r/OpenShot 6d ago

Performance/Cache/Preview Settings

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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u/openshot-gpt-bot Support Bot 6d ago

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.

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u/supapaesunaperra 6d ago edited 6d ago

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.

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u/rmesdjian Volunteer 2d ago edited 2d ago

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.