VLC Team Announces Video Editor In the Works

eldavojohn writes "Despite news that VLC might not have anyone to work on the Mac release, Lifehacker brings word of a video editor that the VLC team is working on dubbed VideoLAN Media Creator. It hasn't been released yet (git clone git://github.com/VLMC/vlmc.git) but a pre-release is due out soon."

Comments

Great!

[hairyfeet]

Can't go wrong with VLC, runs on every OS, opens even the PITA formats. Can't wait! Go VLC Team!

Re:Great!

[clone53421]

VLC is great when it comes to playing media. I really can’t find fault with it on that front.

When it comes to encoding media... well, it’s good enough... usually... if you don’t mind playing with it a bit. (Admittedly it does seem better than it used to be. I used to find that more often than not the encoder would crash with some odd error in the message log.) It doesn’t seem to always create portable files – I’ve had output files that only played in VLC, or wouldn’t seek properly, etc. It can’t simultaneously capture the screen and the stereo mix (I have a .js that launches two copies – one to capture the screen, one to capture the stereo mix – and must recombine the separate video/audio tracks in an external video editing suite). Minor details like that...

I’m going to approach this with a considerable amount of skepticism until I find out how well this video editing feature works, unfortunately.

Re:Great!

[mweather]

You can still run the Linux version on OSX.

Sounds exciting

[Ironchew]

If it has the same quality and compatibility as VLC Media Player, then it would be a welcome beacon here in Penguin Land.

Re:Finally

[clone53421]

VLC is already able to transcode media.

That said, I haven’t been overly impressed with its performance. Strange crashes, glitchy files, etc.

For instance, when transcoding a .flv, the first keyframe is always dropped – resulting in only a smear of black/gray for the first second or two of the output file.

Avisynth

[PhrostyMcByte]

Hopefully it wraps Avisynth -- it's got some incredible community-made scripts and plugins that are unmatched by anything else, but isn't newbie-friendly when it comes to what most people think of as "video editing".

Re:Avisynth

[MobyDisk]

No way. Avisynth is a Windows-only product that is tied to Microsoft's APIs. VLC is a cross-platform application.

oh no!

[clone53421]

It hasn't been released yet (git clone git://github.com/VLMC/vlmc.git)

They’re out to get me!

Yeah yeah! Oh, yeah!

[ichthus]

Could this mean we finally get a decent video editor in Linux? Apologies to the Cinelerra, Kino, etc. people, but (and I really hate to say this) many of the simplest and cheapest Windows offerings put these projects to shame.

I know it makes me seem like a total douche to put down projects that many people put a lot of time and effort into, but come on! The sound editor front is even worse! Audacity is today what Cool Edit was in 1998.

What aboout Avidemux?

[FromellaSlob]

Avidemux always seemed like a natural partner to VLC to me. Based off the same FFMPEG code, QT or GTK interfaces, straightforward design, and despite the name it can do many file types. It's excellent for simple cut and paste editing, very much a Linux equivalent of Virtualdub. Why do so many free software projects try to reinvent the wheel rather reuse and improve on the code that is out there? I always thought that was the point of free software.

Re:What aboout Avidemux?

[jps25]

This has to do with errors in the broadcast you don't notice when watching.

To fix it you have to first clean the stream.

1. projectx to clean it. It's a nice little java program. Just start the GUI, open your file and choose quickstart. You can use the CLI as well
2. mplex -f 8 -o output.mpeg2 input.m2v input.mp2
3. manipulate output.mpeg2 with avidemux.

I've recorded hundreds of documentaries and shows (DVB-S mpeg2-ts), never had sync issues after doing this.

What is wrong with people

[RedK]

Despite news that VLC might not have anyone to work on the Mac release

You mean despite the news that was clarified and proven false by the VLC project the day after everyone in the blogsphere and on tech forums went nuts : http://www.osnews.com/story/22629/VLC_for_Mac_Death_Greatly_Exaggerated_

Why repeat it if it never was true ? It didn't need to be part of the summary at all for that matter, the true story here has nothing at all to do with the Mac port.

Re:Yeah yeah! Oh, yeah!

[thomst]

Ichthus commented:

"I know it makes me seem like a total douche to put down projects that many people put a lot of time and effort into, but come on! The sound editor front is even worse! Audacity is today what Cool Edit was in 1998."

Actually, it's not even as capable as Cool Edit was more than a decade ago. Specifically, Audacity does not support MIDI, whereas, AIR, Cool Edit Pro did. And that's the main reason why Audacity is utterly worthless for music production: because it can't sync to MIDI. So, no drum machine, or outboard sequencer loops.

That's why, when the Linux fanboys point their lofty sneers at lowly Windoze, I just shrug. My old Windows 98SE box allows me to sync my drum droid to Cakewalk 9 to lay down kick, hi-hat, and ride tracks. So I use that, instead of a Linux box, because it actually works. And, in turn, I use Windows 98, because the audio interface hardware I use (the original 16-bit Layla by Echo Audio) doesn't have drivers that work with XP SP3. (Nor, I should point out, does it have Linux drivers.) Since I can't afford new hardware, I use a Windows box that allows me to do stuff like this, which Audacity would not.

And it's sad that that's the case, because I would like to be able to use Audacity on Linux, rather than Cakewalk on Windows.

But I can't.

So I don't.