Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Copy-paste onto a clip is route one, and it is the one everybody already knows. The other four reach further: a track, the Output row above every track, a saved Preset that outlives the project, and an .mlt template that carries a whole multi-track rig into the next edit.
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.
All five reuse the same filter settings. What separates them is how far each one reaches — one clip, one track, the whole timeline, every future project, or an entire multi-track rig. Pick by reach, not by habit.
Copy the filters, select the next clip, Paste filters. Reaches exactly one clip per paste. Right for two to five clips, and a treadmill past that — every later change has to be repeated on each one.
Select the track head instead of a clip. The panel heading changes from a filename to Track: V1 — or to whatever you renamed the track. Reaches every clip on that track, including clips dropped there later.
The row above every track head. Reaches the entire timeline at once, which is what you want for a final LUT or a programme-wide volume lift — and what you very much do not want by accident.
Not the clipboard at all. One filter’s settings, named and stored, offered in every project you open from then on. The only route on this list that survives quitting Shotcut with nothing else attached.
Save the project itself — tracks named, filters loaded, footage deleted — and open it as the starting point for the next edit. Carries a whole multi-track rig, which no preset and no clipboard can.
On 21.05.18 the filter clipboard does not cross the project boundary. Ben says on the recording that 21.08 adds it. Until then, presets and templates are the only things that travel.
[ people accidentally paste something on the output and errors happen… they don’t understand that they accidentally put it on the output ]
Ben Espanto · 13:49
Ben’s own seven chapters are kept with their own titles. Two of them are far too long to sit on one card — Copy-paste filters on tracks runs 4:18 to 13:31, and Using MLT templates runs 21:43 to 25:08 — so they are split. Every card 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.
“In this tutorial, I want to cover the most common ways for you to reuse filters on Shotcut.”
The project is already open before a word is said. Two source clips sit in the Playlist panel — beach1.mp4, Duration: 00:00:14:22, and beach2.mp4, Duration: 00:00:10:10 — and the title bar still reads Untitled* - Shotcut.
“In this tutorial, we are using Shotcut version 21.05.18.”
The About Shotcut dialog puts it on screen: Shotcut version 21.05.18, Copyright © 2011-2021 Meltytech, LLC. Every control name and every dialog below belongs to that release — which matters, because two of them did not exist a year earlier.
“So the first way I showed you is just copying and pasting filters to a clip.”
Route one, and the only route the earlier copy-filters tutorial covered as a clip-to-clip move. One filter is built on beach1.mp4 — Color Grading, a Video filter — and the panel is headed with the clip’s own filename, which is how you know what you are about to edit.
“You select this button, copy the filters.”
The tooltip reads exactly Copy the filters, the same wording the 2020 build showed. What has changed is the row it sits in: there are now seven buttons under the filter list — +, −, copy, paste, move up, move down and a close X — where the 2020 build had four.
“And you select this button, paste all the filters.”
The fourth button’s tooltip reads Paste filters — Ben says “paste all the filters” aloud, the app says Paste filters. The panel is now headed beach2.mp4 with an empty list, and the paste button is live because the clipboard is loaded. Neither tooltip shows a keyboard shortcut, and no shortcut is used anywhere in this video.
“It copies all the filters and all the settings from the previous clip onto the next clip.”
beach2.mp4 now carries Color Grading with the values it was holding on beach1.mp4. Both pastes in this video land in an empty list, so what happens to a target that already has filters of its own is still not shown — the same gap the 2020 page reported.
“The next way I’m going to show you is copying, pasting into a track.”
This published chapter is longer than most of Ben’s whole tutorials. It covers building a second filter, adding tracks, pasting onto two different track heads, and renaming tracks after the cameras that shot them. Every card from here to 13:31 is read off the frames and anchored to its frame index.
“To get to a new track all you have to do is right click the existing track, track operations and add a video track.”
Clicking a track head swaps the panel heading from a filename to Track: V2. The list is empty. That heading is the only confirmation you are aiming at a track and not at a clip — exactly as the 2020 tutorial showed with Track: V1.
“I’m also going to add a blur.”
A second Video filter is added to beach1.mp4 from the + chooser: Blur: Gaussian, stacked under Color Grading. From here on, the thing being copied is a stack of two, not a single filter.
“And what happens is the filter gets applied to every single video within that track.”
Both filters, pasted once, now live on the track rather than on any clip. Every clip on V1 renders through them, and so does anything dropped onto the track afterwards. This is the same move the 2020 tutorial called the hack, on a newer build and with a two-filter stack.
“For greater control what I would usually do is I would lay the clips on different tracks.”
The second track gets its own copy of the stack. Two tracks, two independent filter sets — which is the whole reason to prefer tracks over one long linear timeline. Change the grade on V1 and V2 does not move.
“A lot of times I put my GoPro footage on one track and I put my Insta 360 footage on another track.”
The track heads have been renamed GOPRO and INSTA360, and the Filters panel heading follows: it now reads Track: GOPRO. Naming the track after the camera that shot it is what makes a per-camera grade readable six weeks later.
“Right click the existing track, track operations and add a video track.”
The timeline context menu: Track Operations opens onto Add Audio Track (Ctrl+U), Add Video Track (Ctrl+I), Insert Track (Ctrl+Alt+I) and Remove Track (Ctrl+Alt+U). Note the row above the track heads, labelled Output — that is the next chapter’s target, and it has been sitting there the whole time.
“Copy pasting into the output, which sometimes people overlook.”
Output is not a track. It is the row that sits above every track head in the Timeline panel, and it stands for the whole timeline — the finished programme, after every track has been composited together. A filter there applies to everything, including clips added later. A track filter covers one track; Output covers all of them at once.
“This prompt actually didn’t use to exist. They only added it because [people] accidentally put it on the output.”
Selecting Output and adding a filter now raises a warning: Do you really want to add filters to Output? — Timeline > Output is currently selected. Adding filters to Output affects ALL clips in the timeline including new ones that will be added. It offers Yes, No and a Do not show this anymore checkbox. Ben says on the recording that the prompt is a later addition, put there because people were pasting onto the output by mistake.
“So now I have pasted it into the output and so when I played a video you can see that the filter [holds].”
The panel is headed Output and carries Color Grading and Blur: Gaussian. The playhead is dragged across every clip on both tracks and the look holds on all of them. One paste, whole timeline. Ben’s stated use cases: a final LUT once the grade is balanced, or lifting the volume of the entire programme.
“You know that there’s a filter on the output if you see this icon right here, which is the filter icon.”
A funnel icon appears on the Output head once it carries filters. This is the answer to the failure Ben describes — a grade you cannot find on any clip or track because it is on the output. Check the funnel before you go hunting.
“For the past versions of Shotcut we were unable to copy filters from one timeline to another... starting in version 21.08, which is the version after this tutorial, you will now have the ability to copy paste across different MLT files.”
On 21.05.18 the filter clipboard only reaches inside the project that is open. Copy a stack, open a different .mlt, and there is nothing to paste. Ben states on the recording that this changes in 21.08, then in beta testing. That limit is exactly why the next two routes exist.
“The next tip is making sure you use the filter presets that are available for every filter. If there are settings that you constantly reuse, it’s best to save them as preset so that you have them available to you at all times.”
This is the question the earlier copy-filters page had to leave open, and here is the answer. A preset is not a clipboard. It belongs to one filter, it survives quitting Shotcut, and it is offered in every project you open afterwards. A copied stack is a one-session convenience; a preset is a permanent one.
“All I have to do is go to the preset section and find a saved version of a previous [setting].”
Every filter carries a Preset dropdown with its own + and − buttons. Opened on Text: Simple it lists (defaults), 2-minute, Bottom Left, Bottom Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right, Center Text, Center Text Smaller, Lower Third, Lower Third, Slide In From Bottom, Slide In From Left, Slide In From Right, Slide In From Top, Slide Out Bottom, Slide Out Left, Slide Out Right, Slide Out Top. Some names appear twice: Shotcut’s own presets and your saved ones share one alphabetical list with nothing to tell them apart.
“All you have to do is click the plus icon, name it — let’s say test preset — and then click okay.”
Pressing the + beside the Preset dropdown opens a dialog titled Save Preset with one field, Name:. Ben types Text Preset and deliberately does not confirm, so his own list stays clean. The preset captures whatever the filter is holding at that moment — on this Text: Simple that is Preset Center Text, Font Gotham Black 112, Use font size checked, Outline Thickness 0, Background Padding 0.
“If you want to create your own preset for gain volume, all you have to do is set it to the level [you want] and save it.”
The same Preset row appears on the audio side. Gain / Volume is added from the Audio tab of the filter chooser and shows one control, Level, at 0.0 dB, with its own preset + and −. Ben says he keeps one called voice default for his narration. A preset is scoped to a single filter, so nothing here saves a whole stack — which is what the last route is for.
“This last tip is also a great way of leveraging previous work.”
Route five, and the only one that carries a whole multi-track rig from one project into the next. An .mlt file is Shotcut’s own project format; saving one with the tracks named, the filters loaded and the footage deleted turns the project itself into a reusable template.
“In my GoPro footage I’ve already loaded tons of presets, like color grading.”
The chooser is open with Track: GOPRO selected. One detail worth noticing here: on a track the tabs are Favorite, Video and Audio, while on a clip a fourth tab, Time, is offered as well. Time filters are not on the menu for a track.
“I can save this MLT file — let’s say this is called camera template.”
The Save XML dialog, in Desktop > Copy-Paste. File name: Camera-Template, Save as type: MLT XML (*.mlt), and a Confirm Save As prompt because that file already exists. The folder lists three MLT File entries: Camera-Template at 8 KB, Copy-Paste-Tutorial at 28 KB, source at 11 KB. Eight kilobytes because the footage was deleted first — the template is tracks, names and filters, and nothing else.
“I want to pay it forward. I want to help you gain exposure for your channels.”
The teaching is over at 25:08 and the remaining 3:47 is a segment Ben says he will run on every Shotcut tutorial from here on: viewer channels, shown on screen and subscribed to. No editing happens after this point.
“I’m going to do this for every Shotcut tutorial moving forward.”
The first is Got To Get Outdoors, shown at 634 subscribers, its banner reading SUBSCRIBE FOR HIKING CAMPING CYCLING EXPLORING. The second, a minute later, is MusicalBox Bits & Pieces at 127 subscribers, followed by a piece of its work playing in full.
“If this video has inspired you in any way, I’d love for you to subscribe. It goes a long way to help my channel.”
End card over Ben’s channel page, with the bentacular Instagram handle and a note that the gear links are in the description. Nothing further is demonstrated.
Every control name, dialog title and number below was read off the screen on Shotcut 21.05.18. Where the video does not answer a question, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
Build the look on one clip, then press the third button under the filter list. Its tooltip reads Copy the filters, plural — it takes the whole list and every value in it, not just the highlighted filter. Select the next clip and press the fourth button, Paste filters.
No keyboard shortcut appears for either control — not in the tooltips, and not used anywhere in the video. Every copy and paste here is a button click.
Click the head of the track itself, 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.
New tracks come from the timeline context menu: right-click a track head → Track Operations → Add Video Track (Ctrl+I), or Add Audio Track (Ctrl+U).
Rename a track after the camera that shot it and the panel heading follows: it reads Track: GOPRO. Ben’s working pattern is one track per camera, so each camera’s colour profile is corrected in one place.
Output is not a track. It is the single row that sits above every track head in the Timeline panel, and it stands for the finished programme after all tracks have been composited. A track filter grades one track; an Output filter grades all of them, plus anything added afterwards.
This is the route that bites people. If a look is on every clip and you cannot find it on any clip or any track, check Output for the funnel.
Every filter has a Preset dropdown directly under the button row, with its own + and −. Set the filter the way you want it, press +, and a dialog titled Save Preset asks for one thing: Name:. Confirm, and the name joins that filter’s dropdown in every project from then on.
A preset holds one filter. There is no preset that stores a stack, and none of the seven buttons saves a stack either. For a whole rig, use route five.
Set the project up the way you always work: tracks added, tracks renamed, the right filters pasted onto each track head. Then delete the footage and save the project. File → Save As opens a Save XML dialog with Save as type: MLT XML (*.mlt). Open that file next time and drag new footage onto tracks that already carry their filters.
Ben says he keeps more than two dozen of these. The file is small because it is only structure — tracks, names, filters and their values. Delete the footage before you save or the template drags the old edit along with it.
The companion page for How to Copy Filter Settings from One Video to Others was built from a June 2020 recording on V20.04.12. This one is 21.05.18, fourteen months later. Most of it agrees. Where it does not, the feature changed — the earlier page was not wrong about its own build.
| Point | V20.04.12 · June 2020 | 21.05.18 · August 2021 | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy control | Copy the filters | Copy the filters | Unchanged |
| Paste control | Paste filters | Paste filters | Unchanged |
| Buttons under the filter list | Four · add, remove, copy, paste | Seven · add, remove, copy, paste, move up, move down, close | Changed between the two builds |
| Keyboard shortcut for copy or paste filters | None shown | Still none shown | Unchanged |
| Name of the project-wide target | Master | Output | Renamed between the two builds |
| Pasting onto that target | Shown, never used | Demonstrated, with a warning dialog | Answered here |
| Confirmation when filtering the whole timeline | None | Do you really want to add filters to Output? | Added after the 2020 build |
| Filter chooser tabs | Favorite · Video · Audio | Favorite · Video · Audio · Time | Time tab added; not offered on a track |
| Targets the panel can address | Three · clip, track head, Master | Three · clip, track head, Output | Same three, one renamed |
| Multi-clip selection | Not possible | Not shown | Still no bulk paste |
| Copy filters between two different projects | Not covered | Not possible on this build; Ben says 21.08 adds it | Changed after this recording |
Every filter carries a Preset dropdown with its own + and −. + opens a Save Preset dialog with a single Name: field; the saved name then appears in that filter’s dropdown in every project. Video and audio filters both have it. A preset covers one filter only, and it is the one route on this page that outlives the project without carrying the project with it.
No file browser is ever opened on the preset store, and no path is ever stated. The only folder shown in the whole video is Desktop > Copy-Paste, and that is for .mlt files. Treat the location as unanswered by these two tutorials.
The stopwatch button is visible beside every Color Grading wheel and the Keyframes tab sits next to Timeline at the bottom of the window, but neither is used at any point in this video. Every filter copied here holds a single static value. Ben does say in passing, at 19:46, that a preset can include keyframes — that is his spoken claim, not something the screen shows.
Every paste in both videos lands in an empty list. Whether a paste replaces, merges or appends when the target already carries filters is not demonstrated on either build.
Read directly off the frames. Nothing on this page is transcribed from the audio except the quotes, which are marked as quotes.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 21.05.18 | Help → About Shotcut, shown at 1:00 |
| Copyright line | © 2011-2021 Meltytech, LLC | About Shotcut |
| Project title bar | Untitled* - Shotcut | Window title at 0:00 |
| Source clip 1 | beach1.mp4 · Duration: 00:00:14:22 | Playlist |
| Source clip 2 | beach2.mp4 · Duration: 00:00:10:10 | Playlist |
| Preview scaling | Preview scaling is ON at 540p | Player status bar |
| Timeline length, later in the edit | 00:00:38:13 | Player, at 15:00 |
| Buttons under the filter list | + · − · copy · paste · ▲ · ▼ · X | Filters panel |
| Copy control tooltip | Copy the filters | Third button |
| Paste control tooltip | Paste filters | Fourth button |
| Keyboard shortcuts | None shown, none used | Every copy and paste is a button click |
| Filter 1 | Color Grading | Video filter |
| Shadows (Lift) · Midtones (Gamma) | R 0.0 % · G 0.0 % · B 0.0 % on both wheels | Wheels sit on their defaults throughout |
| Highlights (Gain) | R 100.0 % · G 100.0 % · B 100.0 % | Default, unchanged on screen |
| Filter 2 | Blur: Gaussian | Video filter, stacked after Color Grading |
| Filter 3 | Text: Simple | Used for the preset demonstration |
| Text: Simple settings | Preset Center Text · Font Gotham Black 112 · Use font size checked · Thickness 0 · Padding 0 | Values captured by the saved preset |
| Filter 4 | Gain / Volume | Audio filter |
| Level | 0.0 dB | Gain / Volume, on its default |
| Preset dialog | Save Preset · Name: | Opened by the + beside Preset |
| Preset name typed | Text Preset | Not confirmed on screen |
| Track names | V1 · V2 · renamed to GOPRO and INSTA360 | Timeline track heads |
| Track menu | Track Operations → Add Audio Track (Ctrl+U) · Add Video Track (Ctrl+I) · Insert Track (Ctrl+Alt+I) · Remove Track (Ctrl+Alt+U) | Timeline context menu |
| Project-wide target | Output | Row above every track head in the Timeline panel |
| Output warning | Do you really want to add filters to Output? — Timeline > Output is currently selected. Adding filters to Output affects ALL clips in the timeline including new ones that will be added. — Do not show this anymore | Raised on adding a filter to Output |
| Output filter indicator | Funnel icon on the Output head | Timeline |
| Template dialog | Save XML · Save as type: MLT XML (*.mlt) | Desktop > Copy-Paste |
| Template file | Camera-Template.mlt · 8 KB | Footage deleted before saving |
| Other files in that folder | Copy-Paste-Tutorial 28 KB · source 11 KB | Both MLT File |
| Cross-project filter clipboard | Not available on 21.05.18 | Stated as arriving in 21.08 |
Frame timings on this page follow the extraction grid: frame N is the moment at (N − 1) × 10 seconds, so frame 091 is 15:00. Published chapter cards carry the chapter’s own timestamp; derived cards carry the timestamp of the frame they were read from.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is; only the product names the transcriber mangled have been corrected. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second. No number on this page was taken from this transcript.
In this tutorial, I want to cover the most common ways for you to reuse filters on Shotcut.
To many advanced users, this may not be new, but it’s always good to get a refresher.
And for the beginners out there, hopefully this helps you be more efficient in your
Shotcut video editing. So stay tuned!
In this tutorial, we are using Shotcut version 21.05.18.
Before I get started, I just wanted to thank everyone who has been with me on this journey
so far in helping educate everyone on Shotcut tips and best practices.
In my own little way, I want to thank you, so stay tuned until the end of this tutorial to
see what that is. So, on to the tips.
So you find yourself doing repetitive tasks of using the same filter settings over and
over again, so you want to find ways of speeding up that process.
So I’ll give you a scenario. So I have here two video clips that I’m going to drag into
the timeline. So this is the first one, and this is the second one.
Now in the first clip, while it’s selected, I’m going to go into filters and I’m going
to use a very obvious filter, like color grading, so that you guys will know the effect of what
the filter does to that particular clip. I just want to make it a lot more obvious.
So in this instance, what I’m going to do is I’m going to bring the highlights all
the way up, so that you see the effect on that particular clip.
And so if I toggle it off, this was the original, and this is the effect of the
filter that I just applied. So regardless of what filter you apply, the basic way of
copying a filter is usually going to this icon right here, called copy the filters.
So I’m going to copy that, and then I’m going to go into the second clip here, and I’m
just going to click this thing here called paste filters. And what it does is it instantaneously
applies all the filters that I copied from here to here.
Now what if you have about 20 clips on the same timeline? So basically you go to every
single one of them, and then you click this icon here, you basically paste, paste, paste,
paste, paste, paste until you get through every single one of those clips. Now that’s all well
and good, but the problem is you need to make sure that you’ve basically finalized the
filter settings before you pasted it on all those other clips. Otherwise you would need
to go back and reapply or re-copy and re-paste any changes that you’ve just created to
those clips. So I want to show you other ways of utilizing copy pasting or reusing filters
that may be less manual than what I just showed you.
So the first way I showed you is just copying and pasting filters to a clip. The next way
I’m going to show you is copying, pasting into a track. Hopefully by this point you’ve
watched enough of my tutorials to know that you shouldn’t just edit linearly, meaning that
you should place your clips on multiple tracks for greater control of your transitions. So
right now what you’re seeing is a timeline with just one track. And for all intents
and purposes you can actually create an entire timeline with just one track and you can
just dump all your video clips and images all on the same track. But for greater control
what I would usually do is I would lay the clips on different tracks. So to get to a new
track all you have to do is right click the existing track, track operations and add
a video track. If that’s what you want to add is a video track and you can go through
the same process again right click track operations if you want to add an audio track. So in this
instance we have two video tracks right and so right now I only have the filter applied
to this particular clip as you can see here. And what I’m going to do is I’m also going
to add another filter and again another obvious filter so that we know what the effects are
after it’s been applied. So in this one here I’m going to add a Gaussian blur and I’m going
to just blur it all the way so that it’s super blurred like that. Okay so in this
track we have both color grading and Gaussian blur applied and the second one we don’t
right. And so typically if I wanted to apply it to this particular video all I have to do
is go to the original one and copy which basically copies every filter that’s on this little screen
over here. So right now there’s only two filters so it copies both of them and I can easily go
into this particular clip and then paste it and again it’s applied to that one but in this technique
we’re not going to do that. So let’s pretend again that you have about a dozen clips on this
particular track there and let’s you also have a dozen clips on this on the second track here
so let’s paste it here. So let’s say that’s there let’s copy this one let’s go on this track here
and let’s say that’s
let’s select the track that I want to paste to right there okay so
so now you have these sets of filters here as you can see there and we want to apply it to
this clip here that clip there again no filters at this point and this clip let’s remove that one
because that was a copied one um to that clip there okay so what I can do is instead of applying
the filter through the particular clip what I can do is I can copy it and then let’s remove it from
this clip here so that it now doesn’t have a filter and what I can do is I can go into the track so
I can select this area right here and I can apply a filter here meaning that if I apply
if I apply the filter to this track it applies the filter to all the videos and photos on the
entire track so if I while I have that selected again I can go over here in the filters box and
just click paste and what I did is I essentially applied the filter to every single video
on this track so you can see here once again it’s the highlights are blown and then it’s super blurred
but if I go into the particular clip right here and if I go into the filters you can see there
are no filters loaded because the filter is actually loaded on the track right and so now
by loading the filters here I can instantaneously apply that filter to every video on this track
the same as this track right here so right now on this track we have no filters and if we look at
the video on these tracks again they’re just at their default state but if I select the track
right here and again I click paste
it now applied all the filters to this entire track which makes it a lot easier and again
it’s easier it’s easier to scale so the benefit of applying a filter to the track is that if
ever later on after I applied the filter I want to make an edit to the filter itself
I just need to go to the track setting and say I’m going to drop the Gaussian blur
it applies the changes to not only this video it also applied it to this video
so again it’s kind of a master controller for me to be able to control all the filters
of this one track now what’s the typical use case for me
a lot of times when I’m recording something for example my travel videos or my fishing videos
I usually bring two sets of cameras right I usually bring a GoPro
and another camera called an insta360 x2 so the problem with using two different cameras
in two different points of view is that the cameras though they’re both good they have
different color settings and so I need to find a way to universally apply filters
to one camera or the other so that I can match the footage so that they look like
they came from the same camera so what I usually do is I put all the clips from my GoPro
on this track and then all the clips from my insta360
on this track and so when I need to go back and make color grading or I need if you know
white balance exposure adjustments I could just make the adjustment on the track itself
and it essentially makes the changes to all the footage that I’ve dumped here coming from
the GoPro camera or the insta360 and essentially just saved me a slew of time having to go back to
each individual video and manually change it one by one so that’s the best use case for me
and I’m sure you can find other use cases for yourself in terms of why you would create a
universal filter setting or filter change to a group of videos in one track and so again
use your real estate you can add as many tracks as you want meaning each track could represent
a different camera if you happen to bring four cameras with you again and you can apply
the filter changes to that particular track instead of having to manually go back to each
one of the videos so that’s the second way of being able to reuse your filters also somewhat
copying and pasting but instead copying and pasting into a track instead of the individual
video
so you’ve seen how to copy paste from the clip and then pasting it into another clip you’ve
also seen how to copy paste into a track if you want to control each individual track
the third copy paste trick is being able to apply filters universally across the entire timeline
not just for a track not just for a particular clip but for the entire timeline and that’s
copy pasting into the output which sometimes people overlook and accidentally actually paste
something on the output and errors happen and then they don’t understand why filters are acting a
certain way they don’t understand that they accidentally put it on the output and I’ll show
you that so first and foremost let’s go back into this clip here as you can see there are two
filters and what I’m going to do is I’m going to click this icon again I’m going to copy it
so that it’s on the clipboard and then I’m going to x out these two and so now when you look at
each one of the videos again there are no filters as you can see up here let’s check this last one
here and so this is the track and this is another track and to apply it to this whole timeline I
can go into this thing here which I I didn’t even know you can select um not until maybe
six months ago so you can actually select that you can see there now that it’s selected and you can
paste and you can see here there’s a prompt that says do you really want to add filters to the
output uh this prompt actually didn’t use to exist um it only they only added it because
too many people were accidentally pasting something here and they didn’t realize that some there’s a
filter there and it was applying it to the entire timeline and so they’re wondering you know why
our filters applied when I look at the individual videos there are no filters and when I look
at the track there are no filters so for for those of you who’ve sometimes experienced
errors on your timeline and uh there’s some kind of phantom filter out there that you don’t know
where it’s applied you might have accidentally applied it to the output and you know that there’s
a filter on the output if you see this icon right here which is the filter icon so now
I have pasted it into the output and so when I played a video you can see that the filter
has been applied to this particular video and then if we look at this one here also applied to that
video when we look at this one here also applied and then last but not least that one there and so
generally this technique is used when you want to apply a universal filter across all your clips
um like say you want to bump up the volume of your entire output you would put that here
or you want to do a you know a general
LUT right you want to you know after you’ve done all your video editing you want to apply the LUT
once everything’s been balanced across the entire timeline you can apply it to this thing
here which essentially applies the LUT to every single video of your entire timeline and
this is really useful and and time saving because you can have 30 40 100 video clips in here
you can easily do it on the track of course but here you apply it once and it applies to the
entire timeline so that’s the third copy paste trick which is once again copy pasting into
the output now this next one is not a tip but a bit of good news for the past versions of shot
cut we were unable to copy filters from one timeline to another meaning that I can’t copy these
filters and open up another MLT file and paste it so currently the clipboard only applies to
the current open file you have but starting in version 21.08 which is the version after this
tutorial you will now have the ability to copy paste across different MLT files now that is huge
currently the version is at the beta testing stage but look out for it once it’s released
so enough of the copy pasting the next tip is making sure you use the filter presets that are
available for every filter if there are settings that you constantly reuse it’s best to save them
as preset so that you have them available to you at all times the first example I’m going
to use is the text simple filter and so let’s once again go to the filter box here I’m going to
choose the plus icon and I’m going to type text in a previous video I created I actually saved
a preset so that I can standardize my title text in this example since we’ve already created
the text simple all I have to do is go to the preset section and find a saved version of a previous
formatting that I’ve already created called center text and all of a sudden it centers everything
it brings up the font that I previously used and all I have to do is go into the text box
and change the title text into whatever I want it to be right so
like that right and so I can reuse this formatting over and over again because I’ve
already saved it as a preset and it’s actually really easy to save a preset all you have to
do is go to the plus icon after you’ve formatted your text the way you want it to do
um you can even add all the key frames and and all these other settings that you want to
add in there once you’ve finished and you’ve you’ve gotten it to the point that you think is perfect
all you have to do is click the plus icon name it let’s say test preset and then click okay
I’m not going to click okay because I don’t want to save it on my preset but all you have
to do is click okay and you’ve essentially saved the preset the other example I’m going to use is
the gain volume filter in many of my tutorials I wanted to standardize the volume level of my
videos and so what I did was I saved a preset called voice default and again if you want to
create your own preset for gain volume all you have to do is set it to the level
that you want to reuse over and over again let’s say it’s at 5.7 right you click the plus icon
save it to voice level and then click okay and that should essentially save the preset for you
so that next time you open Shotcut and you’re doing your editing if you want to use that preset
you can use it over and over and so that’s a really simple tip in terms of being able to reuse and
and replicate previous work you’ve already done because that’s what you want to do is you want
to scale like if you spent a lot of time modifying or editing your timeline in a previous video
and you want to be able to leverage that time and use it for future videos
I think using presets are the best ways to do it now this last tip is also a great way of
leveraging previous work and so in this one I’m going to base this off an example that I’ve
already shown you which is tip number two and tip number three which I’ve already mentioned
a lot of times I put my GoPro footage on one track and I put my Insta360 footage on another track
like that right and so let’s say in my GoPro footage I’ve already loaded
tons of presets like color grading right so I’ve already set a color grade for for this particular
track and then I’ve also set let’s say blur right again we’re just going to put some random
filters on there and I might as well since I’m here I might as well copy it and paste it on this other
track and let’s just pretend like this is a totally different set of filters that I apply on my Insta
360 footage right so that’s all well and good so I’ve managed to make my work a little bit more
efficient by leveraging filters on tracks but what I can do is I can actually delete all the footage
on these tracks and then I can save this MLT file let’s say this is called camera template right
so I’m saving that and so what you can do is you can open this template and you can drag
a brand new set of files on this template and these tracks already have the filters loaded
in them that you’ve used in previous videos especially if you’re just going to reload
clips from the same camera that you’ve used previously and so that’s another way of reusing
these filters or groups of filters that’s already been saved so me personally I probably have more
than two dozen different MLT templates that I’ve saved which includes my tutorial videos that
already have the intro video and the outro video already pre-loaded it already has all the sound
settings and all these and all these other things so you know if you do have the opportunity and you
want to leverage your previous work and you want to save time save all your old MLT files that
have all the clips in it and then just delete all the clips in there and so that you can
preserve all the filters that you’ve already applied you can reuse
the MLT file over and over again and so that’s the last tip so hopefully all of these tips have
been very helpful but I do have one more thing for you but at time this tutorial is finished
I would have gotten almost 4,000 subscribers on this channel this is amazing and I wouldn’t
have gotten here without every single one of you because of you I’ve gotten some notoriety in the
Shotcut space but I want to pay it forward I want to help you gain exposure for your channels
I want to highlight videos of individuals who have used my tips and let the rest of my subscribers
see your work and I’m going to do this for every Shotcut tutorial moving forward
so how can your video and channel be highlighted all you have to do is share a link to your video on
the comment and tell me which tip or trick you used please time stamp it so I can find it right away
this time I’ll start with a fellow Shotcut user with the channel called got to get outdoors
I believe his channel is focused on hiking and the outdoors he used a wipe mask transition technique
as an intro and he came out great here’s his video that was awesome the next one I want to
do is make sure you subscribe to his channel and tell him I sent you
there are tons of videos I could have chosen but this time I’m going to highlight his
end credit sequence that looks straight out of a major motion picture
it’s kind of long so I’ll only play the first part but once again remember this was done on
you
if you want to see the rest go check out his channel 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
you
