Preferences

The Preferences window contains many important settings and configuration options for OpenShot. They can be found in the top menu under Edit→Preferences. Many settings will require OpenShot to be restarted after your changes are applied.

NOTE: Some features such as Animated Titles and external SVG editing require setting the paths for Blender and Inkscape under the General tab. And if you notice audio playback issues, such as audio drift, you may need to adjust the audio settings under the Preview tab.

General

_images/preferences-1-general.jpg

The General tab of the Preferences window allows you to modify the settings that apply to OpenShot as a whole.

Setting

Default

Description

Language

Default

Choose your preferred language for OpenShot menus and windows

Default Theme

Humanity:Dark

Choose your theme for OpenShot, either Light, Dark or None

Image Length (seconds)

10.00

How long the image displays on the screen when added to the timeline

Volume

75.00

The percentage of the volume of the clip when added to the timeline

Blender Command (path)

<blank>

The path to the binary for Blender (version 2.8+)

Advanced Title Editor (path)

<blank>

The path to the binary for Inkscape

Show Export Dialog when Finished

<checked>

Displays the Export Video windows after the export is finished

Preview

_images/preferences-2-preview.jpg

The Preview tab of the Preferences window allows you to set a Default Video Profile for your project, if you have a preference for a specific editing profile. More about Profiles. Also, you can adjust the real-time preview audio settings, for example, which audio device and sample rate to use.

Setting

Default

Description

Default Video Profile

HD 720P 30 fps

Select the profile for Preview and Export defaults

Playback Audio Device

Default

Default Audio Sample Rate

44100

Default Audio Channels

Stereo (2 Channel)

Autosave

_images/preferences-3-autosave.jpg

Autosave is a saving function in OpenShot which automatically saves the current changes to your project after a specific number of minutes, helping to reduce the risk or impact of data loss in case of a crash, freeze or user error.

Recovery

Before each save, a copy of the current project is created in a recovery folder, to further reduce the risk of data loss. The recovery folder is located at ~/.openshot_qt/recovery/ or C:\Users\USERNAME\.openshot_qt\recovery. If you need to recover a corrupt or broken *.osp project file, please find the most recent copy in the recovery folder, and copy/paste the file in your original project folder location (i.e. the folder that contains your broken project), and then open this recovered project file in OpenShot. Many versions of each project are stored in the recovery folder, and if you still have issues with the recovered *.osp file, you can repeat this process with older versions contained in the recovery folder.

Cache

_images/preferences-4-cache.jpg

Cache settings can be adjusted to make real-time playback faster or less CPU intensive. The cache is used to store image and audio data for each frame of video requested. The more frames that are cached, the smoother the real-time playback will be. However, the more that needs to be cached requires more CPU to generate the cache. There is a balance, and the default settings provide a generally sane set of cache values, which should allow most computers to playback video and audio smoothly. See Playback.

Setting

Description

Cache Mode

Choose between Memory or Disk caching (memory caching is preferred). Disk caching writes image data to the hard disk for later retrieving, and works best with an SSD.

Cache Limit (MB)

How many MB are set aside for cache related data. Larger numbers are not always better, since it takes more CPU to generate more frames to fill the cache.

Image Format (Disk Only)

Image format to store disk cache image data

Scale Factor (Disk Only)

Percentage (0.1 to 1.0) to reduce the size of disk based image files stored in the disk cache. Smaller numbers make writing and reading cached image files faster.

Image Quality (Disk Only)

Quality of the image files used in disk cache. The higher compression can cause more slowness, but results in smaller file sizes.

Cache Pre-roll: Min Frames:

Minimum # of frames that must be cached before playback begins. The larger the #, the larger the wait before playback begins.

Cache Pre-roll: Max Frames:

Maximum # of frames that can be cached during playback (in front of the playhead). The larger the #, the more CPU is required to cache ahead - vs display the already cached frames.

Cache Ahead (Percent):

Between 0.0 and 1.0. This represents how much % we cache ahead of the playhead. For example, 0.5 would cache 50% behind and 50% ahead of the playhead. 0.8 would cache 20% behind and 80% ahead of the playhead.

Cache Max Frames:

This is an override on the total allowed frames that can be cached by our caching thread. It is defaulted to 600 frames, but even if you give a huge amount of RAM to OpenShot’s cache size, this will override the max # of frames cached. The reason is… sometimes when the preview window is very small, and the cache size is set very high, OpenShot might calculate that we can cache 30,000 frames, or something silly which will take a huge amount of CPU, lagging the system. This setting is designed to clamp the upper limit of the cache to something reasonable… even on systems that give OpenShot huge amounts of RAM to work with.

Debug

_images/preferences-5-debug.jpg

Here you can modify how much data should be logged. Normally, Debug Mode (verbose) is off. The default port is 5556. If you want to help improve OpenShot you can enable Send Anonymous Metrics and Errors.

Performance

_images/preferences-6-performance.jpg

Please keep in mind that GPU hardware acceleration is experimental at the moment. OpenShot supports both decoding and encoding acceleration. For more information take a look at our Github HW-ACCEL Doc. NOTE: On systems with older graphics cards, hardware acceleration may not always be faster than CPU encoding.

Keyboard

_images/preferences-7-keyboard.jpg

This is where hotkeys can be seen and re-assigned, as described under Keyboard Shortcuts.

Location

_images/preferences-8-location.jpg

Default file path locations for saving/opening projects, importing files, and exporting videos can be configured here. This can save you time by defaulting the open/save file dialogs to the most appropriate starting folder (options described below).

Setting

Description

File Import

Default folder to choose when importing a file

Save or Open Project

Default folder to choose when saving or opening a project file

Video Export

Default folder to choose when exporting a video

Values

Description

Recent Folder

The last folder used for this same operation. Project folders, Import folders, and Export folders are tracked separately.

Project Folder

The current project folder (or the user’s home folder, if the project is not yet saved)

Reset (Default Values)

To reset all preferences to their default values, please delete the openshot.settings file and re-launch OpenShot. The settings file can be located at this path: ~/.openshot_qt/openshot.settings or C:\Users\USERNAME\.openshot_qt\openshot.settings. When OpenShot is re-launched, it will create the missing openshot.settings file with default values.

Optionally, you can delete the entire .openshot_qt/ folder and re-launch OpenShot. However, please make a backup of any customized folders: emojis, presets, profiles, recovery, title_templates, transitions, or yolo. For example, your /recovery/ sub-folder contains backup copies of all your existing projects (*.osp files).

Deleting the .openshot_qt/ folder is the quickest method to restore OpenShot preferences and settings to their Default values (i.e. also called a clean install). When OpenShot is re-launched, it will create any missing folders (i.e. .openshot_qt/) and settings files. See our step-by-step guide for more information about clean installs of OpenShot.