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⇱ Shotcut Video Editor Now Using Hardware Decoding By Default Except For NVIDIA On Linux - Phoronix


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Shotcut Video Editor Now Using Hardware Decoding By Default Except For NVIDIA On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Multimedia on 31 January 2026 at 04:11 PM EST. 7 Comments
Shotcut 26.1 is now available as the latest feature update to this open-source and cross-platform video editing solution. Shotcut 26.1 is finally defaulting to GPU hardware accelerated video decoding by default for all platforms sans NVIDIA GPUs on Linux.

With the beta earlier this month Shotcut rolled out new hardware decoder options and now it's officially shipping. Shotcut is using 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 being enabled by default with the noted exception of NVIDIA GPUs on Linux. The codec support also varies depending upon your hardware.

👁 Shotcut 26.1 on Linux


While making use of hardware decoding, the performance speed-up is mostly pronounced if using linear 10-bit CPU processing or are editing on a low-powered CPU.

👁 Shotcut 26.1 video editing on Ubuntu Linux


Shotcut 26.1 also has hardware decoder support for video exporting but that is disabled by default in the 26.1 release since it can sometimes increase export times.

Shotcut 26.1 binaries and source code are available from GitHub. More details on the new release via Shotcut.org.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.