I’ve also seen that black magic’s editor is available for Linux, but it is an enormous package...
The thing is, I really want to like Kdenlive because it is really close to being able to do what I want, but I just felt that every step of the way I had to be very creative just to figure out a workflow that would work well. I eventually moved to the video editor in Blender which has a lot fewer features, but the workflow is really exceptional. I figured that what time I saved struggling with Kdenlive I could spend using other tools for features that aren't in Blender.
I don't do any video editing any more (I decided video isn't really a medium that I enjoy being expressive in), so take my comments with a grain of salt.
Second that. Had great and worse times with Kdenlive.
My general feeling: KDE software tends to be more unstable (i.e. crash or freeze more frequently) then GNOME software. But they have in general more features. Just compare the KDE office suite, Calligra, against OpenOffice (which is however not related to GNOME). It is amazing at what speed KDE software moves, in general.
> Second that. Had great and worse times with Kdenlive.
Agree also. Two elements of hope regarding stability : - The timeline refactoring is nearly completed - A nice fuzzing system has been added, which should really help : see https://kdenlive.org/en/2019/03/inside-kdenlive-how-to-fuzz-...
The presentation and spreadsheet do need some work, though.
I don't know on Linux, but for Windows I also had to search around and manually install some codecs because otherwise it wouldn't render to a given format (I believe it was mp4).
Then I've found OpenShot, that was enough for my requirements (https://www.openshot.org/). It has a Linux version. Source code here: https://github.com/OpenShot/openshot-qt
For a free (as in free beer) software, it is really good. It support a wide variety of feature that can be extended through plug-ins, has a decent UX (even though some stuff required me to look in the documentation) and has a decent documentation (although some of it is outdated).
Overall, if you are looking for a free video editor, my experience is that KDenLive is the best you will get (as of 2019). It has some obvious drawback (last time I used it, it was crashing fairly frequently, but a lot has been fixed), but if you are looking to do some amateur/semi-pro video-editing, KDenLive should do it for you.
Freedom of updating and installing newer versions of software without waiting for maintainer/distro half of year to build new package (outdated next week because it's STABLE package).
This is main problem of any linux desktop initiative - linux users get newer gimp after windows users.
Hope snaps/flatpack/appimage solve this problem in future (snap versions of apps look ugly now).
Using "stable" distros makes little sense for other than complete newbies and enterprise-like critical usage and such imo. If you don't need bleeding edge stuff they are a good choice though, but for average users modern rolling releases are definitely stable enough.
The freedom is there.
New version of Gimp available for all windows users at day one after release is not bleeding edge - it's just normal new release.
Meaning of "bleeding edge" and "stable" became strangely twisted in linux community.
New version of browser is not bleeding edge - it just normal life cycle of modern software (year 2019).
I just replaced my GPU today. I ran `sudo pacman -S nvidia`, rebooted, and I was good to go.
As an aside: Arch isn't as "bleeding edge" as some people would have you believe. They have a testing repository, so packages get vetted before making it into the main package repositories. They often wait for a point-release of some software (like Gnome Shell) to help ensure that only stable versions make it in.
Plus, the Arch wiki is the most useful Linux resource I've found. I reference it even when I'm using an Ubuntu machine.
You have this freedom. It is known as "compiling from sources". In fact GNU/Linux is the only big OS/ecosystem where you have this freedom.
But like all other freedoms, you have to work hard for it.
On windows you just can download the same program and use it without any compiling. And you can freely downgrade it if you want to. No compiling, no messing with repos, makeinstall, and randomly corrupted system.
Then use Arch, or some other rolling release distro.
> Hope snaps/flatpack/appimage solve this problem in future
These are terrible solutions, not least due to the theming issue. Rolling release is the real solution.
Windows + chocolatey or macos + brew (cask) is better than any repository with dependencies on linux.
Also, do not want Arch or any <distro-name> - I just want LINUX (or Desktop Linux).
One predictable system, instead of many kinds/variants of basically the same programs - one system to hate, one system to deal with. (Arch wiki is good though)
What do you mean ? How can you have Linux without using a distro ? Are you saying there should be one official distro instead of many ?
[Awaits inevitable flood of comments along the lines of "I tried x on Ubuntu and it didn't work but it worked fine on y"]
Linux is kernel - I talk about good alternative for macOS/Windows, alternative desktop system, that can do much better than other two.
And this is why I think snap/flatpack/etc model ("system" in system) is real solution for linux desktop.
Valve's Steam client already achieved same thing: provided one "sdk" for apps, one runtime (that developer can rely on) - because you can't have one main linux organisation like microsoft and apple.
I tackled various realm of creative production, namely motion graphics and electronic music. This all started when I was using Windows and pirated program of famous tools like AE, but I was able to get around in Linux with FOSS tools. I use LMMS like a pro. I even used GIMP on Windows.
This was NOT the case with video production. I was making a simple lyrics video on kdenlive, but I had to scrap the project because every time I tried to add a little bit of effect, it was half-baked or simply impossible. I cannot change size of the video without having a major headache on anchor points. I cannot "crop" a content right on kdenlive. The problem? Kdenlive is actually the most feature-rich video editor I ever tried on Linux.
If you only do light editing it may work for you, but ONLY light editing. You can't have custom stuff going on as video creation tool is basically not there. I also use it as a subtitle tool... which basically sums up what your expectation should be.
Not once did I have to resort to Google or documentation for help -- it was all fairly intuitive. I want to reiterate that I wasn't doing anything fancy, just trimming bits and pieces off clips here and there.
I'm actually not aware of another one that uses proxy files on Linux, and with even cell phones shooting at 4K any video editor that doesn't is unusable in most cases.
DaVinci Resolve is also extremely good (probably even better than Kdenlive), but it's a commercial software although they do have a free unlimited version.
FYI, Blender can user proxy files, although I don't think there is an option to automatically create the proxies when you add a video clip.
They aren't in the same league. Resolve is used in Hollywood productions. The license is cheap, 300$, If you wanted to buy it, the free version works great. The big hardware console for Resolve is 30k.