Olive: Professional open-source non-linear video editor
github.com
github.com
Just thought I’d mention these as they might be useful alternatives for some people as they are widely used in the industry so there is a lot of tutorial content etc. available. This looks really cool and is an impressive open source project though!
I have also fully replaced image editors with imagemagick on the cli and some bash scripts.
This phrasing will confuse people who are not familiar with the expression "Free Software". It would be better phrased like this:
>If you're more interested in the “free-of-charge” (as in beer) than the “Free Software” (as in Freedom) part
The full version (notable features are a proprietary GPU-based h.264 codec and support for framerates beyond 60 Hz and resolutions beyond 4K (the free version does 4K) is still only 300 bucks or so.
Many of the features added by Resolve Studio are super awesome things that most people don't need and that other NLEs don't have. I bought the Studio version for the realtime lens distortion removal filter, which saved me a lot of time on a project.
This is how all video editing software I've ever used works. Are there any video editors that aren't non-linear? Seems a bit unnecessary to mention.
The solution to both problems is to produce a workprint from the camera negative and edit with that. This inverts the negative image and gives you a copy that you can play with freely.
Watching someone editing on a Steenbeck [0], you will quickly see the importance of not editing the camera negative directly.
Once the edit decisions are finalized, the original camera negative is carefully cut and spliced to match the workprint, and a pristine "answer print" is struck from the edited camera negative. Traditionally, this is also where color timing is done—the printer lights can be configured to balance different shots and scenes as the answer print is being made.
The final release prints are usually third-generation copies (if you don't count the camera negative as a copy)—(1) a handful of interpositives are made from the original camera negative following the exact procedure used to make the answer print, then (2) internegatives are struck from the interpositives, and (3) a large number of release prints can be struck from the internegatives.
A notable exception to this was the release of Dunkirk (2017). The 37 IMAX screens in the world [1] that were exhibiting a 15-perf 70mm film print were actually showing a first-generation copy struck directly from the original camera negative.
(All that said, it is possible to shoot on reversal film, which is positive out of the camera, and can be edited and projected directly. Also, I've never edited a film like this myself and likely got a few things wrong—so take this with a grain of salt.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUxbfiZ_-9Y [1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/imax-melbourne-is-the-onl...
I took a film production class in which we shot and edited negativeless 16mm film. Tape held together the splices when they were screened the day after editing, never had a problem. 25+ years later, my guess is they’d fall apart if you tried to project them. I didn’t pay to get a VHS transfer made then so they’ll probably never be seen again; no great loss.
If you want a real professional-quality NLE on Linux, there’s Davinci Resolve. In the commercial world, it’s more known for its color-grading features, but it’s a decent editor as well.
If you’re an actual professional (you edit video for money), you’re going to be on a Mac or PC and using Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere, or MAYBE Final Cut Pro (but probably not).
And more and more Mac video editors are switching to PC to get higher clock speeds and better GPUs for dealing with 4K, 5k, and 8k footage faster for less $$$. It will be VERY interesting to see how that trend plays out once the new Mac Pro is released.
I think if they had a monthly subscription option like Premiere & Avid do, they'd get a lot more people willing to give switching a try. The free version is VERY solid, but $300 just to get 4k support is a pretty big showstopper for a lot of potential converts.
In fact, I believe most modern films—including big-budget blockbusters—are still being mastered in 2K (with UHD Blu-Ray discs being upscaled from the 2K masters). My question to anyone for whom spending $300 on an NLE is a big deal: does your project really need more image resolution than titles like Jurassic World and The Hunger Games? Keep in mind that, in addition to spending the $300 on software, your image processing and storage requirements have now quadrupled.
For a close look at the impact of image resolution on cinema viewing, I highly recommend Steve Yedlin's excellent Resolution Demo [0].
I used (non-Studio) Resolve for months coming from Premiere before purchasing the Studio version largely to take advantage of the real-time lens distortion removal effect.
In my view, the non-Studio version of DaVinci Resolve is a fully capable pro NLE and a formidable competitor to Premiere Pro and FCPX. There are some amazing features added in the Studio version (such as the face refinement tool and real-time spatial and temporal noise reduction) but they appear to me to be non-essential unless you are doing certain very specialized types of work.
There are limits on resolution and frame rate, but they are well in excess of the resolutions and frame rates used by most big-budget Hollywood films.
Is there a specific feature exclusive to DR Studio that is preventing you from kicking the tires with Resolve?
Edit: I’m not affiliated with BMD by the way, apart from being an enthusiastic customer.
Can't you move this to a preprocessing / postprocessing step, i.e., out of the editor?
Can a product claim to be professional when it is still in alpha?
By the way, congrats on launching!
"Professional" distinguishes the target audience and use cases; a professional NLE video editor that isn't done yet is different from a lightweight personal video editor that's close to feature-complete.
I use Blender for all of my video editing, but that's despite the Blender video editing UI, not because of it. The Blender devs are very clear that video editing is not a focus for them, and it's only recently that Blender got a maintainer for the video editor.
3-point editing, a core part of most NLE workflows, is just not a thing in Blender. Things like transforming (move, rotate, scale) a video clip, adjusting clip speed, etc. are awkward, glitchy, incomplete, or all of the above.
Blender is crazy powerful, but it's definitely a Venn-diagram relation to dedicated NLE software, not a superset.
I was really excited a while back for the OpenShot rewrite, but one thing I never liked was the new (iirc similar to the old) UI. I can’t exactly pinpoint what, it just had more of a “Windows Movie Maker” style UI, and it wasn’t my cup of tea. This UI, though, looks pretty nice imo.
I’m curious to dig in and see where this project is headed. Would be amazing to see an opensource NLE working towards hardware acceleration and supporting huge resolutions well, but I’ll also take an open source mid-tier video editing tool with a nice UI and be perfectly content.
Use case is just curiosity... was dabbling with applying a LUT to images and thought it'd be nice to create my own with controls as opposed to downloading one pre-baked or using commercial software to export one.
It's still considered alpha-quality, but claims to be rapidly evolving. From the screenshots, it looks like it's already fairly capable. I wonder if it could be a useful alternative to Kdenlive.
If you want a feature added, you have the ability to do it yourself or pay someone (possibly the core developers) to do it directly. Contrast to asking a company like Adobe, where you represent maybe 0.0000002% of Adobe's revenue (based on $20/mo vs $9 billion), what do you think the chances are they'll listen to your input?
If Adobe (or someone who buys them in the future) decides to change their pricing model, or drastically change their product, you have no choice, or you're stuck on an old version (if it still runs), or you just can't open any old projects anymore. With open source, that type of thing rarely happens and when it does, it generally leads to forks (and you can always fork it yourself).
It's really about flexibility, balancing risk, and ultimately, being able to get done what you're trying to get done. Even if you don't use it, the competition generally pushes everyone to keep improving.
What I take away from “professional” in this context is that it targets professional workflows and capabilities.