No software is perfect, but these bugs did sometimes get in the way. We also noticed that sometimes, the transition did work: but, for some reason, showed us a file on a different track that should have been hidden.

This was that, when we dropped transitions between clips, it often only played on one of them - this sometimes happened for effects too, but less frequently. OpenShot reviews from over the years have pointed out bugs in the software, and from our testing time with the program we found one which occurred frequently.

(Image credit: OpenShot) OpenShot: a history of bugs

Some of the transitions available on OpenShot. We also need to point out that, if you right-click on an item in the timeline and select 'Properties', you can find quite a few more complicated things to manipulate like the location and origin points, shear or scale, and the speed a video plays - these functions aren't easy to spot until you find this properties list, and we can imagine some people aren't aware this list exists at all. Well, they’re easy to drop, but that doesn’t always mean they work - more on that in the next section. These are all easy to drop on top of your videos - or between them, in the case of the transitions. The transitions include fades and wipes, the effects include pixelation for video and distortion for audio, and there are also emoji that you can drop on top of your video. There are a few different effects and transitions that OpenShot offers, which will suit easy presentations or home videos. This gives you an easier overview of all the assets your video has in it, and lets you manipulate the audio in more ways, like by bringing it out of sync with the visuals. If you right-click on a video file, you can select ‘separate audio’ which turns the audio into its own separate track.

Or so it seems, and so we thought when we were testing the software, but it’s not actually the case. While some video editors split a video and its audio into separate tracks, so you can play with them separately, that’s not the case with OpenShot. If you drag a video file into a track, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you don’t get to see its audio.

Filmforth video editor review