is save into whatever let’s say let’s call this one
chapter combined.
And this becomes your master file.
And from here, I can then export.
So I’m just going to export it now.
Again, I’m going to call this one chapter combined save.
As you can see, it’s now exporting.
And here’s the final video.
Now, how do I utilize this technique?
Well, I don’t work on long video projects anymore.
What I do is I break the project up into separate chapters.
In doing so, I create much smaller manageable files that I can still edit later.
And if I happen to mess up, I don’t risk ruining my entire project.
I just look for the one chapter that has the mistake and fix it without messing up the rest.
Once I finish all the chapters, I then put all of them together in a final Shotcut file.
If I need to make some last minute universal changes like equalizing color,
I can make it in that master file.
Only then do I export the project into an MP4.
There are also other techniques to join projects together.
You can also render each individual projects into videos,
then put them together using the concatenate method in FFmpeg.
But you need to know a little bit of code.
I’m not going to cover that version in this video, but I can make another video if enough people comment below.
Do you use the same intro to your videos every single time?
Then why not save it as a reusable MLT?
The possibilities are endless.
And using this, you can begin building a library of reusable files
that will hopefully shorten your editing time.
Just be careful when you move these files.
If you move them, make sure you open the original MLT chapter
and reconnect the associated files and save.
Otherwise, you’ll get the notorious invalid screen.
I hope this tutorial was helpful.
Personally, when I first discovered this trick, my mind was blown.
I’m sure you’ll have more questions, so just leave them in the comments
and I will try to answer them as well as I can.
Not at all of this is done.
Here’s my end screen chapter.
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.
