OpenShot crowd funds Windows and Mac versions

The new timeline UI for OpenShot
Source: OpenShot Kickstarter campaign

After successfully reaching its Kickstarter campaign target before the end of March, the developers of the open source video editor OpenShot have now financed Windows and Mac OS X versions of their software in addition to the already available Linux version. The campaign will continue to run until 17 April. Over 800 supporters have already funded the project, contributing over $23,000. Any additional funds received will be used to implement additional features and make improvements to performance and memory usage.

OpenShot can be used to organise and edit videos, add different transitions and effects and produce titles. The open source video editing program supports most open audio and video formats. The crowd-funding campaign will now provide the funds needed to complete the cross-platform video editing engine (work on which has been ongoing for the last two years) and integrate it into OpenShot. This will also improve stability, the developers say. As part of the crowd-funded development work, OpenShot will gain a new timeline feature which will be written using HTML5, JQuery, CSS and WebKit and will work on all platforms. Lead developer Jonathan Thomas is also promising full support for the FFmpeg library.

The development team has also defined additional stretch goals, allowing for the implementation of other features if additional funds are raised. Should the campaign reach $25,000, for example, additional render formats and codecs will be added to OpenShot. A beta version for all platforms is expected to be available in November/December 2013.

(fab)