Shotcut 26.1 is now available as the latest feature update to this open source and cross-platform video editing solution. With Shotcut 26.1, GPU hardware-accelerated video decoding is finally the default on all platforms except NVIDIA GPUs on Linux.

In beta earlier this month Shotcut rolls out new hardware decoder options And now it’s officially shipping. Shotcut uses the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) on Linux, Microsoft’s Media Foundation on Windows, and Video Toolbox on Apple macOS. This hardware decoding for preview scaling is enabled by default except for NVIDIA GPUs on Linux. Codec support also varies by hardware.

Performance gains are most noticeable when you’re utilizing hardware decoding, using linear 10-bit CPU processing, or editing on a low-power CPU.

Shotcut 26.1 also has hardware decoder support for video export, but it is disabled by default in the 26.1 release as it can increase export times.

Shotcut 26.1 binaries and source code are available at: GitHub. For more information about new releases, shotcut.org.