You want to cut the background out of your cat video. Until now that meant expensive software, yet another account somewhere, or fiddling with a green screen. OpenShot 4.0 says: there's another way.
The free video editor (open source, for Windows, macOS and Linux) just got an AI feature worth talking about: automatic object masking. You mark your subject in the video with a few clicks — "this belongs," "this doesn't" — and the software tracks the object through the entire clip. No green screen (a colored backdrop swapped out digitally), no manual rotoscoping (tracing the outline frame by frame by hand), no cloud upload.
What the AI actually does
OpenShot combines three AI models that all run locally on your machine: one detects objects in the frame, one turns that into a mask, a third keeps it stable as the subject moves through the clip. In practice that means your footage never leaves your computer. No waiting on some server, no subscription, no privacy policy you have to read before cutting your vacation footage.
That's the real difference to most AI tools we cover here: OpenShot needs no internet connection, no account, and no credit card. Install the software, drag in your video, done.
"Free" that's actually free
With ChatGPT, Gemini or other AI services, "free" almost always means "free with a limit" — we've made that point often enough on this blog. OpenShot is different: the software is fully open source, free forever, no freemium model, no premium tier waiting to lure you in eventually.
If there's a catch, it's this: AI object masking needs processing power. On an old laptop without a dedicated graphics card, tracking takes noticeably longer than on current hardware. That's the price you pay — in waiting time, not money.
Also new in version 4.0: a built-in recording feature for screen, webcam, microphone and system audio, a dedicated color-grading section, and ten new effects including film grain and audio visualization. The AI object mask is the feature that's genuinely new, though — the rest exists in similar form in other editors.
Who is this for?
Anyone who has ever edited a video, or wants to learn. You don't need any coding skills — OpenShot is a classic timeline editor with mouse clicks, not a command line. If you've used Premiere or DaVinci Resolve before, you'll feel at home fast. Complete beginners need a bit of onboarding, but zero AI background.
It's especially worth trying if privacy matters more to you than the last bit of convenience, if you don't want to pay for an Adobe or DaVinci subscription, or if you run Linux, where plenty of commercial editors don't run at all.
And yes, this is another one of those moments where Linux is the more relaxed choice for AI: OpenShot runs natively there, no emulation, no driver drama. It works just as well on Windows and macOS — just not quite as smoothly.
What you can try right now
Download OpenShot 4.0 from the official project page, drag a video onto the timeline, click the object you want to mask, and watch the AI take it from there. Ten minutes is enough for a first impression. No sign-up, no subscription, no catch in the fine print.
That's it. That's what happens when software is actually free.