Pitivi, a free and open source video editor for Linux
pitivi.org
pitivi.org
Also be aware that Resolve does not support integrated graphics (but only on Linux, bizarrely).
My memory was at the time the only pricing option was a subscription model, and I don't do videos very frequently. I knew I'd be annoyed at paying $20/mo for the many months when I wasn't using it. More recently I've seen that they have a "buy outright" option for around $300, which I would have lept at back when I was first looking at it. But I've since moved on to Resolve.
The thing about Resolve is: You aren't going to outgrow it. It's easy enough for doing simple edits, but if you want to do fancy stuff with it, it can do it. You won't outgrow it.
That said, I spent a stupid amount of time with performance issues in Resolve. My cameras output H.264 or something, and I'd have to convert it to ProRes to edit, a process that took huge amounts of space and time. This was under Windows. Even with that, performance was still pretty bad. One kids concert video took me around 40 hours of editing to get an hour of final footage.
Prior to that video, my desktop machine did a better job with ProRes, but it got milk spilled on it during the home schooling of 2020.
However, and this isn't a solution that everyone can or should do: Resolve on the new Macbook Pro boxes is amazing and will handle anything I throw at it, without having to go through the hoops of converting to ProRes and the like.
How about resource file support for non-standard (as in TV/cinema) parameters, such as video framerate, video resolution, video formats? How about integrating these into the timeline, including per-clip pan/zoom?
Have you used Vegas Pro (for Windows)? I feel like no Linux NLE is able to replicate the flexibility Vegas Pro allows you in treating each clip as an independent, resizable, transformable asset. Instead, many NLEs enforce an "all clips must keep the same parameters as the project file" rule, where e.g. you can't incorporate a 60FPS file into a 50FPS project.
Resolve works like this: You set a project parameters (resolution, framerate being the big ones), either manually or it is set by the first clip you bring in. Then you can bring in clips that don't match those values, and they are just, at render time, converted to the target resolution/frame rate.
You can take clips in your timeline and make a composite clip out of it, basically rendering it within the project to a new artifact, I usually use that primarily for combining the 5m clips my camera breaks things down into into a single large clip, but I think you can also put panning on that. I haven't used Vegas Pro, that sounds pretty slick.
https://www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb
In my case, the machine I was trying to run it on just wasn't powerful enough.
I generally stick with the GTK/GNOME ecosystem but for my (admittedly quite limited) video editing needs I've found Kdenlive to be easier to figure out.
(I recall that these interestingly share the same video editing backend, just the integration is different?)
Last time I looked, they were all using MLT [0] for the backend.
It's the only one that does not have a 50% chance of segfaulting on every click. Not an exaggeration.
Pretty much the only viable solution for FOSS video editing though I have yet to try Blender.
If developers can't be arsed to mention on front page what platforms their product supports then I don't think they really know what "intuitive" means. They might be cool guys and nice people and all but interacting with users is not their strength.
It's also not a bad exercise for Windows and Mac users to learn that the best way to determine this is to go to the downloads section and/or look for system requirements.
But I also understand that the true beauty of open source is the entitlement of free work from devs on a project receiving less than 8 euros a month from donations.
Someone posted the project to Hacker News. A commenter pointed out that they didn't put the supported platforms on their website. That has nothing to do with "entitlement of free work". If the devs don't want anyone else discussing their work, they have every right to keep it private. If it gets posted to HN, it will be discussed.
This is entitlement to free work. Raising an issue is much more reasonable than an HN user submitting a change on behalf of another random HN user. I do understand that the OP wasn't asking for someone to do this for them, though, and not displaying supported OSes is a totally valid critique.
Of course with modern versions of Windows you can probably run this program through WSL relatively easily as well, but that is far from the default for running open source programs.
As this is GTK based, I suppose there's no technical reason why it can't be made to work cross platform if someone would put in the effort. It'd still be nice to see it mentioned, though.
Then I started thinking: "Well, their are probably not malicious or ignorant. This is just probably an acceptable behavior." And continued to behave that way.
I don't think we should complain when FLOSS non-multiplatform software (that support a FLOSS OS) should be criticized when announced without disclosing the lack of portability. People who choose to not use a FLOSS OS should be able to try it more easily and without the limits imposed by usual proprietary software licenses restrictions.
Now, if you announce something, even if it is FLOSS, that only works on windows or macos, the thing is entirely different. A FLOSS user will have difficulty trying it or will have to agree with the restrictions of proprietary software licenses. These are the software that, when announced, should state very clear which platforms it supports.
Wine runs lots of stuff very well.
That said, the download page is where I'd definitely expect something like this, and the download page is useless. It tells you that various Linux distros have Pitivi in their package managers (which ones? links?), and has a Flatpak download (what's flatpak?)
The news on the frontpage make it look like the last release was almost two years ago; but actually there was a release in 2021 and development is ongoing.
It's for Blender 2.8, but I found it mostly applicable for Blender 3 as well.
Finding it at that point is fairly tricky. I have too many bookmarks. Google results for"free video editor" are polluted with junk.
And the name - "Pitivi" is not something I will ever remember. I still can't remember the name of the "online drawing app" that I use quite a lot!
Likely better off with a more active project like kdenlive.
When I entered into the code I admired one of the most spaghetti software I have ever encountered. No tests, all is verification is made on opening it and "checking" if it was working. Several major bugs that nobody have an idea why, I ended up certain times commenting parts of the code to make it work.
I will take a look on Pitivi.
Cinelerra has been splitted to two^H^Hthree but only Cinelerra CG seem to work.
Those who remember old-time Cinelerra can be amazed with the render-list of 20, which all seem to work. In the olden golden times you just made big MJPEG and used FFMPEG for coding.
Says yet another Linux video editor
But I think that it's impractical in reality. For various reasons, such as politics, differences in vision, BDFLs, death by committee, etc., many open-source projects find themselves reaching a plateau and stagnating. At that point, it becomes easier to just make your own competing project with the features you want, than try to fight to get your features added upstream.
I think that this, counter-intuitively, leads to the stagnant project improving, as the "competition" with new features helps un-deadlock whatever bureaucracy was preventing improvements.
Obviously, finding it is a one time cost, but given the landing page praises the cleanliness of the code, I'd expect a link to it. Make the "clean codebase" link to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pitivi and that would be perfect!
Is this like iTunes on windows where it downloads the whole apple operating system to run the software? I know disk space is cheap but it's not always the case especially with these new laptops with fixed and small nvme drives.
edit: just found out this too requires 2.4GB disk space :/
One day though I had I had a weird library problem #linuxproblems
So i checked out pitivi and ya really liked it, converted me.
I wish we could have something like it with Qt/KDE. Calligra's Karbon once was a nice promise but it is now only a shadow of what it was meant to be and even living a slow death.
But if very basic components like file choose and file save dialog are incredibly painful to be used with buttons scattered through all window corners (fitts law anyone?) then "nothing" starts resounding in your mind.
https://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_imag...
You can find another control at bottom left to choose file codification or whatever.
Font select dialog:
https://docs.gtk.org/gtk3/fontchooser.png
Will gtk4 be any better?
https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/fontchooser.png
No, there is an extra settings button before select which looks to me totally secondary not to be present by the primary button. Primary actions should be together: - Choose letter - Choose size - Click select ...In a row or L movement
We will get this extra UI darkening: now is not evident you can type font size numbers cause all controls are flat.
In gtk3 at least inputs look like inputs and buttons look like buttons.
It seems to me that designers are much less likely to give their time for free to a software project than programmers. Is that why OSS suffers from problems like this? A junior UI designer would never make these kinds of decisions.
I can understand why designers wouldn’t work for free. What I don’t understand is why an average coder couldn’t do some basic googling and learn the fundamentals. You can get a long way by imitating commercial work and following standard conventions. So is it lack of skill, or some sort of mistaken belief that the conventions established by the experts are wrong?
I’m wondering here if the idea is to imitate a forward/back step from a wizard (albeit with the buttons in the “wrong” vertical position) Not a paradigm appropriate for repeated everyday interactions, mainly because wizards are not designed for efficiency.
UI usage is mostly learned.
Just to be clear, I don't think GTK is the perfect UI system. In my opinion, there is none.
Moreover, which users who never used a PC before would be using Gnome?
But we need to be aware of those learned habits, metaphors and conventions and build those affordances into our own designs if we want people to use our software efficiently.
A convention often used in modals and other popup windows is to put the close icon in the top right. So putting the confirm button there could cause a user to click it wanting to close the window and confirm a destructive action instead.
Another convention is to put the confirm/cancel buttons at the bottom of a dialogue window. Buttons like those don't normally go in the title/toolbar, and putting them there goes against the top-down, left-to-right way we read things.
Putting things in non-conventional places is not 'wrong' per se, but adds extra friction to every interaction.
Yes, it is. There are lots of UX rules backed by research.
Fitts' Law in this case is just one reason why this is wrong.
Now, let's get rid of all visual clues for actions/controls...
Implementing a design requires discipline and a shared vision, which is often against the bazaar-like nature of open source projects. Everyone's working on their own particular piece and can't agree about anything at all – just look at the internecine battles that are still going on about which init system to use.
In my experience, any attempt at making an interface better, even if it's proven with data and testing, results in extreme pushback about dumbing down. The attitude seems to be that making software accessible is not 'real computing' and therefore should be fought tooth and nail.
Designers often don't work on open source projects not because they don't work for free, but because it's a miserable experience.
Having said that, good counter-examples to this are the recent Blender redesign, where significant effort has been put into making the software more consistent and easier to use, and the Elementary distro where one of the goals is to create a good user experience.
This did also occur to me, but I don't have any experience of it.
I do know that solo designers working in a team of commercial devs often find it a miserable experience.
I find it nice that the cancel is visually separated away, most important primary actions are prominent and in the top right.
I find gnome to be quite nice and friendly compared to five years ago when I'd always jump to a KDE desktop first thing.
GTK choice of putting everything, including buttons, on the windows title bar kills intuitiveness and slows down the workflow. When a window/dialog/whatever opens, I look at the title, then if necessary I move it to another place by grabbing that same title bar, which is immediate because that is where I was already looking to, then start reading its contents downwards. When finished I'd expect to see choice buttons just below the contents of that frame, I'm looking just there so that it would come very easy, but no, now I have to go back upwards and find the title bar to push a choice button. To me, this is against any interface writing logic; it trades usability for a dubious more modern appearance, and I would very much welcome a patch to correct it.
There's always a hypervocal minority in any a GNOME related thread claiming that GNOME 3 was a regression, it has too much padding, it's too slow, it takes too much memory, it doesn't allow you to configure something, etc etc etc.
Meanwhile, every big distro chooses it and millions get on with it just fine.
I'm mostly not in a direct line-of-fire for user complains due to Gtk/Gnome (but actually received some, mainly around, you guessed it, file dialogs), but the impact zone is basically next door. And it's not exactly happy noises and good smells coming out that door. This is from users who couldn't care less what the thingamajing is called and don't know or care if their Linux explorer is called Dolphin or Thunar. What they do notice is that they've got an OS upgrade from IT and now they're angry because two thirds of the UI are gone and the remainder makes less sense to them.
I don't understand why everyone keeps trying to make it work. It's not what anyone wants.
(disclosure: I used to work for muvee over a decade ago)
I pinged this 'cos the approach is very different from most editors especially from the perspective of what a user needs to know about video editing (much less with muvee). There are editing "styles" that you get to choose which will adapt whatever video/photos content you throw in and adapt it to the music track you supply. The styles have many parameters you can tweak too. Otherwise, it's a button to produce a video. The first time you use some media item, it'll analyze the audio & video .. which will take some compute time.