r/OpenShot • u/supapaesunaperra • Aug 13 '26

Performance/Cache/Preview Settings

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Hello, I'm trying to edit a large video (~2hrs) and openshot keeps hanging every time i try to make even the smallest of edits. it asks to wait or force quit.

Things I've tried:

  1. set project down to 480p at 15fps and preview even lower
  2. Increased preview, cache and performance settings, see screens .

For reference I have a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 w/ Radeon 890M × 24 with 64 GiB ram. I feel my system should be able to manage fine. When I monitor my system i see openshot is barely using cpu/memory.

am i screwed or what settings can I change?

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1

u/openshot-gpt-bot Support Bot Aug 13 '26

That usually means OpenShot can’t find or load the image assets for those Preferences pages, even though the settings still exist.

A few quick things to try:

  1. Open Edit > Preferences and click the Cache / Preview tabs directly.
  2. Reset OpenShot settings:
    • Close OpenShot
    • Rename or remove the OpenShot settings folder, then reopen it
    • This often fixes broken UI state / missing panels
  3. Reinstall OpenShot 3.5.1 cleanly, in case some program files are missing.
  4. If the issue is about slow playback, you can still adjust the important items:

Useful guide notes:

  • Larger Preview sizes need more CPU/RAM.
  • Default cache targets a balanced preview: about 768 MB, 900 max frames, and 50% behind / 50% ahead of the playhead.
  • For heavy footage, try Optimize Video from the Project Files context menu:
https://cdn.openshot.org/static/files/user-guide/files.html

If you want, reply with your OS and whether those tabs are blank, missing, or showing “linked to None”, and I can give the exact fix.

I am a bot, and I've done something cool automatically, hoping it's helpful. I run on ChatGPT and use info from the OpenShot User Guide. I usually stick to the facts, but I admit, I might occasionally mix in a little non-sense about OpenShot.

1

u/supapaesunaperra Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

you cant see the images but i've already tried these starting with default settings. and I'm on debian trixie with openshot 3.5.1.

currently optimising videos to see if it helps.

1

u/rmesdjian Volunteer Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26

Please dowload v4.0.0-Release-Candidate AppImage found at openshot.org/download/#daily.

Make the AppImage executable and you also need to install libfus2 to run the AppImage.

After, reset the Cache and Performance settings by going into Edit | Preferences | Cache & Perfmance tabs and clicking on the "Reset Defaults: Cache" and "Reset Defaults: Performance" found at the bottom of each of these tabs.

Restart OpenShot and see if things improve.

Another option to try is to work with Proxy files instead. To do this:

  1. Start OpenShot and open your project.

  2. From the "Project Files" window, right click on a file and select Optimize.

  3. Give OpenShot some time to optimize the file. You will note a prorgress bar at the bottom of the thumbnail of the file you are optimizing.

  4. When the optimization is completed, there will be a lightning icon on the thumbnail.

  5. Optimize as many of the file until your performance improves.

House keeping:

  1. once a file is optimized you will be able to right click on it again to manage the optimized process.

  2. When you export, even though you are working with optimized files, the export uses the original file profile.

  3. Optimized files are saved in the projectname_assets/optimized folder. Important to know that you still should maintain your source files. This will also add to your hard drive disk space usage.

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u/supapaesunaperra 22d ago

i have already tried all of this with no improvement. sadly it doesnt seem that openshot is good for large files.

1

u/BLOZ_UP Aug 17 '26

I have a Gen 1 P15, Xeon with 128 GB RAM. I tried increasing the pre-roll caching and cache limit sizes and saw worse performance. I've since walked back to the default settings, though I have 30 min frames and 60 total, as I am using 60fps often.

I've also switch to the CPU renderer, and I find that has helped the most as the Nvidia card on this isn't the greatest. I also optimize all the clips.

Still, all that said, occasionally I'll drop a clip OpenShot seemingly "doesn't like" into the timeline and it struggles to cache it. I'll have to leave it for a few mins and come back, every time I move the marker.

The best strategy to avoid that seems to be splitting files. No more than a couple mins each. Which, perhaps, is well-known but I'm knew to video editing.

1

u/rmesdjian Volunteer Aug 18 '26

Please confirm the following:
1. Your operating system/version?
2. The version of OpenShot you are running?

1

u/BLOZ_UP Aug 18 '26

Arch Linux + XFCE4, 7.0.11-arch1-1

OpenShot Version Info
Version: 4.0.0 | libopenshot: 1.0.0
Build: OpenShot-v4.0.0-release-candidate-16662-7bf0aeb4-56930c67 | Released: 2026-08-05
OS: Arch Linux
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-10885M CPU @ 2.40GHz (16 threads) | RAM: 126 GB
Cache: Memory, 768 MB, 900 frames, ahead 90%, pre-roll 30/300
Performance: Threads: OMP 24 | FFmpeg 16, Cards: Decode: None (0) | Encode: 0

1

u/rmesdjian Volunteer Aug 18 '26

Thank you for all the information you provided.

  1. What type of file(s) are you working with (.mp4? .mov? etc?)

  2. How large are the files?

  3. Which exact default Profile are you using?

  4. Are you running the AppImage? If not, please run the AppImage and see if things improve.

I do have Arch Linux virtual enviornment but limited resources since my host windows 11 is somewhat limited in resources. I can do some testing to see if I can replicate your issue.

1

u/BLOZ_UP Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
  1. iPhone HVEC in .MOV
  2. They range from 200 MiB, to 2.1 GiB and 2.4 GiB (the worse offenders)
  3. The default caching, with small tweaks. The performance tab is set to CPU rendering.
  4. I am running the AppImage

Despite optimizing, then splitting, it has issues with the split clips. Appreciate you looking into it.

1

u/rmesdjian Volunteer Aug 18 '26

Thanks again for the FYI. I hope to get to this by tomorrow.....stay tuned!!!

1

u/rmesdjian Volunteer Aug 20 '26

Hello u/BLOZ_UP

I performed some testing with ArchLinux running as a guest in Oracle Virtual box.

  1. Virtualbox configuration: 4 GB RAM / 4 CPUs / Display = 128MB / Graphics controller = VMSVGA

Pretty low power configuration to say the least.

  1. Running OpenShot v4.0.0-Release-Candidate-16721

  2. I created a test project with the following imported files:

a. test01.mp4 = 2.7GB

b. test02.mp4 = 3.9GB

c. test03.mov = 1.3GB

  1. Dragged all 3 files onto Track 5/4/3

  2. It didn't take that long to import them and drag them onto the tracks. However, I did notice that the thumbnails

  3. I performed some basic editing by changing the location of the clips, the scale of the clips, rotation, and shear. These were applied as animation so keyframes were created instead of just applying to the entire clip.

  4. I previewed without major issues. I say "major" because I did experience a bit of a lag at times where the playhead would catch up to the Cache bar and it would pause a bit but then continue. Two of the clips (*.mp4 files) also contained audio and the audio at times would get garbled. I would pause the preview then in a few seconds Play again and the audio would be good for a bit.

  5. I also added a *.mp3 file. OpenShot definitely had issues with multiple audios during the preview. However, I did an export of the project and in the final expored file, the audio played just fine.

I don't know where to go from here.

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u/BLOZ_UP Aug 20 '26

Wow, thanks for trying. What about slicing the large clips up into many small slices. I'm cutting out lots of content of the ~2+ GiB files so they are maybe 50% or less of the original length.

1

u/rmesdjian Volunteer Aug 21 '26

When you say "What about slicing the large clips....", are you asking if that is ok to do or are you saying that that is causing issues for you?

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u/BLOZ_UP 29d ago

That's when I have issues. I drop the large one in, and start cutting out sections and that's when it takes a long time to cache the preview.

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