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Olive, a new non-linear video editor

195 points by app4soft 8y ago

app4soft 8y ago
@probonopd wrote:[0] > Olive is a professional open-source video editor in the making. And they are publishing continuous builds in #AppImage format for #Linux which makes it trivially easy to follow @oliveteam[1] development. Pro tip: Use AppImageUpdate for binary delta updates[2] [0] https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/1079154249253179392 https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/1079154249253179392 [1] https://twitter.com/oliveteam https://twitter.com/oliveteam [2] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...
- BZH314 8y ago
  @app4soft, humbly asking for an "executive summary" tweet (maybe pinned on @OliveTeam?) introducing the project to people who have never heard of it to make it easy to retweet with some essential "selling" points (cross platform, open source, free, financially backed on Patreon, very active, ...)
  - app4soft 8y ago
    Of course! I will tweet few "executive summary" during this week via @app4soft and will ask @OliveTeam pin some of them ;)
bayesian_horse 8y ago
I still use Blender for everything, including non-linear Video editing. And apparently the Video Sequence Editor is being worked on again, after a couple of years of neglect.
- rawfan 8y ago
  Same.. it's quite great.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  Yep, VSE finally got a maintainer after many years of having none. Personally, I'm really looking forward to Richard's contribution.
- em-bee 8y ago
  is there a good tutorial on how to get started with video editing in blender? i managed to use blender to edit some render sequences others made that i added to my video using pitivi, which is frankly the only video editor that i could get to work reliably (compared to kdenlive, openshot and cinelerra). i'd love to use blender for everything to cut down on learning multiple tools and deal with transition issues but i couldn't figure out how to edit the whole video in it.
  - prokoudine 8y ago
    Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj4onvP06w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj4onvP06w (suggests using an add-on for Blender) or the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViX4Tn_tGs&list=PLH3QvbpQe8WQY9ms1t9oKbpWyNu1Q_8PW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViX4Tn_tGs&list=PLH3QvbpQe8... series maybe?
    - em-bee 8y ago
      thanks, i'll check those out...
BZH314 8y ago
OpenShot [1] is another free (also GPLv3 as Olive) video editor for Windows/Linux/Max using the portable AppImage format [2] (AppImage lets you download a single binary and launch the software directly, no install process or super user privileges needed). It uses ffmpeg behind the scenes. It seems to have suffered from stability issues in the past (the wikipedia article mentions lots of negative reviews) but seem pretty stable now, so you might want to give it a ... shot. It has been very useful for its quick install process, intuitive interface and reliability: haven't had a single crash in a very long time, with more than 200 videos on our channel [3] (albeit none required anything fancy editing-wise). OpenShot's goal might not appear to be as grandiose as Olive's so I would love if there was a comparison of both out there. Looks like we're off trying Olive to compare. Thanks and good luck to the Olive team. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenShot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenShot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage [3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgsdHWWQBMHP1plylPrrgpA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgsdHWWQBMHP1plylPrrgpA
- snazz 8y ago
  There continue to be many stability issues in the 1.4.3 branch of OpenShot that Debian ships. Version 2.4.3 is not available from the Debian Stable repos but is much more stable. You might want to use the AppImage to get the most recent version if you’re using Debian.
  - BZH314 8y ago
    This is a very important point that is probably the source of confusion, and people quickly ditching OpenShot because of installing it through apt. This is exactly what happened to me: started using it from the distro and experienced crashes. Then downloaded the latest AppImage and never had a problem since. Trying to help break the vicious circle here: Wikipedia mentions stability issues, Debian ships with a crash-happy old version that doesn't do it any favor, but latest AppImage seems stable.
- Epskampie 8y ago
  Did you read the article? It mentions openshot, and compares the two a bit.
IshKebab 8y ago
> The program doesn't crash all the time. In fact, I've only seen 4 or 5 crashes for overall ca. 8 hours of use. That's pretty terrible and matches my experience with other open source video editors. Cinelerra was especially bad. Why is it so hard to write a video editor that doesn't crash?
- snazz 8y ago
  I’ll guess that they crash a lot because they need to allocate a lot of memory and the size of the files they deal with often exceeds the machine’s free RAM. Blender seems to have the whole “stability” thing down at this point, though, probably because its primary use is as a 3D modeling and rendering application and so the video editor can take advantage of its good memory allocation system.
  - app4soft 8y ago
    Please, read with magnifying glass: > The program does _NOT_ crash all the time. Also, I can run and normally use Olive on my 10-year-old notebook[0], where Blender VSE/OpenShot/Shotcut/Kdenlive could NOT work properly! [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1080489940138512385 https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1080489940138512385
    - zaphar 8y ago
      4-5 crashes over 8 hours is way too many crashes.
      - app4soft 8y ago
        Test latest nightly build of Olive![0] Four days ago it crashed for me on some tasks, BUT after yesterday update I try reproduce same steps — and Olive not crashed anymore! It's development activity is really high; just check their commits[1] and bug-tracker[2] history. [0] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou... [1] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commits/master https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commits/master [2] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues
kachurovskiy 8y ago
I've used a few open source video editors and the only one that was stable enough was Kdenlive. Since then I switched to the DaVinci Resolve and am super happy with it, even bought the paid version USB dongle. Funny that Resolve is also not stable on computers that aren't beefy, had to upgrade the PC for it to handle 4k smoothly. It's refreshing that you can de-noise audio, fine-tune video stabilization, color correct and add nice effects and transitions all in one app. I've got a ton of crispy artisan 4k home video now :-)
- myself248 8y ago
  I would love to try Resolve but got stuck on installation. They've never packaged it for any distro I can find, and their self-made installer seems to only work on RedHat. Am I missing something? How did you get it installed?
  - kachurovskiy 8y ago
    Sadly can't help since I'm using Windows at home, didn't have any installation issues. Only gotcha so far is that one has to download a separate binary for the paid version of the app, there's no "activation" in the free version.
  - slondr 8y ago
    I'm fairly certain the download offered on Blackmagic's website is just a JAR file that you can run in your preferred JVM. It's also in the AUR, if you use Arch.
- tyfon 8y ago
  I also use kdenlive quite extensively and while I get a crash here and there, KDE asks me to restart the app and it then loads the file with the last edits. I don't think I've ever lost edits. I've done about 25 hours of 4k so far and it's actually not that bad (i7 4770k/16gb ram/ssd).
  - rhizome 8y ago
    I don't do much with either, but I've been trying to edit a 3+hr video for a long time and Kdenlive does seem to autosave in ways (or frequency) that OpenShot lacked when I tried it. OS crashed more and I would have to start over more.
krispbyte 8y ago
> Olive is geared towards users who rely on shortcuts: all editing tools and common operations have them, and you can configure your own shortcuts (UI for that could do with more work though). I wish all programs that rely heavily in shortcuts also had a search bar for users still not proficient with the program. The way Code Editors have been doing in the last years. Searching with a few keywords is much better than having to look through tons of menus for new users.
- app4soft 8y ago
  > I wish all programs that rely heavily in shortcuts also had a search bar for users still not proficient with the program. Maybe, this feature request[0] would be implemented very soon ;-) UPD: Added few mockups into description of feature request![0] P.S.: Issue with saving customized shortcuts in Olive just fixed![1] [0] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/259 https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/259 [1] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/250 https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/250
  - fnord123 8y ago
    Issue 250 took 13 hours to be fixed. That's pretty great turnaround!
    - app4soft 8y ago
      > Issue 250 took 13 hours to be fixed. That's pretty great turnaround! Haha, Issue 259 just fixed![0] ;) And it took only 1 (one!) hour to be fixed!!! :P @krispbyte, GET latest nightly build of Olive with "search shortcuts" feature while it hot![1] [0] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commit/d46252b823fb40e317e0857c9d88b9bf63df2c54 https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commit/d46252b823fb40e... [1] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...
      - fnord123 8y ago
        That's an amazing turnaround.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
It was buried at the end of the article, but this is the creator’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor I’d love to see Patreon grow as a viable way to fund open source projects.
s1mon 8y ago
It always pains me when people write about software without mentioning what platform it runs on. Even after clicking on the project page link in the article, you have to go to the downloads to find this information. As it turns out it's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so this is a little less objectionable than other instances of this problem where I read about something only to find it's only available on a single platform.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  Fair enough. Updated the beginning of the article.
ggambetta 8y ago
I don't see any practical reason not to use Davinci Resolve, which is free (as in beer) and miles ahead of the open source editors. I used to be quite fond of Kdenlive but having used Resolve for a couple of months there's no way I'm going back.
- jotm 8y ago
  You could say... a working monetization strategy does wonders for products, even free ones. Too bad so many Linux OSS developers are fundamentally against that.
  - wtracy 8y ago
    Why do you say that OSS developers are against that? Personally, I am all in favor of any monetization scheme that doesn't infringe on the four freedoms described by the FSF: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
    - jotm 8y ago
      The downvotes say it for me.
      - wtracy 8y ago
        The people who read Reddit and Hacker News don't even begin to represent the Open Source community.
        jodrellblank 8y ago
        What evidence do you have to support that claim?
        wtracy 8y ago
        Frankly, I think that the burden of proof is on anyone who claims that online discussion boards are a snapshot of the FOSS community. That said, anecdotally, very few of the FOSS developers I've worked with are active Redditors or HNers or whatever.
bdz 8y ago
I admit I still use the abandoned Premiere 2 from Adobe. It's a free download and it works, perfect for home projects (even if it's technically piracy)
Macha 8y ago
I've previously used Pitivi, found it too unstable for continued use. I think next time I need to do some video editing, I'll probably try out Blender.
unicornporn 8y ago
> Proxies. Olive doesn't do that yet. In the age of UHD resolutions and up this should probably be on the list of immediate priorities. I could not work without the proxy feature of Premiere.
- lostgame 8y ago
  Likewise. I immediately cringed at the idea of usability for 4K or even 1080p video without proxies.
  - prokoudine 8y ago
    On smaller projects (think 5 minutes of final video), Olive works pretty sensibly.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  The article, however, goes on to say "Matt says he's in the middle of designing proxy support at the moment" __right after that__.
- jsd1982 8y ago
  Can someone explain what a proxy is in this context and what it is used for and why it would be necessary? Can video editing software truly not be written to natively process video data itself?
  - tedyoung 8y ago
    From my understanding, proxying is the ability to work with lower-resolution video -- so it's faster to edit -- but still be frame-accurate to the original, so the output matches what you've been editing.

195 points by app4soft 8y ago

@probonopd wrote:[0] > Olive is a professional open-source video editor in the making. And they are publishing continuous builds in #AppImage format for #Linux which makes it trivially easy to follow @oliveteam[1] development. Pro tip: Use AppImageUpdate for binary delta updates[2] [0] https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/1079154249253179392 https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/1079154249253179392 [1] https://twitter.com/oliveteam https://twitter.com/oliveteam [2] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...

BZH314 8y ago
@app4soft, humbly asking for an "executive summary" tweet (maybe pinned on @OliveTeam?) introducing the project to people who have never heard of it to make it easy to retweet with some essential "selling" points (cross platform, open source, free, financially backed on Patreon, very active, ...)
- app4soft 8y ago
  Of course! I will tweet few "executive summary" during this week via @app4soft and will ask @OliveTeam pin some of them ;)

bayesian_horse 8y ago

I still use Blender for everything, including non-linear Video editing. And apparently the Video Sequence Editor is being worked on again, after a couple of years of neglect.

rawfan 8y ago
Same.. it's quite great.
prokoudine 8y ago
Yep, VSE finally got a maintainer after many years of having none. Personally, I'm really looking forward to Richard's contribution.
em-bee 8y ago
is there a good tutorial on how to get started with video editing in blender? i managed to use blender to edit some render sequences others made that i added to my video using pitivi, which is frankly the only video editor that i could get to work reliably (compared to kdenlive, openshot and cinelerra). i'd love to use blender for everything to cut down on learning multiple tools and deal with transition issues but i couldn't figure out how to edit the whole video in it.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj4onvP06w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj4onvP06w (suggests using an add-on for Blender) or the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViX4Tn_tGs&list=PLH3QvbpQe8WQY9ms1t9oKbpWyNu1Q_8PW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViX4Tn_tGs&list=PLH3QvbpQe8... series maybe?
  - em-bee 8y ago
    thanks, i'll check those out...

BZH314 8y ago

OpenShot [1] is another free (also GPLv3 as Olive) video editor for Windows/Linux/Max using the portable AppImage format [2] (AppImage lets you download a single binary and launch the software directly, no install process or super user privileges needed). It uses ffmpeg behind the scenes. It seems to have suffered from stability issues in the past (the wikipedia article mentions lots of negative reviews) but seem pretty stable now, so you might want to give it a ... shot. It has been very useful for its quick install process, intuitive interface and reliability: haven't had a single crash in a very long time, with more than 200 videos on our channel [3] (albeit none required anything fancy editing-wise). OpenShot's goal might not appear to be as grandiose as Olive's so I would love if there was a comparison of both out there. Looks like we're off trying Olive to compare. Thanks and good luck to the Olive team. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenShot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenShot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage [3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgsdHWWQBMHP1plylPrrgpA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgsdHWWQBMHP1plylPrrgpA

snazz 8y ago
There continue to be many stability issues in the 1.4.3 branch of OpenShot that Debian ships. Version 2.4.3 is not available from the Debian Stable repos but is much more stable. You might want to use the AppImage to get the most recent version if you’re using Debian.
- BZH314 8y ago
  This is a very important point that is probably the source of confusion, and people quickly ditching OpenShot because of installing it through apt. This is exactly what happened to me: started using it from the distro and experienced crashes. Then downloaded the latest AppImage and never had a problem since. Trying to help break the vicious circle here: Wikipedia mentions stability issues, Debian ships with a crash-happy old version that doesn't do it any favor, but latest AppImage seems stable.
Epskampie 8y ago
Did you read the article? It mentions openshot, and compares the two a bit.

IshKebab 8y ago

> The program doesn't crash all the time. In fact, I've only seen 4 or 5 crashes for overall ca. 8 hours of use. That's pretty terrible and matches my experience with other open source video editors. Cinelerra was especially bad. Why is it so hard to write a video editor that doesn't crash?

snazz 8y ago
I’ll guess that they crash a lot because they need to allocate a lot of memory and the size of the files they deal with often exceeds the machine’s free RAM. Blender seems to have the whole “stability” thing down at this point, though, probably because its primary use is as a 3D modeling and rendering application and so the video editor can take advantage of its good memory allocation system.
- app4soft 8y ago
  Please, read with magnifying glass: > The program does _NOT_ crash all the time. Also, I can run and normally use Olive on my 10-year-old notebook[0], where Blender VSE/OpenShot/Shotcut/Kdenlive could NOT work properly! [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1080489940138512385 https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1080489940138512385
  - zaphar 8y ago
    4-5 crashes over 8 hours is way too many crashes.
    - app4soft 8y ago
      Test latest nightly build of Olive![0] Four days ago it crashed for me on some tasks, BUT after yesterday update I try reproduce same steps — and Olive not crashed anymore! It's development activity is really high; just check their commits[1] and bug-tracker[2] history. [0] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou... [1] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commits/master https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commits/master [2] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues

kachurovskiy 8y ago

I've used a few open source video editors and the only one that was stable enough was Kdenlive. Since then I switched to the DaVinci Resolve and am super happy with it, even bought the paid version USB dongle. Funny that Resolve is also not stable on computers that aren't beefy, had to upgrade the PC for it to handle 4k smoothly. It's refreshing that you can de-noise audio, fine-tune video stabilization, color correct and add nice effects and transitions all in one app. I've got a ton of crispy artisan 4k home video now :-)

myself248 8y ago
I would love to try Resolve but got stuck on installation. They've never packaged it for any distro I can find, and their self-made installer seems to only work on RedHat. Am I missing something? How did you get it installed?
- kachurovskiy 8y ago
  Sadly can't help since I'm using Windows at home, didn't have any installation issues. Only gotcha so far is that one has to download a separate binary for the paid version of the app, there's no "activation" in the free version.
- slondr 8y ago
  I'm fairly certain the download offered on Blackmagic's website is just a JAR file that you can run in your preferred JVM. It's also in the AUR, if you use Arch.
tyfon 8y ago
I also use kdenlive quite extensively and while I get a crash here and there, KDE asks me to restart the app and it then loads the file with the last edits. I don't think I've ever lost edits. I've done about 25 hours of 4k so far and it's actually not that bad (i7 4770k/16gb ram/ssd).
- rhizome 8y ago
  I don't do much with either, but I've been trying to edit a 3+hr video for a long time and Kdenlive does seem to autosave in ways (or frequency) that OpenShot lacked when I tried it. OS crashed more and I would have to start over more.

krispbyte 8y ago

> Olive is geared towards users who rely on shortcuts: all editing tools and common operations have them, and you can configure your own shortcuts (UI for that could do with more work though). I wish all programs that rely heavily in shortcuts also had a search bar for users still not proficient with the program. The way Code Editors have been doing in the last years. Searching with a few keywords is much better than having to look through tons of menus for new users.

app4soft 8y ago
> I wish all programs that rely heavily in shortcuts also had a search bar for users still not proficient with the program. Maybe, this feature request[0] would be implemented very soon ;-) UPD: Added few mockups into description of feature request![0] P.S.: Issue with saving customized shortcuts in Olive just fixed![1] [0] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/259 https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/259 [1] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/250 https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/250
- fnord123 8y ago
  Issue 250 took 13 hours to be fixed. That's pretty great turnaround!
  - app4soft 8y ago
    > Issue 250 took 13 hours to be fixed. That's pretty great turnaround! Haha, Issue 259 just fixed![0] ;) And it took only 1 (one!) hour to be fixed!!! :P @krispbyte, GET latest nightly build of Olive with "search shortcuts" feature while it hot![1] [0] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commit/d46252b823fb40e317e0857c9d88b9bf63df2c54 https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/commit/d46252b823fb40e... [1] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...
    - fnord123 8y ago
      That's an amazing turnaround.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

It was buried at the end of the article, but this is the creator’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor I’d love to see Patreon grow as a viable way to fund open source projects.

s1mon 8y ago

It always pains me when people write about software without mentioning what platform it runs on. Even after clicking on the project page link in the article, you have to go to the downloads to find this information. As it turns out it's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so this is a little less objectionable than other instances of this problem where I read about something only to find it's only available on a single platform.

prokoudine 8y ago
Fair enough. Updated the beginning of the article.

ggambetta 8y ago

I don't see any practical reason not to use Davinci Resolve, which is free (as in beer) and miles ahead of the open source editors. I used to be quite fond of Kdenlive but having used Resolve for a couple of months there's no way I'm going back.

jotm 8y ago
You could say... a working monetization strategy does wonders for products, even free ones. Too bad so many Linux OSS developers are fundamentally against that.
- wtracy 8y ago
  Why do you say that OSS developers are against that? Personally, I am all in favor of any monetization scheme that doesn't infringe on the four freedoms described by the FSF: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
  - jotm 8y ago
    The downvotes say it for me.
    - wtracy 8y ago
      The people who read Reddit and Hacker News don't even begin to represent the Open Source community.
      - jodrellblank 8y ago
        What evidence do you have to support that claim?
        wtracy 8y ago
        Frankly, I think that the burden of proof is on anyone who claims that online discussion boards are a snapshot of the FOSS community. That said, anecdotally, very few of the FOSS developers I've worked with are active Redditors or HNers or whatever.

bdz 8y ago

I admit I still use the abandoned Premiere 2 from Adobe. It's a free download and it works, perfect for home projects (even if it's technically piracy)

Macha 8y ago

I've previously used Pitivi, found it too unstable for continued use. I think next time I need to do some video editing, I'll probably try out Blender.

unicornporn 8y ago

> Proxies. Olive doesn't do that yet. In the age of UHD resolutions and up this should probably be on the list of immediate priorities. I could not work without the proxy feature of Premiere.

lostgame 8y ago
Likewise. I immediately cringed at the idea of usability for 4K or even 1080p video without proxies.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  On smaller projects (think 5 minutes of final video), Olive works pretty sensibly.
prokoudine 8y ago
The article, however, goes on to say "Matt says he's in the middle of designing proxy support at the moment" __right after that__.
jsd1982 8y ago
Can someone explain what a proxy is in this context and what it is used for and why it would be necessary? Can video editing software truly not be written to natively process video data itself?
- tedyoung 8y ago
  From my understanding, proxying is the ability to work with lower-resolution video -- so it's faster to edit -- but still be frame-accurate to the original, so the output matches what you've been editing.