Ask HN: I'm building a video editor for Windows, what features do you need? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm building a video editor for Windows, what features do you need?

^ this.

Been working on this for longer than I care to admit ;) I'd like to know what things you'd like, and add them to my roadmap.

Thanks!

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The ability to apply filters / adjustments to pixel area sections of a video for a set number of frames.

Eg I want to lighten or darken or HSV adjust a limited area of the video for 400 frames. As opposed to applying an adjustment only to the full frame. Like using lassos, marquee selection, brushes, and so on in Photoshop or the equivalent.

Perhaps the ability to create pixel area adjustment layers (that sit over top of the video) with filters and then be able to apply those template layers only to a certain set of frames.

Nearly all video editing software lacks this type of granular ability; I assume because it's a pain to implement.

Thanks!

> The ability to apply filters / adjustments to pixel area sections of a video for a set number of frames.

This will definitely be there! Long story short, I will allow for something even better, but lets keep it a secret for now :) Having said that, I do believe this will come in an about 3-month timeframe, since it is indeed very hard to implement :)

> Perhaps the ability to create pixel area adjustment layers (that sit over top of the video) with filters and then be able to apply those template layers only to a certain set of frames.

This should also be there, again, my take right now is we'll have a BETA version of this in an about 3-4 months, and I assume it will take an additional 3-4 months to make it stable. Yes, it is very hard to implement ;)

Basic editing should be easy, some times all i just need to cut some bad part and render the output. That's all

Also most of the people on hn will not be professional video editors. So we mostly want something easy to use for small editing tasks.

Thanks! That already works very very easy (there's a tool which allows to to cut/split/reverse cut and the like, with instant preview at all times) ;) For things like this, I would say my app already shines :)

let me give it a try :)

Sounds good :D The link is this - https://studiocinematic.com - please let me know what you think :)

LATER EDIT: Here's a tutorial to get you started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv4g7bUU5vk

A beginner friendly interface I can teach my parents to use, with audio editing as an equal citizen. The options for doing simple multimedia are really lacking right now, and I'm tired of loaning my Adobe login info to friends and family so they can use Premiere which is complete overkill.

Thanks! Agreed! I would say I mostly have that, and in the near future I will also have several layers of audio which you can mix incredibly easy (right now I have a layer for sound effects, one for background music, one for recording, and several layers for the audio from your videos).

Cutting, trimming, moving are really really easy at this time (and also, you can stretch sound effects).

Any other audio operations you'd like?

Crossfade editing is pretty important when doing cuts.

Synchronizing audio to video is also pretty important and hard to do if you're not familiar with it, and also the most common task I've been asked to help people with (example: a lip sync video).

I wouldn't touch time stretching, that's a rabbit hole.

I'd hazard against using a "layer model" for audio because that will not scale very far. But audio engines are also a rabbit hole.

For SFX editing, a sampler or VST3/AU soft synth host with midi playback would be great as a stopgap for full audio editing.

If you want something totally unique that I don't know exists: ambisonic mixing/rendering alongside 3D video editing. There are tools for both but the medium is pretty new. This is also a bit of a rabbit hole and not an enthusiast area today.

Thanks!

> Crossfade editing is pretty important when doing cuts.

I do have a feature that automatically fades out background music when you talk (record yourself) and fades it back in afterwards. I will add more features to allow you manually set where to fade in/out. Is this what you mean?

Synchronizing audio to video - do you mean, re-recording yourself, or lip syncing to another voice?

Time stretching - right now, I only allow this for sound effects, and so far it works correctly.

> I'd hazard against using a "layer model" for audio because that will not scale very far. But audio engines are also a rabbit hole.

What would be the alternative?

> For SFX editing, a sampler or VST3/AU soft synth host with midi playback would be great as a stopgap for full audio editing.

Not sure I fully understand what you mean - is this something where you can manipulate different frequencies in the sound (a.k.a, sound equalizer)?

> ambisonic mixing/rendering alongside 3D video editing

I think I might look into this at a later time. At least, I don't have proper support for it as of now :)

As a side note - I do have something rather unique in my app: custom music visualizers. The ability to have the video/text effects react to sound (and you select when/where/how this would happen). This is early beta, but I do kinda' really like it :D

Support 60.00 Hz based frame rates and not just 59.97, and don't forget about 50 Hz as well. Think thoroughly about conversion between all of them when mixed source footage is used.

Thanks! I will do more testing on this one, but I should actually support this already. I do interpret everything down to the microsecond, so it should work quite fine.

I also support mixed source footage - even though I want to provide even more helpers on this front.

Having said that, I do allow even 240 fps as input, but right now I don't output at more than 30 fps. The rationale has simply been that this will require heavy testing. Once I go live, this will definitely work ;)

Thanks again!

AWS S3 and m3u8 support. Let me point the editor straight to livestreams that are still being made/recorded.

That's an interesting idea! Definitely worth adding to my todo. Having said that, I need to figure out how to properly read the stream and all, but for sure worth pursuing!

Linux support :p

If it is really that simple and nice, I will probably recommend it to family though.

Hehe ;) Trust me, I do want to allow this in the future. However, video editing (the implementation details) is so complex, that I could not start from the get go with a multi-platform solution.

Having said that, in the long term I do want to port it to other platforms, but I can't commit to a timeframe just yet.

About recommending it to your family - I guess your family can try it out and judge for themselves. Here's a getting started tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv4g7bUU5vk - if that looks easy, I guess it should be for them ;) Thanks!

Nah, don't worry about it. I understand. Also graphics under Linux tend to be a PITA sometimes.

Agreed :) Well, long story short, I do plan to port it to more platforms, but that is once I get is all good and stable on Windows.

Accessibility features and translations.

Thanks! I guess translations will come in the near-to-medium future.

What do you mean by "accessibility features"?

I am pretty sure they are talking about the application being usable by people who might be impaired in some way: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_accessibility

I "think" having options to make font and controls more legible, and being accessible by a screen reader(which you GUI framework should facilitate), is 85% done.

search HN for blind or accessibility, I suspect you will find great resources.

If this is what he meant, I should be able to allow for that. Windows allows for that from the get-go (dpi scaling), but probably I may need to tweak it even more.

will you be adding ability to record as well?

recording sound - is already working. Recording video is a bit more problematic (implementation wise). I have something experimental that is somewhat working if your screen is up to 1920x1080 resolution (if it's 4k, it's not working correctly yet). I do plan to fix this in the future.

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