Pitivi Video Editor Surpasses 50% Crowdfunding Goal, Releases Version 0.94

kxra writes With the latest developments, Pitivi is proving to truly be a promising libre video editor for GNU distributions as well as a serious contender for bringing libre video production up to par with its proprietary counterparts. Since launching a beautifully well-organized crowdfunding campaign (as covered here previously), the team has raised over half of their 35,000 € goal to pay for full-time development and has entered "beta" status for version 1.0. They've released two versions, 0.94 (release notes) being the most recent, which have brought full MPEG-TS/AVCHD support, porting to Python 3, lots of UX improvements, and—of course—lots and lots of bug fixes. The next release (0.95) will run on top of Non Linear Engine, a refined and incredibly more robust backend Pitivi developers have produced to replace GNonLin and bring Pitivi closer to the rock-solid stability needed for the final 1.0 release.

Pitiemacs

[CanEHdian]

Bah, humbug! My money is on Pitiemacs.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fantastic industrial management system and ERP suite, I just wish it had a better video editor.

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[marcello_dl]

But, emacs users piti-vi!

LGPL 2.1

[Anonymous Coward]

So would this mean that any plugins would not have to be GPL?

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[Anonymous Coward]

So that the people making it can continue to make it. So that they can continue to improve it. So that they can do so more than they already have.

It takes time to make software. Time is worth money.

You want someone to make it? They have to invest their time. That costs [opportunity cost] them money. They either do it out of the goodness of their heart, or someone gives them money to do it.

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[Delicious Pun]

Closed source software already exists. Why not spend money on that?

Re:Honest question

[Narcocide]

Because closed source software disappears when the company goes out of business. Ever heard of Caligari Truespace?

Exactly.

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[Delicious Pun]

But open source software can effectively disappear too. If the devs want to change it to something you don't like, you have no say in the matter. If no one forks it and you can't do it yourself, it's gone.

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[Narcocide]

But if its something useful and popular, historically usually someone will fork it, or replace it with something else. Its no guarantee of everlasting life, but making it closed-source-only is an almost certain eventual doom.

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[Bite The Pillow]

So back to the point - the purpose of funding open source instead of closed source is to ensure future production. Closed source has a product in mind, and you pay for what you were delivered, with fixes to major bugs.

In that sense, Caligari Truespace did exactly what it was supposed to do for whatever money people gave it. Sure it disappeared, but people didn't pay for a continuing company. They paid for a product that worked.

Open source means that the people who care and want to develop it will. If th

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[LordLimecat]

Gnome2, AmaroK, Songbird...

Yea, OSS just isnt the miracle elixir people like to pretend it is, and "Just fork it" isnt an effective incantation.

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[risom]

Gnome2, AmaroK, Songbird... Yea, OSS just isnt the miracle elixir people like to pretend it is, and "Just fork it" isnt an effective incantation.

But the Mate Desktop, a Gnome 2 fork, exists, so GP seems to be right: If it's popular enough, it will live on.

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[reikae]

Nobody claimed that free software means someone will fulfill one's every wish. In the end, with free software you're allowed to create the fork; proprietary software, you're not (generally). That's it, no miracles involved.

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[Narcocide]

Also, you're forgetting that the simple fact of there being existing open-source code for a project, means that someone, even you, given the effort and time, can learn to fork it, or rewrite something like it from scratch. With closed-source code this is not possible either.

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[jones_supa]

Just be aware that we are often talking about 100k+ lines of code projects these days. For fixing minor bugs it is okay, but adding new features means a lot of real work. Have you tried downloading the source code of some application and making even just small modifications to it?

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[Narcocide]

But adding new features isn't necessary just to keep it in play. Often all that is required is minor updates to keep it working on newer kernels.

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[jones_supa]

Yep, that should be doable by one man.

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[Narcocide]

You seem to be forgetting the fact that if the source code isn't available then its not doable AT ALL. PERIOD. You also seem to be assuming that there only will ever be "one man."

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[jones_supa]

My main point is that it is hard also when the source is available. At least I have found fixing even a small bug to take a few days. In the end, the fix can be trivial but it takes ages to get familiar with the codebase.

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[Narcocide]

Well then, just imagine how much longer it must have taken to write in the first place. Don't think of that time you spent learning the codebase as a waste; think of it as an investment.

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[jones_supa]

That is true.

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[jones_supa]

No, no, no. As an example, download Firefox source code and find where the code for linear interpolation of zoomed images is located. Before even modifying it, just locate it and try to roughly understand how it works. When you have done this, come back to the coffee table.

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[LordLimecat]

Open source software disappears too. Ever hear of AmaroK?

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[Anonymous Coward]

You still can compile AmaroK if you want to. The source code is available.
If you are skilled enough you can even make improvements.

Try that with closed source...

Re: Honest question

[iluvcapra]

Avid has been in development and in release for about 25 years now; I think Adobe Premiere is been available since at least 1992. I think both have been available for longer than the Linux operating system, let alone any OSS video editing package.

Re:Honest question

[davydagger]

you don't know what your getting, often no bug tracker, or companies hostile to the concept of fixing bugs, expensive, often bloated, often limited in features, and unable to make your own in many cases.

There are lots of reasons to get involved in FOSS programs. The notion that an established project is going to pick up shop after you donate is simply ludacris.

Also, if a program is GPL or copyleft, more or less all work put into it, will be done publicly and will be available in some form.

Oh, and what happens if a closed program just goes away, the maintainers split, company goes under? No more bug fixes, doesn't get ported to new platforms.

I just saw your page, not convinced your not a troll.

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[Microlith]

ludacris

Ludicrous is the word you want. What you used was this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]

Re:Honest question

[unrtst]

Agreed with AC.

In addition, they're goal was 35,000 €. In comparison to commercial development, that's damn near free.

You can continue to:
* pay zero and use nothing
* use any of the existing free-ish editors that don't have the features this has
* pay zero and pirate some commercial software
* pay your monthly subscription for creative cloud etc
* pay ~$1k for a license to something like Final Cut Pro or Premier Pro
* pay nothing and still end up using this after others put their time and money into it and still complain because they asked for money

Why *wouldn't* you donate money to an open source project?

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[Anonymous Coward]

* pay zero and use Fusion 7 - https://www.blackmagicdesign.c... [blackmagicdesign.com] - now free-as-in-fantasy-beer
* pay zero and use LightWorks - http://www.lwks.com/ [lwks.com]

There's probably others that are closed source and commercially developed, yet available in free form one way or another, with extensive featuresets.

Of course on the open source side, there's further software as well. So I don't think it's unjust to ask why one would donate to Pitivi; it's just that the reason in this case is bunk. The real question should have b

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[hvdh]

I was looking for something free and tried Lightworks. I had a free-hand 720p recording from a Nikon D3100 and wanted to de-shake it, do some noise reduction (temporal, recoring was quite low-light at night), cut it in a few places and store it properly compressed. Nothing special, typical household stuff.
Lightworks free couldn't read the camera's video files (MPEG4/H.264 in MOV containier), had no image stabilization and couldn't export H.264. I also could not find proper noise reduction or a way to use av

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[Delicious Pun]

C'mon, admit it. You just want free stuff.

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[Camembert]

Correction: Final Cut Pro costs $300 these days. For someone who is serious about their video, that is not too bad. It is good enough for the Coen Brothers after all. But for non professional use, something like Premiere Elements or iMovie may be more than good enough, except of course if you use Linux. Does Pitivi offer more features?

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[iluvcapra]

NB. I'm not sure if the Coen brothers ever made the transition to Final Cut Pro X. Most professionals haven't. After X came out most feature crews I know either have been keeping their FCP 7 installations going or transitioned back to Avid. A lot of the people on the very low end have mostly transitioned to Premiere Pro.

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[wierd_w]

No, because I still would have gotten what I paid for. A more mature, more stable code base, from which a good and fully useful product can be built.

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[grahamtriggs]

You would donate if you believe in the direction that they are taking, and want to help them get there / sustain it.

Just like you buy commercial / closed source software, because you want what it does.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, but you have more of a chance of getting what you want if you are prepared to put your money (or time) where your mouth is.

Porting should be given priority

[Alworx]

I think the broader the base, the quicker the funding, so I would recommend pushing for porting to OSX, Windows and perhaps even Android

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[kxra]

Aside from achieving stability, there are no set priorities, and donors have been given the opportunity to vote. Porting has not been of significant interest. It could be an issue of self-selection (probably is), but there is no way that the expanded donor base would be greater than the cost of doing those ports. Plus what's the point of porting to a platform which has way more competition available for no charge?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Completely agree with this. If it doesn't run natively on OS X, most content developers won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

I have the full Adobe Creative Suite, which costs $50 a month and gives me not just Premiere, but PhotoShop, Audition, Illustrator and the very very powerful After effects, which is something this project isn't even contemplating. The claims that PITIVI will somehow be an alternative to the very very feature rich tool suite from Adobe is laughable. The value for money Adobe is providi

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[Anonymous Coward]

Never say never. Don't underestimate the power of large numbers of people that have the same itch and are pointed in generally the same direction

There was a time when nobody thought anything could challenge the dominant operating system. Now there are several different viable OSes available, some of which are completely free. Same thing for web servers and word processers.

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[iluvcapra]

Never say never. Don't underestimate the power of large numbers of people that have the same itch and are pointed in generally the same direction

Casual users will no change their platform in order to get a video editor. People cutting YouTubes and home videos, that want "image stabilization" and "hum removal" are going to continue to use whatever platform makes the most sense for their use case. If all an OSS editor has to offer is "works like iMovie but free," that won't be enough to get people to transi

US Tax deductible

[gQuigs]

Just in case you were wondering.. (Handled by the Gnome Foundation)

And they let you allocate the money to specific sub-projects..

And slashdot posted a crowdfunding campaign before it was over!

why?

[jehan60188]

why is this necessary? i mean, blender has nonlinear video editing capabilities. what will this offer that blender doesnt?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Because Blender has a shit interface and is an enormous pain in the ass to use.

Also, I tried Pitivi recently and it crashed every few mouse clicks.So does every other FOSS video editor.

Can you fuckers just make something that doesn't crash CONTINUOUSLY?

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[Immerman]

Possibly a discoverable interface? I mean I'm pretty technically inclined, and I liked Blender once I got decent with it, but go few months without using it and I'm practically back to square one.

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[the_arrow]

You mean besides Blender not being a generic video editing program like, for example, Pitivi?

Awesome

[trawg]

More OSS video editors is great. I backed openshot [openshot.org] a while ago, not because I have any interest in video editing (or watching videos - would much prefer to read) but because I think it'd be great to wrest some of the power away from the commercial options.

Speaking of open source editing tools...

[neurovish]

Is Cinelerra still around? Looks like there was an actual update back in September, which is the first movement I've seen on the project in about 5 years. I've never come across anybody else that uses it though.

just use FFmpeg

[PJ6]

GUIs are overrated.