Thursday, April 3, 2014

OpenShot Video Editor :: Getting Started

Haven't tried the OpenShot Video Editor yet but were thinking of giving it a go? Don't do what I did.. I jumped right in and... found myself struggling for a few days before I, gack, read the destructions. You can find them by clicking "Help" in the top menu bar and then clicking "Contents". Keyboard shortcut offered is the universal "F1" key. That worked here but YMMV (your mileage may vary) depending on the entire of your computer situation.

Reason I ended up in Help was my second video starting glitching. It was hiccuping inconsistently as it ran through the clips. First clip faded as desired then hiccuped out one last clearly viewable frame after the fact. Next clip nada. Third clip hiccuped a single frame both at the beginning AND the end. *hm*

Turned out by reading the instructions labeled "Learn OpenShot in 5 Minutes!", I had music clips in the second track and video in the first. Whether or not that was the only thing wrong (or if rearranging things also quietly deleted the real glitch causer), I don't know. BUT.. switching them around so that they were set up reversed as "Learn OpenShot in 5 Minutes!" depicts = no hiccups. Yayhoo, we have video (to be uploaded soon)!

Happy Safe Surfing out there!

PS Tried to get a printscreen to go with purely for posterity but, um, hm. What I needed didn't happen here on Ubuntu. I NEEDED... to be able to grab the that top bar showing the word "Help". It comes and goes in Ubuntu, you have to put your cursor (pointer) up there first. Since I was trying to.... oh, shoot, wait. One sec...........

Speaking of glitches, forgot about the "PrtSc" key. Been years since I've had a computer where it actually worked. Still didn't quite capture what I wanted. Was able to display and printscreen the word "Help" but printscreen refused to operate with the Help dropdown menu dropped and displaying the word "Contents".

Sooo.. got half what I went after, I'm over it... Tired but still wanting to play a little in OpenShot before the night's over.. Priorities! :)

PPS Might have misunderstood but over at the Ubuntu-Users listserv, I got the impression that software title bars might not be playing catch-me-if-you-can anymore in one of the latest releases... YAYHOO TIMES TWO (IF TRUE)!