Shotcut — The Complete Guide: Free Video Editing for Tutorials and Site Documentation
Shotcut is an open-source video editor from Meltytech for Windows, macOS and Linux. It opens almost any video file directly, with no import step, and turns site footage or a screen recording into a tidy video.
Shotcut
Meltytech
A free video editor — cut, caption, add callouts and export tutorial and site-inspection videos.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Broad format support — hundreds of formats through FFmpeg, including clips from different phones and cameras in one project.
- Multi-track timeline — mix clips with different resolutions and frame rates.
- Text and filters — titles, highlights, colour correction and sharpening.
- Recording — from a webcam and from the screen, straight from the program.
- Export up to 4K — with ready-made settings for the web and devices.
Using it in an engineering office
A typical case: you film a site visit on your phone, join the clips in order, add a caption with the detail or floor number, and export one video for the project file or the client. The same goes for a tutorial on calculation software: record the screen, cut out the waiting and add titles between the steps.
Related tools
To record the screen itself — OBS Studio. For longer projects with automatic subtitles — Kdenlive. To shrink the file before sending — HandBrake.
OBS Studio
OBS Project
Screen recording and streaming — software tutorials, model walkthroughs and recorded lectures in high quality.
Get it from the vendorKdenlive
KDE
A multi-track non-linear video editor — for longer training videos and project presentations, with automatic subtitles.
Get it from the vendor
HandBrake
HandBrake team
Compress and convert large video files — screen recordings and site videos down to a shareable size.
Get it from the vendorLosslessCut
Mikael Finstad
Cut and join video without re-encoding — fast and with no quality loss, for drone footage, inspections and recordings.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Shotcut is a complete video editor that is entirely free, including for commercial use, and it covers most of the videos an engineering office produces.