OpenShot Video Editor Reaches Version 1.0 128
An anonymous reader writes "After only one year of development Jonathan Thomas has released version 1.0 of his impressive NLE for Linux. Based on the MLT Framework, OpenShot Video Editor has taken less time to reach this stage of development than any other Linux NLE. Dan Dennedy of Kino fame has also lent a helping hand ensuring that OpenShot has the stability and proven back-end that is needed in such a project."
Deb and PPA (Score:2, Interesting)
This is pretty neat, they also provide a .deb and ppa for installing. The demo video looks cool, I've never heard of this software before but it's good to see something new come out of the woodwork and do something halfway decent.
What about Gstreamer Gnonlin and Pitivi? (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks like the author of this program spent(wasted?) a lot of time trying to use Gstreamer as the back-end for his project but basically ran into a brick wall [openshotvideo.com].
If I remember correctly the developers of another Linux NLE called diva [archive.org] finally gave up on Gstreamer after years of struggling with it and subsequently abandoned their project altogether. Didn't the Diva developers also clash with the Gstreamer developers?
So it appears that the above developers put a lot of effort in writing Linux NLE's using Gstreamer but still ultimately failed at their attempts. Is there something inherently flawed with Gstreamer/Gnonlin? If Video software using Gnonlin as its back-end(Pitivi) can only be written by its author(Edward Hervey), Gstreamer must be too cryptic for mere mortal programmers. I wonder if anything formidable will ever come of Pitivi.
[Insufficiently specific] (Score:4, Interesting)
> Is this one usable, unlike the other ones for linux?
Ah, if I answer "Yes", you want me to imply the (unspecified) "other ones" aren't usable? And if I answer "No", what does that mean? Your question appears to be obvious flamebait, if you didn't mean it to be, you should work harder in the future to enable real discourse. A good start would be to actually list the names of the programs in question and for each one explain why you didn't think they were usable.
> That's one thing I never liked about linux, the tools are all either extremely dumbed down and
> featureless or incredibly hard to start using. I like power, but I like being able to jump right in.
Is this your standard "I am fishing for mod points" commentary on Linux? You didn't find even one tool which was both powerful and easy enough to use that you could just "jump in"? People here are posting that their grandmothers practically don't notice when they switch them over to Firefox from IE. I guess that means that you don't believe it's "a tool", or you don't think it is "powerful"?
A pity, since I would have classified "video editing" as really one niche where Linux, up until recently, was quite deficient compared to (what I've heard about) proprietary solutions on Windows and OS X. It happened by chance that LiVES reached 1.0 exactly when I needed a video editor to edit a short home video clip (less than 10 minutes long) and it was exactly what I needed (in terms of functionality).
> Additionally, is this 1.0 as good as the competition's 1.0?
No, ours goes to 1.1!
This question is even more idiotic. First of all, what program or programs are "the competition's"? Secondly, version numbers are arbitrary in that each vendor/OSS project defines totally different criteria as to what reaching the v. 1.0 goal means. One project might define it as "we have a rock-stable program which is useful for editing 98% of all home video" and another project might define it as "we feel our program is useful for simple editing tasks for production cinema".
Re:Music? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Feaking Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Recently I tried Pitivi to make a cheesy Christmas Christmas video. Otherwise all my experience has been with my copy of Adobe premiere Elements 4.0. I looked hard at the advantages of paying for a more recent copy of Adobe Premiere too, but it offered no advantages that I could see. (And it is sloooooooow, at least on my Vista hardware).
The workflow I developed was to edit using pitivi on Ubuntu, because the speed of Linux on my Quad-core helped make the labor go quickest. Then I exported video in a humungous .avi container, with motion jpegs and MU-law audio, and let Premiere sloooowly render it to FLV adding motion-stabilization and auto-color-levels/balance. Newer versions of Premiere Elements are identical for these aspects as far as I could tell.
I have read Ubuntu dropped Gimp while opting for Pitivi, and the devs for OpenShot were in a competitive mood, trying to become the Ubuntu video editor-of-choice, (at least the one distributed on the CD). I cannot pull up a reference now, but it looks like this is the result of timely competition; and someone working their ass off, possibly to make an impression prior to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.
I will certainly try OpenShot next. While it seems Pitivi support for gstreamer export would work really well, in practice I only found 1 maybe 2 useful export formats that Premiere would work with. Also Pitivi transitions & titles are still being worked on. These are the things that appear compelling, and are now being offered by OpenShot.
Adobe Premiere Elements, and TechSmith Camtasia are 2 of the 3 critical Windows apps I still use regularly, and their days are looking numbered. Adobe FrameMaker is the other one.
FWIW, I find video screenshot documentation useful for some projects & online help. Also, I have found that recording screencasts of software engineers explaining there complex app/logic to me, saves time & frustration for everyone, while allowing for better final documentation to be created from using this captured info (i.e. this is efficient knowledge transfer, and a great way to make docs).
Re:Yes but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Even mplayer/mencoder, the best of the bunch imho, has many, many options that won't work together, and can produce output that itself cannot read. How the developers even manage to keep that massive jumble of libraries from bursting into flames I can't imagine.
Just because you *can* do something, it doesn't mean you *should*. Mencoder won't complain (much) if you give it mutually-incompatible options but it might produce something weird and unusable. Equally, it might produce something weird and awesome.
It reminds me of the drinks machines we used to have at a place I used to work in - you selected a drink by typing in a number, where the bit pattern of the number enabled or disabled various things in the machine. So, black coffee no sugar might be 11, fizzy orange juice might be 22, chicken soup might be 41 and so on. So logically warm fizzy orange juice (nice) would be 23, hot orange juice (awesome) would be 21 and warm fizzy black coffee (nicer than it sounds) would be 13. Of course this means that 42 gives you fizzy chicken soup, which isn't very nice at all.
Re:I-Frames, P-Frames, B-Frames... (Score:3, Interesting)