Wednesday, 12 July 2023

Shotcut Video Editor: How To Create a Simple YouTube Video With a Still Image

Here's just a quick and simple tutorial on how to make a basic video from a still image and some audio. I usually make these simple videos for uploading my own music to YouTube. I used to use web apps or command line stuff for this but i find it a lot easier, better, to use a decent video editor. Shotcut can usually be found in your Linux distro's package manager if it's not installed already. I am using KDE so i usually use Discover to install Shotcut. That usually works best though if there's an issue you could also try the Appimage, or, as a last resort, the Flatpak or Snap packages but they won't integrate as well with your distro. Shotcut is also available for Mac and Windows.

1. Click Timeline, if the Timeline is not showing. 


2. Right click on the Timeline, select Track Operations and then choose select Add Audio Track (or use the keyboard shortcut)


3. Drag an audio file onto that track, so now you should have an audio file in like so:

4. Right click on the Timeline, select Track Operations and then choose select Add Video Track


5. Drag an image from the file manager onto the Timeline, Hover over the edge of the image in the TImeline, drag so it fills the whole line, making sure it lines up with the audio track at both ends. You may also like to experiment with adding effects - click on the image or audio and then click Filters, click the plus symbol and choose some suitable effect, I often use the Fade Out Video and Fade Out Audio filters, 


6. Click Export File, choose a name and press enter to save it. By default it saves as an H.264/AAC MP4 video, which is suitable for Youtube. 


And that's it, just drag the resultant file into Youtube's upload box and it should work just fine. 


Here's a YouTube upload of mine that I made using Shotcut. 

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