That's right. You can now buy OpenShot at Borders and Barnes & Noble book stores across the United States and the United Kingdom... sort of. Linux Format magazine (a UK Linux magazine), issue 129 has included a copy of OpenShot 1.0 on the included CD.

Although the magazine only has a small mention of OpenShot, I am thrilled to finally be "in print", so to speak. It's also great to be included on the CD, and physically distributed to many different countries!

Here is a quote from the magazine:

"OpenShot is a relatively new program, but it sports an impressive range of features."

If you see OpenShot mentioned in your favorite magazine, please drop me an email, because I would love to keep track of the articles.

It seems like just yesterday we released version 1.0 of OpenShot. However, two months have passed, and we have a brand new version just busting at the seams with excitement and anticipation. I am proud to announce the immediate availability of OpenShot 1.1!

40 different bugs and features have been addressed in this version, including some highly requested features such as Undo/Redo support! As tradition, here is a video I put together announcing 1.1. All of the footage was filmed on my Canon HF S100, and edited with OpenShot (of course).

Here are the highlights:

• Speed, speed, and more speed improvements. Over 1300% faster rendering previews after an edit. 1000% faster launching OpenShot. Seriously though... it's way faster.
• Undo / redo (with history panel)
  
• Improved export screen. Only your installed formats and codecs are listed. Improved notifications after the export has finished (using libnotify). One of the most common crashes of OpenShot was selecting an export format that was not installed. So this should provide much more stability.
• Multiple copies of effects can be added to clips. A common scenario would be using 2 chroma key effects, each with a different shade of green or blue.
  
• Dynamic tiling of overlapping clips (Brady Bunch style). This can take an unlimited number of clips (that are all on separate tracks playing at the same time), and tile them across the screen. OpenShot does all of the math, and the user only has to click 1 menu option (in the Layout menu). Just imagine the possibilities.
  
• New effects have been added: Contrast, Edge Glow, Saturation, and Cartoon.
• Fade in / out menu has been added. This is the quickest and easiest way to dissolve / fade a clip (including audio).
• Edit titles with ease. Use our simple title editor or Inkscape. Just right click on a title, and select "Edit Title". Also, when you duplicate a title, it will now create a new SVG and add it to your project.
  
• New keyboard shortcut to cut / slice clips. Just press the "c" key, and it will cut clips at the position of the play-head (i.e. the red line).
  
• Improved localization and translations. Many labels, buttons, and tool-tips were missing from our translation system. Also, numbers on the export screen (such as bit rate) would not work in other languages. These have been fixed, and OpenShot works much better in other languages.
• Timeline scrolling has been improved to better support lots and lots of tracks. The left and right side of the timeline will always stay in sync now.
  
• H.264 support has been improved to support Debian.
• View the full details of this release

If you are upgrading OpenShot from our PPA, you might need to use Synaptic instead of the Update Manager. We have a few new dependencies, and the Update Manager might not allow you to upgrade.

This will be the last version of OpenShot to support Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10. Moving forward, we will only support 9.04 and greater. This is due to gtkbuilder support (or lack thereof) in those older distros.

A big thanks to all of the contributors that have helped with version 1.1: Andy Finch, Olivier Girard, Dan Dennedy, Francesco (hva), Moimael, Cody Parker, Joop Mevissen, Ptf, Benjamin Drung, and everyone who emailed, submitted bugs, submitted translations, asked questions, and supported us.

I hope everyone enjoys using OpenShot 1.1 as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Guess what! Not only has OpenShot been accepted into Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and will soon be a 1 click install, it will be version 1.1 of OpenShot! This is a far better version than 1.0, and because many users will not bother upgrading OpenShot to future versions, it is great to have this version accepted.

This has been a goal of mine since I started the project. Ubuntu was the first distro I fell in love with, and I am super excited to be accepted into the Ubuntu universe. This will be the easiest way for most people to install OpenShot.

On a somewhat related note, we have also found a Sponsor for Debian, and are currently waiting to be approved for Debian. In the next 1 to 2 weeks, I expect OpenShot 1.1 will also be available in Debian Unstable. I will let everyone know once this has happened! We have lots of Debian users, and because so many distros are based off of Debian, it will be great to be in their repository also.

NOTE: This only lets you import the project files as a "clip". You will not be able to edit the individual parts of the project files unless you return to Kdenlive or Kino. Still... it's a great feature that might be useful to a many people.

OpenShot has two methods for fading a clip in and out. You can drag and drop a transition onto the timeline, overlapping the edge of a clip. Or you can open the clip properties dialog, and set the video fade in / out.

The benefit of using transitions is the flexibility to use different wipe designs and patterns. The benefit from setting the clip fade in / out properties is the fade belongs to the clip. If you move the clip, the fade moves with it (very nice).

With OpenShot 1.1, we have introduced a new "easier" way to fade clips. Simply right-click on a clip (video, image, or audio), and choose an option from the "Fade" menu.