FAQ
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WHAT IS SHOTCUT?

	Shotcut is a video editing environment specifically designed for TV 
	broadcasters. 


WHAT PLATFORMS DOES IT RUN ON?

	It's been developed on the Linux platform, but it should be relatively 
	simple to port to other POSIX environments, such as the BSD platforms.


WHAT ARE ITS DEPENDENCIES?

	The multimedia components are provided via the MLT framework and the GUI
	toolkit used is FLTK.


WHAT'S THE LICENSE USED?

	It's developed under the GPL license and the copyright holder is Ushodaya 
	Enterprises Limited.


WHAT COMPONENTS DOES IT PROVIDE?

	Shotcut consists of a number of components. 

	* The Non Linear Editor (NLE) is the main component for project creation
	* The Preview is a standalone player for optionally examining clips, images 
	  and audio prior to including them in the NLE
	* The Editor is a text editor which is specifically tailored for the shotcut
	  XML project format
	* The Server provides a background proxy process which connects multiple
	  instances of the other components together
	* The Injector is a command line tool which can be used to introduce media 
	  into the shotcut environment
	* The Window Manager (WM) provides a complete tailored environment for 
	  staging the shotcut components.

	More details can be found in the main README of the project.


HOW DOES IT DIFFER TO A TRADITIONAL VIDEO EDITOR?

	Video editors generally feature a lot of configurability when it comes
	to the application of filters, transitions and track usage - shotcut is 
	designed to restrict the options available to the user in order to ensure
	consistency between projects and a quick turn around time.


WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES? WHY NOT USE AN OFF THE SHELF PACKAGE?

	The complex UI designs associated to video editors are counter productive 
	to a broadcasting organisation which really needs a quick turn around and
	a consistent look and feel to their broadcast material. By restricting the
	options available and automating many of the tasks, user training and the
	risk of errors being broadcast are reduced.


WHAT'S A TEMPLATE?

	A Template is designed to provide a channel or program 'branding' - 
	administrators can define new templates to activate specific filters and
	track definitions.


HOW DO I CONFIGURE NEW TEMPLATES?

	There are no tools available to automate the template design and there is some 
	tight coupling between the GUI components and the templates which currently 
	restrict the amount of configurability available.
	
	See docs/templates.txt for more information.


HOW DO YOU OPEN VIDEO CLIPS/AUDIO/IMAGES IN THE NLE?

	Shotcut doesn't provide a traditional drop down menu, hence the normal 
	File Open operations aren't available and nor is drag n drop supported. 
	Instead, clips are 'injected' into it from other applications.
	
	While this might seem strange, the general idea is that it allows 
	collaborative editing with external applications being capable of doing
	complex editing operations which are then passed from component to
	component. If you have a network share for the media itself, these
	components can run on different machines. They can also be scripted using
	shell, perl, ruby, tcl or python.

	As a result of this design, there are many ways to introduce content 
	into the NLE - the simplest is from the command line:

	$ shotcut-inject --port=5260 <files>

	But other approaches are available when used in conjuction with other
	shotcut components and mlt based tools. Check the README for specific
	details on how to configure the shotcut components.


IS IT USEFUL FOR HOME USE?

	That depends on your requirements of a video editing environment. It wasn't 
	designed with general use in mind, but for specific tasks, it may be useful.


COULD IT BE USED FOR WEB BROADCASTING?

	Yes. The MLT framework is very extendible and is already quite feature rich.


WHAT FORMATS DOES IT SUPPORT?

	It supports all formats that are supported by the MLT framework.


WILL IT EVER BECOME A FULLY FEATURED TRADITIONAL NLE?

	No. That would go against the objective of the project. There are plans to 
	provide a fully featured video editor based on MLT though, but at the point
	of writing, these details have not been finalised.

