Linux Video Editor Cinelerra 1.0 Released

Ogerman writes "At long last, Heroine Virtual's Cinelerra 1.0 has been released. This successor to the discontinued Broadcast 2000 project is absolutely amazing and should give Adobe Premiere and others a run for their money as it continues to mature. So, fire up those digital camcorders, get to work on all your latent indie-film ideas, and help put ol' Jack V. out of a job. Here's the 1.0 Press Release." For those unfamiliar with Cinelerra, check out the screen shots.

Comments

Re:Wow more good news for low budget films

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately you're right. That is, you are kidding yourself. I'm quite sure many indie moviemakers would sell out to the big corporations if they were offered enough money, simply because they'll see it as their one shot at the big time.

I know, I know. Not all of them feel this way, but in every rebellion you have a lot of rebels fighting simply because they are jealous of what they are rebelling against. Give them what they want and they turn around and go home.

Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

First, let's start with the non-flamebait part: it's great to see another relatively cheap video editor out, as it puts filmmaking ability into the hands of the masses rather than just those able to afford $20k+ Avids.
iMovie and iDVD don't count, 'cause those are really just toys for making home movies or submissions to iFilm, but Final Cut Pro is/was a great competetor to Primere, with all of the features at less than half the price.

However, I'm an audio professional, and will happily and uniformly disparage all of these 'tools' for neglecting to have any real ability to edit audio. As just about anyone in the industry will tell you, audio is the bastard stepchild of video/film, with less than a tenth of any movie's budget spent on sound... and yet all of those same people will agree that sound is just as important as visuals, if not more - consider the Blair Witch Project, with cheap, shoddy visuals, but eerie and compelling audio to create the mood... Now imagine a rock-steady camera in a high-budget film, with sound that sounds like cheap vinyl... or even AM radio... It's just not acceptable, and nothing will alienate your audience sooner.

As an example of the downplay of audio, Digital Video Magazine has an ad in the last issue offering a turnkey video editing system... Dual 1 GHz G4, Final Cut Pro2, 80 GB Firewire drive, Superdrive, Firewire Media Converter, Sony's $5000 prosumer digital camera, 23-inch Apple LCD cinema screen, Sony 19" NTSC reference monitor (>$1000!), and... Harmon Kardon SoundSticks!

$20,000 USD for this system, and you're getting a $150 pair of speakers... which, frankly, suck (I just wrote an article to be published in December about those speakers, after running them through tests of frequency response, distortion, noise level, etc., and you'd do better with a $150 pair of headphones... but they aren't as pretty).

Additionally, none of these programs have the ability to scrub audio, a MUST as any real audio editor will tell you, very few of them will let you edit on a resolution smaller than a frame (30 fps means that 1 frame = 33 ms... However, a 5 ms delay is audible as phasing, and as low as a 25 ms delay can be audible as a distinct echo), most of them have linear VU meters (rather than logarhythmic, like our hearing... consider, with 0 dB FS as the top of the scale, -3 dB FS is half the power, and on a linear meter, half the distance down... However, -3 dB is a difference in level that is really only noticed by trained ears... Additionally, the SMPTE standard for digital audio is to have normal level (0 VU) at -18 dB FS... Or almost off the scale on any program with linear meters... That's freakin' insane. As a comparison, try using Photoshop with the brightness on your monitor turned down to almost 0. You're trying to work reasonably at the threshhold of noise of the system you're working on.

Also, the EQs in most of these programs have their frequency range set linearly, too... Human hearing goes from roughly 20 Hz to 20 kHz (roughly - young women and children can frequently hear higher frequencies, usually topping out by 23-26 kHz), but our interpretation of frequency is logarythmic: the top octave goes from 10 kHz to 20 kHz (or, the top HALF of a linear scale). The next octave (or, the next lowest quarter on a linear scale) is from 5 kHz to 10 kHz...
You don't start getting into useful ranges until you're in the bottom 32nd of the scale, from 500 Hz to 1 kHz - the fundamental of the human voice goes from about 125 Hz to about 500 Hz, most of the vowels and formants are from about 500 Hz to about 1.5 kHz, and the consonants are from about 1.5 kHz up to about 4 kHz (for the sibilants). There's very little energy in the human voice above 5 kHz... So have fun setting your EQs properly when you're looking at a linear scale that emphasizes the top two octaves... ABOVE what you're dealing with.

Then again, the two major audio editing software programs on the market, ProTools and CoolEditPro also miss some of these, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. When you deal with sub-standard tools everywhere, you have to give up some expectations

By comparison, look at the Orban Audicy (used in most radio stations for production), and the Fairlight Merlin and D.R.E.A.M. Stations, used for most film/television production.

Sorry. :)

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

Yes, that's quite true, in a professional environment... However, in a professional environment, they wouldn't be using FCP or Primere... They'd be using 20k+ Avids.

In a prosumer, Cannes-Film-Festival-type environment, they'd be using this or either of the cheaper solutions, and editing audio on it, too... Unfortunately.

It happens way too often - I interned at Emerson College in Boston, and spent a large portion of my time helping video/film graduate students fix the audio in their Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project. This is further perpetuated by the software on the market, which pushes audio into the realm of "another" program.

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[mholt108]

I agree with both of you but I have done loads of prosumer editing on indie videos, documentraries etc and have run into the problems described. I do not have the time or money to learn pro audio or hire pro audio people (maybe I should look into it). Having said that I really would like to have better audio capacity in Premiere. My feeling is that the audio got worse in the 4.2 - 5 transition, not in terms of features but in usability.
I would love to see some sort of a toggle between Video edit mode and Audio edit mode. In video mode the editor would look similar to what it does now. In audio edit mode the video tracks would become smaller on the timeline (with a small monitor window or output to external monitor) and the audio tracks would be enlarged with good VU's appearing and an equaliser. Also effects that can be applied easily and accurately to different parts of different tracks and not rendered but use the CPU for realtime playback along with the video. I think that with CPU speeds now getting up there this is realistic.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[foobar104]

However, in a professional environment, they wouldn't be using FCP or Primere... They'd be using 20k+ Avids.

Not exactly. There's offlining and then there's finishing. If you're offlining you might use a $30,000 Avid Express, but these days it's just as likely that you'd be using Final Cut Pro.

On the other hand if you're finishing, you're using a linear bay, or a DS, or a Fire or Smoke. Those are all $100,000 - $300,000 systems.

There's really not much room in the market for the $30,000 editing system these days.

...Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project.

Um... that's because audio is the last step of the project. Like I said, audio finishing is an art entirely separate from video finishing, and is dealt with using different tools, by a different artist. There's no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. They just don't go together.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

...Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project. Um... that's because audio is the last step of the project. Like I said, audio finishing is an art entirely separate from video finishing, and is dealt with using different tools, by a different artist. There's no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. They just don't go together.

Um... No. Sorry, audio is NOT the last step of the project. That myth is what makes so many films sound like crap.

Audio starts at the same time as the video, thinking about where you're recording, and how best to mic it to avoid extraneous noises. Thinking it comes last leads to thinking, "just use the mic built into the camera, we can fix it later in post," which you most emphatically can't. Garbage in, garbage out. Noisy distorted sound in, guess what comes out.

And again, by your own admission, we aren't talking about $300k+ systems, or even $30k+ systems. We're talking about There is no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. However, in a prosumer video package, there IS a need to have audio finishing tools. They DO go together.

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

Why should you have to export your audio tracks into an external program in order to do scrubbing or effects editing? That is like Photoshop requiring you to export your alpha channels into an external program in order to edit them separately from your RGB channels. Audio is an integral part of the video experience yet is treated like a redheaded stepchild when it comes to NLE editors.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. My analogy is exactly correct. If you want to insert an image into your word processed document you do not create that image in Word. You use a program that is designed to create that document, specifically. If it's a graph, you might generate it with Excel. If it's a bitmapped image, you might touch it up in Photoshop. In fact, you might take your images from one graphics program to another, layering it and adding 3d-generated images, and compositing and in short getting it all nice and ready before you plop it in your word processor.

Now, why does audio work demand its own program(s)? Why is it not like alpha channels in photoshop? Because you're not giving audio post enough credit. It's not as simple as "throw in some effects and some scrubbing" and we're done.

WHY AN AUDIO PROGRAM IS A STANDALONE APP

1. Combining audio and video into one master editing app wastes system resources An audio editing program frequently requires significant processing power to manipulate and add effects to multiple tracks. If your NLE is tapping your CPU w/displaying and uncompressing video, that's quite a bit taken from the audio.

2. You are not editing the final recorded sounds When editing movies, you are generally editing with a "scratch track" taken from the field, which is frequently unusable. It's not the job of the editor to deal with sound issues. It's just not. In many productions, the sound track must be built from the ground up through ADR ("looping"), through peices of alternate takes, etc.

3. Editing and Post-Audio are different professions, different fields. In real life, each is a speciality with its own tools. Expecting an editor to have to deal with audio crap in a NLE, or an audio tech to deal with picture is ridiculous. Even if it's a small one-man production-- when you're editing, you don't need to obsess over sound-- you don't want to have to deal with 50 layers of sound. It's only when you've got picture lock that you move on to the next phase-- the audio, which logically deserves its own program. You can go back and forth anyway, so why not do what makes sense?

4. There is rarely one final audio mix When you mix a film, you will typically create several mixes-- 35mm and 16mm have different frequency ranges-- video sound can be encoded in a number of different ways using a variable number of audio sources. You may want to have many, many mixes of your film (keeping sound effects seperate from dialogue so that you can put alternate language tracks, music tracks may be mixed in different ways, etc.). To try to do all this from a NLE is insanity.

5. Non-linear editors and audio editors are physically different things With an Avid, you got two monitors, maybe a third for video. You've got the keyboard, and you've got the computer. Maybe you have some extra drives, a camera, and a deck of some sort. The only funky gizmo you might have for Avid is one of those shuttle things. Protools looks different. No multiple monitors-- just one big one for viewing one of many many many audio tracks you might be using. No shuttle. No decks. Add in a rack of DSPs, maybe some MIDI devices. A keyboard or two. A DAT, a TASCAM. And of course, any good audio editor will have amixing board-- it's hard to nudge the volume for seven tracks on the fly with one mouse to get just that right dialogue mix with three equalized microphone positions, and some ambiance...

6. Video apps use video plugins, audio apps use audio plugins -- if you wanna compare to photoshop plugins, look at this simple fact-- video apps usually allow for plugins to allow you to do funky effects, video filters, and transitions like wipes, dissolves, morphs -- video stuff. Audio apps usually have plugins like phlange, reverb, pitch shifting, MIDI stuff, effects filters, compressors, and other frequency manipulation stuff. They're different types of effects for different types of programs.

7. Moving between applications is precisely what the OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange Format) and similar formats are designed to do. You are SUPPOSED to export your audio information and take it into a program that is specific for audio.

So, ok--- could you have some kind of "super-program" that lets you edit picture and do fine audio tuning in the same app? Yes. Would it be unweildy? YES. Would it suck to have to rely on a single vender for all you want in a single program? YES. Would it be a pain in the ass? YES.

Why not just throw in some 3d modeling/rendering software, a compositing progrram, and the script-writing software in there too? And an email program so it can invite your friends to the premiere of your project?

In short-- It is not the role of an non-linear editor to do a significant amount audio effects. As they are different professional fields, they are and should be different programs.

W

Re:Wow more good news for low budget films

[mholt108]

I think low budget film makers consider being able to make films on a windows PC and a cannon camera grass roots enough! it is already a big "up yours" to studios and has that rebelious feel to it. Maybe the real hardcore vegan filmmakers will go for this.
The real benefit seems to be the renderfarm facility. Not available on Adobe or Apple software out of the box. Admittedly you dont really need it in most cases but it could work out cheaper than doing it in Hardware (on the capture card / effects card)for HDTV or IMAX or the new digital cinema formats.
THe most important thing though is that it does not crash / hang ... anyone had any experience with this?

Re:When will programmers learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, sorry to burst your _open_ bubble, but if this application wants to have any chance whatsoever of taking on Premiere, it's going to have to support EVERYTHING that's out there, especially formats that are immensely popular (like QT, Real, and WMV). Saying that "it only needs to work with _open_ formats" is narrow mindedness at its worst, and is a perfect example of (a) taking something too far and (b) exactly what's WRONG with the "Linux Community" thus far. "We won't do anything YOUR way since we're so damned non-conformist, so you better change EVERYTHING that YOU do to CONFORM to what the Linux folks want, since we're some sort of White Knight of Open Source." Too bad, because no videographer in his/her right mind is going to do anything more than TOY with this application as long as it refuses to support commonly-accepted web media formats, "proprietary" or not.

Bah, why do I bother? This'll get modded down faster than...well, anything I can think of.

Re:demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

200GB disk space 100GB ($120 after shipping) x 2 = $240
Tyan S2460 DDR dual amd 1600 two CPU $408 after shipping
Generic 512MB DDR $93 after shipping
Gigabit ethernet Ark $43 after shipping

That's $784! hah. lol. $800... lol
(you might need some accessories. ex: video card, mouse/keyboard. most people have these lying around already)

Problems with Cinelerra

[thomasvs]

It is good that applications like these are making their way to Linux. However, some things are really bad about Cinelerra and it's developer and it's important that they're noted so that the community can try to resolve these.

• ANY application developer that serves RPM's on their homepage and recommend you to "install them by using rpm --force --nodeps" really shouldn't make RPM's AT ALL. There is nothing worse than telling users of your software to mess up their packaging system. If the answer to this is "well that's because RPM sucks", then you don't know what you're talking about. It's perfectly possible to make good RPM's. In fact, if prodded, I'll make them from cinelerra to prove my point.
• A really bad issue in Cinelerra is how it incorporates every outside library inside it's source tree instead of using external libraries. We all need to promote code reuse. Taking other people's code and putting it in your tree is bad for several reasons : you're bloating your software when you should be reusing libraries; fixes to those libraries do not go back upstream to the original library and thus the community isn't advancing. There aren't enough advantages to "stealing" code like this to warrant it. Please force the author to reuse software properly and play nice with the rest of the community.
• Broadcast 2000 got pulled from the site due to "copyright problems" or "disillusion with the community on HeroineWarrior's side" (depending on who you ask). So what has changed about that now to ensure this won't happen to Cinelerra ?

I'm certainly going to try the final release, and HeroineWarrior knows what he's doing and has the advantage of actually having produced usable apps. But, in my opinion, applications like this are a nice transition but ultimately a dead end for the community. No one benefits much from applications like these. We should stick to what makes open source as good as it is : code reuse, polishing, cooperation.