Video Editors
We have extremely promising open source media editing applications for Linux like the Jokosher audio editor and PiTiVi video editor, both built on the powerful GStreamer framework, reaching a point of maturity where the focus can shift from making sure the underlying infrastructure of the application is solid to adding all the cool features that everyone's been waiting for. These apps will make multimedia editing simple and easy yet still fully featured. Projects like the recently announced VideoLAN Movie Creator (you know, from the people behind the VLC media player) and OpenShot are certainly cool projects which show that FOSS video editing is really progressing, but PiTiVi will still be my NLE of choice. VLMC is sure to be a great product, but being cross-platform drives the focus away from our OS of choice, and OpenShot while perhaps adding as many features as quickly as possible, lacks the same focus on proper design that PiTiVi has.
In short, PiTiVi's development has a strong focus on doing everything "the right way" before adding extra features, and using the GStreamer framework is an important choice. The result is better integration with the Ubuntu, GNOME-based desktop, a consistent user interface, and clean, modular code that will help development progress faster as we enter the stage of expanding the feature list. It's an exciting time for open source video editing on Linux, and hopefully more developers can hop on board to bring these advancements sooner.
High Definition Video
While things may be looking up, one shortcoming is an ever increasing problem that deserves some more serious attention. There is a lack of proper MPEG-TS support which is used for HDV and AVCHD camcorders and as such, Linux users need a way to easily play, edit and see thumbnails of these videos. Video editing on Linux can't get very far when the de facto standard for high-definition video isn't well-supported especially as more and more cameras are HD out of the box, and the prices for such camcorders are falling.
I have a camcorder that happens to produce these .mts/.m2ts files and in order for me to be able to make use of them, I would have to convert it to another format using ffmpeg. This should not be necessary. New users should not need to look up how to convert their video, and they should not need to re-encode the file and lose the original quality of the video. This bug will hold back video editing on Linux and generate a lot of angry users who cannot reliably play or edit their video files.
Hopefully some developers will address this mostly overlooked bug before it becomes a bigger issue and turn it into something to brag about. In the big picture though, this bug isn't huge, and it's sure to get fixed at some point; the question is whether it'll happen sooner or later. Either way, the more developers working on GStreamer and video editors like PiTiVi, squashing these bugs and adding new features, the better.
We have extremely promising open source media editing applications for Linux like the Jokosher audio editor and PiTiVi video editor, both built on the powerful GStreamer framework, reaching a point of maturity where the focus can shift from making sure the underlying infrastructure of the application is solid to adding all the cool features that everyone's been waiting for. These apps will make multimedia editing simple and easy yet still fully featured. Projects like the recently announced VideoLAN Movie Creator (you know, from the people behind the VLC media player) and OpenShot are certainly cool projects which show that FOSS video editing is really progressing, but PiTiVi will still be my NLE of choice. VLMC is sure to be a great product, but being cross-platform drives the focus away from our OS of choice, and OpenShot while perhaps adding as many features as quickly as possible, lacks the same focus on proper design that PiTiVi has.
In short, PiTiVi's development has a strong focus on doing everything "the right way" before adding extra features, and using the GStreamer framework is an important choice. The result is better integration with the Ubuntu, GNOME-based desktop, a consistent user interface, and clean, modular code that will help development progress faster as we enter the stage of expanding the feature list. It's an exciting time for open source video editing on Linux, and hopefully more developers can hop on board to bring these advancements sooner.
High Definition Video
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| A snapshot camera that produces .mts files |
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| PiTiVi is one of many multimedia apps lacking proper .mts support |
Hopefully some developers will address this mostly overlooked bug before it becomes a bigger issue and turn it into something to brag about. In the big picture though, this bug isn't huge, and it's sure to get fixed at some point; the question is whether it'll happen sooner or later. Either way, the more developers working on GStreamer and video editors like PiTiVi, squashing these bugs and adding new features, the better.
13 comments:
The new features in gstreamer are amazing and should really open doors for applications like Pitivi. I just hope that they are ready when Lucid comes out.
Or you should just use kdenlive...
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2010/01/video-editing-in-linux-a-look-at-pitivi-and-kdenlive.ars
indeed kdenlive is the best open source non linear video editor ; and it became just better with version 0.77
I used the search engine of the OpenShot Video Editor website, typed "mts" in the window and found the following link
http://www.openshotvideo.com/2009/07/avchd-h264-aac-and-mts-supported.html
It seems that OpenShot does already support AVCHD, H264, AAC and MTS since july 2009.
Greetings from Catalonia!!
Jokosher was updated 3 times in the last 8 months...
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~jokosher-code/jokosher/main
Not exactly promising...
Right now, KDEnlive is the best video editor on Linux.
My 8yr old and his friends who have macs have figured how to take their skateboard videos and edit them with no problem.
There is always need for more apps because what one adds, the others will soon after if its worth it... so we users benefit.
I am however more interested in the VLC one you mentioned which I wasnt aware of.
I am a huge VLC fan since back in my Win days so i am very excited by these news.
nowadays when I switch people to Mandriva Linux, ive already shown those people FF, OO, Thunderbird as well as VLC so it makes the transition easier. (as well as Skype, its not free software but people love it and it works well with video nowadays. VLC just works so im very psyched by this.
DV Grab 3.5 and Cinellerra, all works fine on Ubuntu with HDV.......
How can you write an essay about NLE editors for Linux without mentioning KDEnlive? Is it because it is a KDE app and won't integrate perfectly with GNOME or whatever, regardless of the fact that it is currently the best in its field (OSS NLE video editors, that is)?
Biased much?
A agree with comments about kdenlive, you should have really considered that app, whether you like KDE or not.
What's interesting about this "review" is that PiTiVi can't actually do anything but link together video. I can do this with cat file1.avi file2.avi file3.avi > file4.avi.
Without transitions, clip editing, titles etc.. it's completely worthless.
Unfortunately the state of NLE editors in Linux is very sad. Cinelerra looks powerful but can't stay running long enough for most purposes - even testing.
OpenShot is promising, but it has quirks too, and while editing HD video, the audio/video synchronization is not working. Audio plays fine, but video lags behind (on a Q6600 with 2GB RAM). It works at first, but when it happens, you're doomed, and no "undo" function...
PiTiVi is nice, but as a previous poster mentioned, you can't do any real work with it. We really need transitions and titles, at *least*.
KDENLive is nice, but it too has some stability issues - at least on my machine.
Oh well... Video Editing is one of the very few reasons that keep me from wiping my XP partition. I guess at some point in the future, things will be better - a few months back, I couldn't use my iPod Touch with Ubuntu, and now I can! :-)
blender's sequence editor is what i use to edit videos in linux. I usually compile it since i found i get audio issues if i don't. But I've made two music videos using it and been paid for my work. granted blender's got a learning curve but more and more documentation is popping up since when I first started using it.
Let's not forget LiVES:
http://lives.sourceforge.net
it's also a very nice video editor for Linux.
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