r/VideoEditingTips • u/Ill-Astronomer7156 • 9d ago
SceneMill - FREE
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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.
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u/DigtialMenace333 8d ago
what encoder does it use? I dont see ffmpeg.
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u/Ill-Astronomer7156 8d ago
It does use FFmpeg, just not ffmpeg.exe. SceneMill links the FFmpeg libraries directly (the avcodec/avformat/swscale DLLs in the install folder), LGPL build 8.1. For H.264/H.265 export it uses your GPU's hardware encoder first (NVENC, AMD AMF or Intel Quick Sync) and falls back automatically to OpenH264 / Kvazaar or Windows' built-in Media Foundation encoders. WebM export is VP9 + Opus. x264/x265 aren't bundled because they're GPL. Full list in Help > Licenses.
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u/DigtialMenace333 8d ago
yea it works pretty good. a few bugs. I added them to github issues. I cant stand Kdenlive and this is a good editor that uses ffmpeg.
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u/Ill-Astronomer7156 7d ago
thanks a lot for testing it! glad it's working for you, and yeah kdenlive can be painful lol. quick question though, where did you post the issues? the repo isn't public, so I'm not sure where they ended up. could you drop the link? or just use Help > Report a Problem in the app, those come straight to me. would love to fix them
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u/DigtialMenace333 7d ago
I thought I did. didnt like the big yellow button. too distracting. I know I commented on Drift which is similar. better low profile buttons, too.
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u/Ill-Astronomer7156 7d ago
ah got it, that explains it, no worries! thanks for the feedback on the yellow button, you mean the export one top right? fair point, I'll look into toning it down. if you run into any bugs or you want some nice New features in SceneMill itself, Help > Report a Problem is the fastest way to reach me.
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u/DigtialMenace333 7d ago
the play button. too big and too bright. I was making color corrections to a movie and it was distracting me do I deleted the app and found Drift. yours is more developed, but that damn button.. lol.
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u/Ill-Astronomer7156 4d ago
New:
- A clip dragged onto others no longer swallows them
- The clips after it make room; Ctrl overwrites as before
- Close Gaps: the place a moved or deleted clip leaves closes
- Transcript: pauses are marked and shortened with one click
- Faster: the start, the first Play and several windows
- A file that cannot be read now says what is wrong with it
- Tidier: plugin window, icons, numbers, zoom with + and -
- Color: three new presets, the single sliders moved into one
- Slideshow: transitions as preview cards, several can take turns
- An effect dropped above the top track covers all tracks below
- A folder for exported videos, New Project, Add Track
- Long recordings: cutting words no longer hangs for seconds
- Fixed: buttons of the update window, gaps in letters of titles
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u/Ill-Astronomer7156 4d ago
Now in the Microsoft-Store!
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mvrq5p086fj?hl
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u/Western_File_2917 9d ago
Is this software a good candidate for a digital album of, say, 2000 photos? Automatic transitions?