> (I recall that these interestingly share the same video editing backend, just the integration is different?)

Last time I looked, they were all using MLT [0] for the backend.

[0] https://www.mltframework.org/

Pitivi uses gstreamer for everything.

For me Shotcut won in usability. Openshot often had no tools for what I wanted, and Kdenlive was just so clunky with the interface I wanted to throw my laptop away and pay someone else finish the project. Shotcut is by no means perfect and for example simple masking ends requiring sliders in the plug-in to adjust the rectangle size on the display... but it still won.

> Kdenlive wins hands-down in stability

It's the only one that does not have a 50% chance of segfaulting on every click. Not an exaggeration.

Pretty much the only viable solution for FOSS video editing though I have yet to try Blender.

I have found Shotcut to be entirely stable over the last year on both Windows and Linux, whereas the last version of Kdenlive I just tested this morning experiences freezes on Windows. I'm quite happy with Shotcut.

Weirdly, in my use, Openshot was the stable one among those. Not discounting your experience, but wondering if it could be, e.g., distribution-specific.