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SXSW: Pitivi Aims To Bring Real Video Editing to Linux

39 points by yiedyie 13y ago

Morgawr 13y ago
Video editing is one of the few things that Linux really can't do well. Years ago we had problems also in the music production area but nowadays it's much better, there are a lot of awesome projects (Ardour, Soundgarden, Hydrogen, Kxstudio products, etc etc) which really makes it shine. I wish we had this also in the video production department. This might be the step towards the right direction, definitely going to donate to this campaign. Kudos!
- Tmmrn 13y ago
  > Video editing is one of the few things that Linux really can't do well. That's one of these bullshit blanket statements. Linux doesn't do video editing because it is an operating system. Its job is to provide a base for applications like video editors to run on. And video editors run no worse on linux than on other operating systems. A few seconds with google brings you a lot of articles about how well video editing works on linux: http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/linux-hollywood/44656 http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/linux-hollywoo... What you meant to say is that the open source, freeware and consumer level video editors are lacking a bit.
  - Morgawr 13y ago
    I think you really need to chill. What I meant to say is that the environment on Linux systems doesn't do video editing that well at the moment. This doesn't mean that the Linux kernel cannot do video editing at all. Compared to other platforms like Windows and OSX, video editing on Linux platforms at the moment is not on par with them, and this project is awesome because it's trying to solve this issue. I've been a Linux user for years, I've tried most video (and audio) editing tools on GNU/Linux systems and I can say that the video side is much more lacking compared to the audio side and I would love for it to become more competent and on par with the rest. If you want to nitpick without even reading the post you're replying to, maybe you should just do it someplace else. Thank you.
    - espadrine 13y ago
      > I've tried most video (and audio) editing tools I would love you to expand on that if you can. I am currently settled on kdenlive, which is reasonably stable and features non-linear editing with a number of standard effects (I consider things like fading, zooming, speeding, blue screen to be pretty standard), although it has some rough edges, especially around sound editing (which forces me to use Audacity on the side). I notably use it on a Mac as well; it is clearly superior to iMovie, although it is clearly inferior to Premiere and Final Cut. However, I haven't tested the competition for a while…
    - deathcakes 13y ago
      In fairness you said can't and not doesn't, which implies that video editing is not possible on linux.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        Professional-grade certainly isn't, at least not until there's enough demand for it, for tools like Vegas and Final Cut to be ported. I don't know. but I hear about all these projects and my mind immediately starts thinking about OSS pretenders (all missing features) to professional/enterprisey apps. GIMP to Photoshop being the canonical example. Aside from the lack of feature parity and the legendarily bad UI (apparently designed by people who do not edit images regularly), the single biggest problem is lack of support. If I'm doing something like a magazine, and something breaks, I get to keep both pieces aaaaand that's about it. Am I being overly cynical, here? Honest question. Maybe I'm overly sensitive to many years of FOSS advocates proposing solutions ignorant of professional workflows.
        deathcakes 13y ago
        Sorry, you have also missed the point - I'm not defending the gp's point by saying that there is in fact software available currently that you can use to video edit on linux. I am saying that stating that linux _can't_ do video editing is disingenuous. It demonstrably _can_, because it is an operating system and the capability is there. It _doesn't_ at the moment because no one has written a high-enough quality application to do it yet.
  - yiedyie 13y ago
    People very often use Linux as shorthand for Linux distribution... which has more to it than the Linux kernel.
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      And they kind of need to be reminded what Linux is.. If people start clamoring Linus to descend from heavens and bring us video editing, it's just a silly as what grandparent referred to. I see this might be viewed as pedantic, but Linux is not a distro you used. Additionally Linux does have Blender with support for video editing, which from what I've heard was used to make Sintel and other movies.
      - yiedyie 13y ago
        Blender is a 3D computer graphics, and video editing is just one of its many features, its hard to learn Blender just to edit a video. A video editing software should be easier to use and have more features.
        lotsofmangos 13y ago
        I agree that blender is not the most straightforward bit of software, however I don't find it has a lack of features.
  - lotsofmangos 13y ago
    Blender makes a reasonable video editor if you set it up right - http://processdiary.com/video-editing-in-blender-introduction/ http://processdiary.com/video-editing-in-blender-introductio...
- spuz 13y ago
  You obviously have not tried Lightworks. It runs very well on my ubuntu system and offers a decent level of editing features. It's not open source but the free version is certainly capable and the professional version is not expensive compared to other similar video editing products. http://www.lwks.com/ http://www.lwks.com/
- meatsock 13y ago
  n.b. rosegarden is the linux sound app, soundgarden is a rock band
  - Morgawr 13y ago
    Welp, not sure how I managed to write soundgarden when I obviously meant rosegarden, sorry!
skbohra123 13y ago
http://kdenlive.org/ http://kdenlive.org/ works really really well and is fairly stable, I have been very happy with it all these years!
rjzzleep 13y ago
the title is incredibly misleading. pitivi has been around since 2004. i don't think any of the linux editors really got the traction they needed. this is more of an awareness campaign for their fundraiser. not saying that's bad, i'm also wishing them all the luck in the world, and it's been a while since i followed the topic. but it's also worth noting that lightworks finally released its' linux beta last quarter.[1] personally i'm not a big fan of either the audio infrastructure or gstreamer in linux. but i guess it will allow them more easily to support many video and audio formats, why not directly use a non free build of ffmpeg though is beyond me. as a sidenote, the state of audio is not really that great in linux either, there is actually a way to use vst plugins in wine, but afair it depends on jack, and some proprietary steinberg library, which means that in linux tradition the average joe consumer doesn't have access to those things. i think professional audio and video go hand in hand, but then again what do i know. [1] http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=209 http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...
- pronoiac 13y ago
  I've used Cinelerra quite a bit; it has multiple layers, color correction, and perspective filters, which makes me happy.
  - buovjaga 13y ago
    Cinelerra will be presented at NAB 2014. They say it is undergoing a redesign of some sort.
- Morgawr 13y ago
  >the state of audio is not really that great in linux either I personally disagree, after doing hobbyist music production on Windows with Cubase (& friends) for years, I moved to Linux and I found a whole ecosystem well integrated into the OS/distro itself that makes me way more productive with better results. While the array of finetuned technologies/plugins/samples might not be as extensive as on other more popular platforms, the Jack environment and its freedom is really unrivaled. I think it has to do with the way of doing things on Linux systems vs other operating systems, while on Windows you have your DAW + ReWire, on Linux you just fire up Jack and a few dozens of smaller applications (+ your DAW, which might be Rosegarden or Ardour or others) that you can tie together with easy-to-use interfaces like patchage or ladish. On that note, ladish is awesome, allowing you to suspend and recover whole jack sessions (with dozens of programs) in a simple click. Also check out kxstudio, they have some really fancy and nicely built tools that further improve the ecosystem.
yeureka 13y ago
Baselight, IMHO one of the best film non-linear grading systems, was developed and runs in Linux.
buovjaga 13y ago
Here are some newer contenders in the FOSS video editing arena: http://shotcut.org/ http://shotcut.org/ http://code.google.com/p/flowblade/ http://code.google.com/p/flowblade/ New compositing tools (both from France): http://natron.inria.fr/ http://natron.inria.fr/ http://buttleofx.wordpress.com/ http://buttleofx.wordpress.com/ I'd say 2014 looks pretty good for FOSS/Linux video editing!

39 points by yiedyie 13y ago

Video editing is one of the few things that Linux really can't do well. Years ago we had problems also in the music production area but nowadays it's much better, there are a lot of awesome projects (Ardour, Soundgarden, Hydrogen, Kxstudio products, etc etc) which really makes it shine. I wish we had this also in the video production department. This might be the step towards the right direction, definitely going to donate to this campaign. Kudos!

Tmmrn 13y ago
> Video editing is one of the few things that Linux really can't do well. That's one of these bullshit blanket statements. Linux doesn't do video editing because it is an operating system. Its job is to provide a base for applications like video editors to run on. And video editors run no worse on linux than on other operating systems. A few seconds with google brings you a lot of articles about how well video editing works on linux: http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/linux-hollywood/44656 http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/linux-hollywoo... What you meant to say is that the open source, freeware and consumer level video editors are lacking a bit.
- Morgawr 13y ago
  I think you really need to chill. What I meant to say is that the environment on Linux systems doesn't do video editing that well at the moment. This doesn't mean that the Linux kernel cannot do video editing at all. Compared to other platforms like Windows and OSX, video editing on Linux platforms at the moment is not on par with them, and this project is awesome because it's trying to solve this issue. I've been a Linux user for years, I've tried most video (and audio) editing tools on GNU/Linux systems and I can say that the video side is much more lacking compared to the audio side and I would love for it to become more competent and on par with the rest. If you want to nitpick without even reading the post you're replying to, maybe you should just do it someplace else. Thank you.
  - espadrine 13y ago
    > I've tried most video (and audio) editing tools I would love you to expand on that if you can. I am currently settled on kdenlive, which is reasonably stable and features non-linear editing with a number of standard effects (I consider things like fading, zooming, speeding, blue screen to be pretty standard), although it has some rough edges, especially around sound editing (which forces me to use Audacity on the side). I notably use it on a Mac as well; it is clearly superior to iMovie, although it is clearly inferior to Premiere and Final Cut. However, I haven't tested the competition for a while…
  - deathcakes 13y ago
    In fairness you said can't and not doesn't, which implies that video editing is not possible on linux.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      Professional-grade certainly isn't, at least not until there's enough demand for it, for tools like Vegas and Final Cut to be ported. I don't know. but I hear about all these projects and my mind immediately starts thinking about OSS pretenders (all missing features) to professional/enterprisey apps. GIMP to Photoshop being the canonical example. Aside from the lack of feature parity and the legendarily bad UI (apparently designed by people who do not edit images regularly), the single biggest problem is lack of support. If I'm doing something like a magazine, and something breaks, I get to keep both pieces aaaaand that's about it. Am I being overly cynical, here? Honest question. Maybe I'm overly sensitive to many years of FOSS advocates proposing solutions ignorant of professional workflows.
      - deathcakes 13y ago
        Sorry, you have also missed the point - I'm not defending the gp's point by saying that there is in fact software available currently that you can use to video edit on linux. I am saying that stating that linux _can't_ do video editing is disingenuous. It demonstrably _can_, because it is an operating system and the capability is there. It _doesn't_ at the moment because no one has written a high-enough quality application to do it yet.
- yiedyie 13y ago
  People very often use Linux as shorthand for Linux distribution... which has more to it than the Linux kernel.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    And they kind of need to be reminded what Linux is.. If people start clamoring Linus to descend from heavens and bring us video editing, it's just a silly as what grandparent referred to. I see this might be viewed as pedantic, but Linux is not a distro you used. Additionally Linux does have Blender with support for video editing, which from what I've heard was used to make Sintel and other movies.
    - yiedyie 13y ago
      Blender is a 3D computer graphics, and video editing is just one of its many features, its hard to learn Blender just to edit a video. A video editing software should be easier to use and have more features.
      - lotsofmangos 13y ago
        I agree that blender is not the most straightforward bit of software, however I don't find it has a lack of features.
- lotsofmangos 13y ago
  Blender makes a reasonable video editor if you set it up right - http://processdiary.com/video-editing-in-blender-introduction/ http://processdiary.com/video-editing-in-blender-introductio...
spuz 13y ago
You obviously have not tried Lightworks. It runs very well on my ubuntu system and offers a decent level of editing features. It's not open source but the free version is certainly capable and the professional version is not expensive compared to other similar video editing products. http://www.lwks.com/ http://www.lwks.com/
meatsock 13y ago
n.b. rosegarden is the linux sound app, soundgarden is a rock band
- Morgawr 13y ago
  Welp, not sure how I managed to write soundgarden when I obviously meant rosegarden, sorry!

skbohra123 13y ago

http://kdenlive.org/ http://kdenlive.org/ works really really well and is fairly stable, I have been very happy with it all these years!

rjzzleep 13y ago

the title is incredibly misleading. pitivi has been around since 2004. i don't think any of the linux editors really got the traction they needed. this is more of an awareness campaign for their fundraiser. not saying that's bad, i'm also wishing them all the luck in the world, and it's been a while since i followed the topic. but it's also worth noting that lightworks finally released its' linux beta last quarter.[1] personally i'm not a big fan of either the audio infrastructure or gstreamer in linux. but i guess it will allow them more easily to support many video and audio formats, why not directly use a non free build of ffmpeg though is beyond me. as a sidenote, the state of audio is not really that great in linux either, there is actually a way to use vst plugins in wine, but afair it depends on jack, and some proprietary steinberg library, which means that in linux tradition the average joe consumer doesn't have access to those things. i think professional audio and video go hand in hand, but then again what do i know. [1] http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=209 http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...

pronoiac 13y ago
I've used Cinelerra quite a bit; it has multiple layers, color correction, and perspective filters, which makes me happy.
- buovjaga 13y ago
  Cinelerra will be presented at NAB 2014. They say it is undergoing a redesign of some sort.
Morgawr 13y ago
>the state of audio is not really that great in linux either I personally disagree, after doing hobbyist music production on Windows with Cubase (& friends) for years, I moved to Linux and I found a whole ecosystem well integrated into the OS/distro itself that makes me way more productive with better results. While the array of finetuned technologies/plugins/samples might not be as extensive as on other more popular platforms, the Jack environment and its freedom is really unrivaled. I think it has to do with the way of doing things on Linux systems vs other operating systems, while on Windows you have your DAW + ReWire, on Linux you just fire up Jack and a few dozens of smaller applications (+ your DAW, which might be Rosegarden or Ardour or others) that you can tie together with easy-to-use interfaces like patchage or ladish. On that note, ladish is awesome, allowing you to suspend and recover whole jack sessions (with dozens of programs) in a simple click. Also check out kxstudio, they have some really fancy and nicely built tools that further improve the ecosystem.

yeureka 13y ago

Baselight, IMHO one of the best film non-linear grading systems, was developed and runs in Linux.

buovjaga 13y ago

Here are some newer contenders in the FOSS video editing arena: http://shotcut.org/ http://shotcut.org/ http://code.google.com/p/flowblade/ http://code.google.com/p/flowblade/ New compositing tools (both from France): http://natron.inria.fr/ http://natron.inria.fr/ http://buttleofx.wordpress.com/ http://buttleofx.wordpress.com/ I'd say 2014 looks pretty good for FOSS/Linux video editing!