Add them together, and you get 'OpenShot'.Īs OpenShot has improved and grown, so has it's popularity and the opportunities for me and other developers that work on OpenShot. Officially though, the name stands for a lot more than a missed basketball attempt: Open stands for open-source, and Shot stands for a single cinematic take. [First public image of the OpenShot logo - Sept 2008 Sounds cheesy, but that's the true story of how I came up with the name 'OpenShot'. My friends started laughing at me, and then it clicked. One day while playing basketball ( PIG to be exact), I missed an open shot. Was I actually going to be able to pull this off? Was I actually going to create a video editor? Maybe. Once it all started to fit together, I got real excited.

the library that does all the video and audio mixing). The last piece missing from the puzzle was a good multimedia framework (i.e. It has allowed me to document my key decisions, meet many interesting people, and most importantly, it gives me a direct feedback loop with the video editing community. Although I had no experience blogging, it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made. One of my friends suggested that I should track my progress with a blog. I quickly decided on the Python programming language, for it's speed, beauty, and it's rich bindings for many libraries. I decided it would be an interesting challenge, and it was worth attempting.

I had no idea how to mix video & audio via code.

I barely knew anything about programming on Linux (all of my experience was with Microsoft C# and the.Sounds easy right? However, as I learned, I had many challenges awaiting me. So, after much consideration, I decided to start my own video editor project in August of 2008.

It turns out there are many, but none that met my simple criteria: For weeks I researched, downloaded, configured, compiled, and installed any Linux video editor I could find. I was very impressed, but like many people, I realized immediately the lack of a video editor.

Openshot video editor ubuntu