Nick Peers reveals how easy it is to take your raw video footage and turn it into a polished movie
Just how many photos and video clips have you accumulated over the years? Whether you’ve got dedicated equipment or just love snapping and filming on your phone, now is the time to do something creative with it. OpenShot is a brilliant video editing tool that’s relatively simple to learn, yet packed with features that allow you to turn last holiday’s rough video footage into a polished movie you’ll be happy to share with others. In this tutorial we’ll introduce you to all the key elements you need.
You can install OpenShot through the Windows Store, but it costs £8.20 there, so head to www.openshot.org/download where you’ll find the latest version for free. Download it (there are 32- and 64bit installers depending on your version of Windows, and portable versions too, and double-click the installer to run it. It can take a little while to initialise, so be patient and when the main screen appears, you’re ready to proceed. Run through the quick-start tutorial that will quickly provide an orientation around the application window – it may be tempting to skip it, but it’s worth spending a few minutes to take it all in.
Collect and add your files
Step one is simply to drag and drop your video, picture and audio files to the Project Files pane – OpenShot is based on the open-source FFmpeg video codec library, which covers most bases. After dragging into the pane, use the Video, Audio and Image tabs to filter the view to show only those types of files, or use the Filter box to filter by keyword. Now is the perfect time to save your project for the first time – when you reload it in future, all files you’ve added to the Project Files pane will be restored.
You’re now ready to start putting your movie together. The Timeline pane at the bottom of the screen is where you drag your elements. Five tracks are set up by default, in descending order, with Track 5 at the top, and Track 1 at the bottom. Think of these as layers. Anything placed on Track 1 is your ‘background’, with all other elements appearing on top of it; OpenShot’s support for track transparency means you can overlay all kinds of effects without hiding the original track. More on that later.
For now, we’re going to start with two simple tracks: one video stream containing your video clips (including any sound) and still images, and a separate audio stream for background music. So, let’s clean things up a little: right-click Track 5 and choose Remove, then repeat for Tracks 4 and 3 so only the first two tracks remain. Next, click the V button next to ‘Track 1’ and choose ‘Rename Track’, calling it ‘Video’. Repeat for ‘Track 2’, calling this ‘Audio
