Free Software for Movie Production?

Ploum asks: " Like some folks, I like to take my mini-dv camera to make films. First, I was using Premiere, then Avid Xpress on Windows. But now I want to make [a movie] on my Debian box. Everybody says that video under Linux is not possible but I want to do it! I want to write the scenario on Linux (maybe with a set of Latex commands or SGML?). When all is in the box, I want to put it on my computer. Dvgrab does a perfect job! Now I'm looking for a video editor. Cinelerra is nice but it doesn't read files from dvgrab. When it's time to have fun with FX, I was using Adobe After Effect, but [are there similar programs for Linux]? Film Gimp? Jahshaka?"

Comments

Except for Kino, you are out of luck

[Nice2Cats]

I use Linux for absolutely everything except for games and video software -- this is one last area where the Penguin really sucks fish cold and hard.

You can try Kino which is all DV and is making great strides to change this (even better, if you can program, help them): Only a few features so far, but those are rock solid and well done.

Avoid Cinelerra -- it crashes like it was written by Microsoft. At first, I thought it was my system, but after asking around a bit, I found out that this is a problem so common as to be a feature. Also, the documentation is a joke; the people writing it obviously are too full of themselves (as in: this is only for professionals, kids, if you don't understand it, you're stupid and should go away) to stoop down to our level.

Again, this is an area where Apple and even Microsoft wipe the floor with Linux.

Let's try something helpful

[TheWanderingHermit]

First -- This person has asked a perfectly valid question. He wants to use Linux for video/digital film production. Comments that tell him/her to get illegal copies of software or to switch to a Mac (which just assumes he has the extra money to run out and buy one) are not only not helpful, but are basically a rude way of saying, "I don't have an answer for you, but I want to act like I do, so I'll just suggest something that doesn't really answer your question."

Second -- This is definately an area where Linux does not have the software. I've spent years in video. I d/l'ed Adobe Premiere (the 30 day demo version) and found it extremely easy to use for someone who is used to "real" video editing. I've tried Cinelerra several times, in test installs, and I've found it to be anything BUT easy to comprehend. This stuff about it being "advanced" or for "advanced users" doesn't wash with me. I have the experience and it's just a pain in the but to find your way around the program. The interface is anything BUT intuitive. (As someone pointed out earlier, in editing, this is a time when you need to focus on the work, not on getting your tools to work.)

Now, after those comments, here's what, to me, seems a useful suggestion and what I am currently planning. The company Main Concept is a German company. The last version of their editing program, Main Actor (V. 3.65) cost US $100 and worked on Linux and Windows. It's not Premiere, but for $100, I found it a good comparison. Currently the program is unavailable because they are preparing for the release of version 5.0. If you go to their site, you can download a Windows version of their V 5.0 beta 3 and test it out. This version is roughly comprable with Premiere 6.0. Some features aren't as good, but some are better (for instance, there was no smart gain for audio, but there are more sound adjustment abilities in MA than in Premiere). When I last corresponded with the people at Main Concept (when the beta 2 was out), they were still integrating some features into the betas and final version.

It will probably cost more than the US $100 price of their last version, but I wouldn't expect it to be any more than $150 or so. While it's not open source, and it's not free, it is a good solid program and will do what a video editor needs. They are also working on porting their effects program over to Linux as well.

I don't expect to see much more in the way of video editing in the open source field for a while. It involves too much GUI programming and the kind of intuitive feel that programmers seem to hate to deal with unless they have to.

It's a longshot, but Possible

[cioxx]

Making a movie is not the hardest part. Making it look good is what matters. Do not expect anything remotely close to AE on linux. There are no substitutes. AE is pretty much prosumer, fairly extended special effects tool which won't appear in the GNU/GPL anytime soon. Then again, you don't really need AE, unless you're trying to create Farscape clones and cheesy made for TV effects.

Sure, you might be able to do basic stuff in Cinelerra, FilmGimp, etc, but for your movie to look absolutely flawless you need some high-end filters and effects. Jahshaka is in it's early beta and extremely buggy. They are emulating the feel of Discreet Fire (Post Production). I'm not too familiar with it's featureset. Don't count on it to be the Editing solution.

The secret is not the software itself, but the camerawork. If you put a lot of effort into shooting it, you'll make up for the editing shortcomings. It's definately possible. Hope you made a bet with the naysayers, because they'll lose. Funny thing is, it'll be a piece of cake to make a movie like Pi in linux with open source applications.

Good luck on your project.

Kdenlive

[i_am_nitrogen]

There's a relatively new contribution to the Linux NLE field, called Kdenlive. I haven't tried it myself, but the screenshots look pretty good, a lot like Adobe Premiere (which I use quite a bit).

http://freshmeat.net/redir/kdenlive/36293/url_ho me page/kdenlive.html

And for those of you saying Cinelerra is too hard, I have to agree. It's too slow too. I had to remux my DV files into Quicktime wrappers to load them, and then it took me a really long time to figure out how the timeline works (it's not even close to Premiere), and then playing the video was choppy, on my Athlon XP 1800+ with half a gig of RAM. It's a cool idea, but it really needs a new UI. It's not as revolutionary over Broadcast2k as they said it would be.

The timeline works kind of like Acid's tracks. Each track is a single file, instead of each track being a video layer that can contain any number of events from any number of files. Right now I think that Cinelerra would be capable of producing a half way decent wedding slideshow, but not a whole lot more, at least not without a dedicated rendering farm and months to learn the ins and outs of the UI.