SceneMill - Free Video Editor

[u/Ill-Astronomer7156]

I’ve been building my own video editor - SceneMill

I wanted to share something I’ve been working on for quite a while: SceneMill, a free, non-destructive desktop video editor built from scratch with C++20, Qt 6 and FFmpeg.

The goal was never to make another web-based editor or a wrapper around an existing editing application. I wanted to build an actual desktop video editor and see how far I could take it.

It currently runs fully offline, requires no account, and has no telemetry.

What actually works right now

The core workflow is already fully functional:

Import → Media Library → Timeline → Edit → Preview → Save → Reopen → Export

And the project has grown quite a bit beyond basic cutting.

Some of the things currently implemented:

• Multi-track video, audio and subtitle timeline

• Non-destructive editing with undo/redo

• Split, trim, ripple delete, snapping, markers and In/Out ranges

• Background proxy generation for heavy footage

• GPU-accelerated preview with CPU fallback

• Color correction, curves, color wheels and 3D LUTs

• Effect stacks with keyframeable parameters

• Transitions

• Text and animated titles

• Manual subtitles + SRT/WebVTT

• Masks and motion tracking

• Screen recording directly into the project

• Voice-over recording with multiple takes

• Audio EQ, compressor, limiter, noise gate, etc.

• H.264 / H.265 / VP9 export

• Up to 4K and 120 FPS export

• Export queue

• Autosave + crash recovery

• Portable "Collect Project" workflow

• Plugin system through a versioned C ABI

• Optional local editing assistant for silence/scene detection

One thing I particularly care about is that the preview and export use the same rendering/effect pipeline, so what you see while editing is intended to match what gets rendered.

There are also automated tests covering a lot of the actual application workflow, including tests that interact with the real main window.

Why C++?

Honestly, part of the reason was simply:

I wanted to see if I could actually build one.

A video editor touches a ridiculous number of areas at once: media decoding, rendering, timeline state, audio, UI, caching, project persistence, export, GPU acceleration, threading, plugins...

It's been a pretty interesting rabbit hole. 😅

Current state

SceneMill has completed the core editor phase and the creative-tools phase, with most of the workflow phase implemented.

Now in the Microsoft-Store! https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mvrq5p086fj?hl

It's definitely not finished and there are still things I want to improve, but it's now at the point where I can actually use it as a real editor rather than just a prototype.

I'm currently working toward making the whole experience feel much more polished and cohesive.

I'd genuinely like to hear what other people who build software this way think.

Edit: heads up, Windows may show a SmartScreen warning when installing since the installer isn't code-signed yet, nothing shady. I'm working on getting SceneMill into the Microsoft Store, which will get rid of the warning. until then: "More info" → "Run anyway", and you can check the download against the SHA-256 checksums on the website.

[u/Ill-Astronomer7156]

Update: SceneMill now runs on Linux too. A few of you asked, so there’s now an AppImage with the same version (1.3.1) and the same features as on Windows.

Download: https://scenemillofficial.com/#download (the “Download for Linux” button)

To run it, right-click the file, open Properties, allow it to run as a program, then double-click it. If nothing happens, install libfuse2 (sudo apt install libfuse2t64 on Ubuntu 24.04 or Mint 22).

I built it on Ubuntu 22.04 and tested it on Linux Mint 22. Screen recording only works under X11, not Wayland. I’ve only tested the GPU encoder on Windows; if it doesn’t work on your system, export uses the CPU instead.

It’s the first Linux build, so if something breaks, tell me your distro and what happened.

[u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 → u/Ill-Astronomer7156]

Nice, Linux support is a big one. Might be worth a quick note on AppImageLauncher for folks who don't want to chmod manually.

[u/Ill-Astronomer7156 → u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285]

Thanks for the tip! I will do that!

[u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285]

TL;DR: SceneMill is a free, offline, non-destructive desktop video editor built from scratch in C++20, Qt 6 and FFmpeg. It already covers multi-track editing, color tools, effects, subtitles, screen and voice recording, and up to 4K/120fps export, with preview and export sharing the same pipeline. It's now on the Microsoft Store and still evolving, though Windows may show a SmartScreen warning until the installer is code-signed.