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Open Source Video Editing Software

Zamros

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I've been using an old version of Sony Vegas for years now and its age is starting to show. When I finish my Clone Wars edit, I'll be switching to a different editing software.

I like the open source model so try to support it as much as I can. I'd rather not pirate editing software, and I don't want to get subscribed to Adobe's terrible terrible system. So I figured, why not check out the Open Source editing market?

Pitivi is one currently in development and approaching a stable release. It is written in Python so if you're familiar with that script you can do with the SC as you like. I'll be excited to check it out once v1.0 releases (Currently v0.98).

Openshot seemed like a decent system. Then I noticed that their website hadn't been updated since 2011. So this would probably be a bit of a fixer upper.

Lightworks' Free version seems decent although I'm put off by its output limitations. Not exactly Open if they're withholding software features.

Cinelerra CV is promising, with a seemingly active development cycle. Although it's pretty much just for Linux.

Kdenlive is built on Qt and KDE (Hence the name). It has had an active development cycle since 2003 so it looks pretty promising.

Blender seems like an excellent choice, although it seems to be more of an animation tool than anything so unless I redoing the janky animation of The Killing Joke, I think I'll pass.

Natron is another that could work as an editing software, but it seems to be focused on digital compositing. It could be useful for individual scenes that require that though.

Shotcut has been actively developed since 2011 by a guy using the code that he also developed. It looks cool, but I wouldn't be diving into the code any time soon.


Anyone got experience with any of this software?
 

TV's Frink

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I actually found both of those by searching for "Lightworks."
 

Zamros

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That might be why, I wasn't searching the specific software names, cheers.
 

That One Guy

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I haven't tried any of the open-source editing suites, but I wanted to mention that OpenShot is actively developed, with its most recent update dated last week.

If you do try any of these out, please share your experiences and how you feel they compare to commercial editing suites. It's always useful to have information about the strengths and weaknesses of different tools.
 

Zamros

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That One Guy said:
I haven't tried any of the open-source editing suites, but I wanted to mention that OpenShot is actively developed, with its most recent update dated last week.

If you do try any of these out, please share your experiences and how you feel they compare to commercial editing suites. It's always useful to have information about the strengths and weaknesses of different tools.

I'm not sure what website I was looking at, it's clearly in active development. I'll put that down to a brain fart.

Looking through the development cycle it seems to have drastically improved since its v2.0 release, I'll have to give it a look.

And yes, I will post my reactions to whatever software I end up using.
 

theslime

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I'm a Linux user, and have researched this quite a bit. Open source video software really has the commercial world beat on the tools bit (ffmpeg, Vapoursynth, Avisynth, Sox, etc.), but on the user-friendly software side it's lagging behind. I think there are really only two great and user-friendly NLE's on Linux: KDEnlive and Flowblade. KDEnlive is a pretty solid editor, and one of the best reasons (along with Krita) to use a KDE-based Linux distro. Flowblade is a hidden gem no one ever talks about, despite the fact that it's more or less PiTiVi without the bugs. It lacks a couple of features that would be great to have (like proper 5.1 editing), but it's well-designed and stable. (I think Flowblade is Linux only, but KDEnlive might work on Windows.)

Openshot is promising, but the last time I tried 2.0, it crashed badly. He's been bugfixing like crazy the last six months, though, so it might be better now.

I've completely given up on Cinelerra. I hear it's pro-level if you can actually make it work. I don't have the patience.

Also, there's Blender if you can get over the fact that most of the features are completely useless when you're just editing.
 

Zamros

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I wasn't too impressed with Openshot after using it. It has a very nice interface, and seems on the outset like a decent setup for an NLE system, but then it crashed. And it crashed beyond repair. Even multiple fresh installs wouldn't fix it.

It could be great, if it worked.
 

Zamros

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Old computer is almost bricked at this point, am installing kdenlive on my new Ubuntu setup, will see how this goes :)
 

Octalus

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I'm using the video editor of Blender for my edits. It's not as fancy as Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere, but it's good enough for editing. It's the fastest video editing software that I have used so far and has a neat feature for creating low-res proxies of the videos to edit, which allows for a smooth editing experience on my $300 laptop.
 

DigModiFicaTion

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Octalus said:
I'm using the video editor of Blender for my edits. It's not as fancy as Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere, but it's good enough for editing. It's the fastest video editing software that I have used so far and has a neat feature for creating low-res proxies of the videos to edit, which allows for a smooth editing experience on my $300 laptop.

Do you have a UI project file to share? I've tried using Blender to edit, but the UI never works for me.
 

DigModiFicaTion

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Octalus said:
No sorry, I'm using the original UI.

Any chance you could do a video/screen cap demonstration? I taught myself how to use blender, well how to make a crawl, but I couldn't really understand it much beyond that.
 

Octalus

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This is a great tutorial series that I've used to get into video editing with blender:
 

DigModiFicaTion

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I've seen those. Never really could get it to to work without it feeling lagged and buggy. Maybe it was the version of blender I was using?

If you have any tips in the future feel free to post them in the blender editor thread. Having some community insight might help others like me better understand it :)
 

Octalus

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Well, I'm hardly an expert with blender. But I will keep the thread you mentioned in mind.
 
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