OpenShot released version 3.2.0 a few days ago with great performance improvements.

OpenShot is a free open-source Qt-based video editor works on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Due to its beginner friendly menu options, built-in title templates, and animated titles (Blender powered), I prefer it over Kdenlive and Shotcut.

However, the video editor was sluggish, froze frequently, and slow for video preview playback every time after made changes. It made me crazy quite often, so I turned to learn using Kdenlive for basic editing.

In OpenShot 3.2.0, the video editor has significant performance enhancements. It’s now running smoothly out-of-the-box in my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop!

Besides performance improvements, the release also introduced 2 new themes:

• Retro, as the screenshot above shows it’s great for users prefer working in light mode.
• Cosmic Dusk theme with blue colors, new icons, and more compressed design.

The release also improved timeline snapping and behaviors, improved Undo / Redo functionality for better transaction support, and added Remove Gap feature to quickly remove empty space between video clips.

You can either right-click on a gap in time-line and use the context menu option to remove that gap, or right-click on header of the track to remove all gaps. So, all clips to the right will shift over by the amount of the gap.

Other changes in OpenShot 3.2.0 include:

• Update with Blender 4.1 support.
• Improve HiDPI display support.
• Experimental support for Java bindings
• Improve FFmpeg 7.0 compatibility
• Add auto-resize capability to crop effect.
• See release note for more details.

How to Install OpenShot 3.2.0 in Ubuntu & other Linux

The software website provides universal Linux package through AppImage. It’s a non-install package that can run directly to launch the video editor, after added executable permission from file Properties dialog.

For Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04, there’s an official PPA contains the native .deb package for Intel/AMD platform. Just open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one to add PPA & install the package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/ppa

sudo apt update

sudo apt install openshot-qt

For choices, there are also community maintained Snap package available in Ubuntu Software (App Center), and Flatpak package in flathub repository, though both run in sandbox environment.