OpenShot 4.0 adds screen recording, pro color grading, and local AI masking

The open-source video editor OpenShot has shipped its 4.0 release, one of its largest feature jumps to date. A new Recording View captures screen, webcam, microphone, and system audio directly into a project, keeping each source as a separate, independently editable clip — enough to make it a usable workspace for voice-overs, tutorials, commentary, and reaction videos without a separate capture tool. Capture uses platform-native paths across Windows, macOS, Linux X11, and Linux Wayland via PipeWire.

The other headline addition is a dedicated Color View built around a single keyframable Color Grade effect. It combines everyday correction controls (exposure, contrast, temperature, highlights, shadows, saturation) with colorist-grade tools: shadow/midtone/highlight color wheels, per-channel Bézier curves, .cube LUT support with blend intensity, and live scopes (waveform, histogram, RGB parade, vectorscope with a skin-tone reference). Notably, the release leans on locally run, free-to-download machine learning models for subject masking and tracking, explicitly avoiding any cloud service or subscription — a privacy-friendly stance that keeps footage on the user’s machine.

Rounding out the update are ten new effects, including an audio-visualization engine benchmarked well above typical frame rates, a cleaner native timeline, and broad performance gains (Blur is called out as dramatically faster). Under the hood, expanded Qt 6 support improves compatibility with newer Linux distributions and lays groundwork for future platforms such as Android — signaling that the project’s ambitions extend beyond the desktop.