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Kdenlive 0.8 Adds Advanced Features for NLV Editing
dmbkiwi writes "For a long time I've been a big fan of Kdenlive. I've written two articles about it. One is a general overview of video editing on Linux and the other is more specific to Kdenlive. For a number of years, video editing on Linux – at least at a consumer level — has been patchy at best. This is somewhat ironic given the heavy use of Linux in major Hollywood blockbuster film production. However, with the advent of Kdenlive, things are looking pretty good and with the release of version 0.8, there have been some great features added for the more advanced users, while still retaining a simple and easy to use UI."
I use a folder full of tens of thousands of BMPs and some perl scripts that move them around as I command.
From the above article:
No, it isn't - he is confusing a render farm with an editing deck - a film could easily have a thousand machines in it's render farm, but it is a rare film that uses more than a handful of editing decks. Typically you can count them on one hand, and have enough fingers left to go bowling with...
That throw-away line in his post above prevents me from thinking his "overview" of consumer-level editing of video on Linux will be anything worth spending time on.
Ken
Your complaints are somewhat silly:
* Kdenlive is as good a name as Vegas when it comes to making sense for video editing. I suppose Apache (and Cherokee) was a horrible, politically incorrect name for a web server. Unfortunately trademark law prevents using names like "Non-Linear Video Editor", "Photograph Manipulation Editor", "Text Editor", or "Word Processor" because they are common descriptive names.
* Some names have roots in foreign languages and make perfect sense there but sound horrible here (Choquok - an amazing twitter client - is a perfect example)
* Unix itself is a play on Multics, which predates Stallman's great crusade.
* Things aren't designed to confuse people. They are usually designed by one person, who may not be as good as UI design as a six person UX team at a large development shop. In some cases, I've discovered that the graphical interface is wonky, but the keyboard interfaces is amazingly smooth. Unfortunately, doing UI redesigns is a huge to-do for end users who have in many cases become very adept at the original UI of a software package.
I guess its cooler to be the smart kid using different software than the ordinary people.
No, for me it costs a lot less, I can get things done, and if I want to customize, I can and do. In some cases the software is incredibly good at what it does. In other cases, the commercial alternatives are really a lot better, but I don't want to spend $, so you live with it. It's really not about being cool. It's about freedom as in having no encumbered rights and having the economic means to exercise them.
-- $G
This is an area where Linux desperately needs to be competitive if there's hope for the Linux desktop going mainstream anytime soon.
Okay, look, I know we all believe that we know what's best for the market and what's in demand - but I am so sick of hearing this line pulled out. "What Linux really needs is ***** if it's to become acceptable in the mainstream". The reality is that there's no single app that will propel Linux into the mainstream magically, the best we can do is just continue to improve where we can and as we do we pick up more and more converts. We are long past a position where a single application will suddenly make Linux mainstream. For every application/area you knock off that list there will always be another one that raises its head.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing our best to deliver great new apps of good stability and functionality (like Inkscape, Scribus etc), I'm saying that the sky isn't falling if we don't deliver X Y or Z.
Paul.
Random gobbled-together words or terms, eh? Like for example ColdFusion, RoboHelp, Alcohol 120% etc.?
You may have noticed that all of these are easy to pronounce and remember, and there are no "near-misses" that make as much sense. That's what a good name needs to be like. Kdenlive does not link to any known terms, which makes it hard to remember without additional mnemonic aids. "ColdFusion", just to pick one of the examples, does not make sense as a product name (which has nothing to do either with temperature or nuclear power), but it's two well-known, easily recalled terms. It is unique enough to be remembered, it is pronouncable without effort.
Those are important things. That's how word-of-mouth works. "I found this great video editing tool. If only I could remember what it was called, Kenl-something or so." just doesn't cut it.
Yes, there are stupid names in the commercial space. I must have missed the memo about it being a good idea to copy the failures.
Yes, even if they are successful. You can be successful despite a stupid name. But why make it more difficult then it has to be?
And there are good examples. Broadcast and Cinerella were great examples for naming. Cinerella especially works so well that I still remembered it without looking it up 7 or 8 years after I've last checked on it. I doubt anyone who doesn't use Kdenlive will remember "that video editing software" name even three weeks from now.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What is your problem dude? The program is for free and you can use it or not. Nobody is forcing you to use it.
My problem is that it pains me to see so much talent wasted because the Free Software stuff is so often excellent quality with a crappy exterior. There's these V10 engines that can go 100 km on 3 litres with making hardly any noise - and they put them into Yugos.
People rarely buy cars just for the engine. They want to sit comfortably in them and they want to drive them without a Ph.D.
just fork the project and release it under a new name. You can even sell it with a new name and if you redesign the UI you can sell it with a new UI.
I stopped contributing to Free Software development years ago when I realized that it's a net negative for me - I spent more time working on software than I spent actually using it. I did contribute quite a bit back then, but I also learnt that lots of Free Software people are too much in love with their projects to take a good advise - or patch. Which, again, is a perfectly ok attitude if you run the project to scratch your own itch. But then don't be surprised if the mainstream doesn't share your personal style.
That's my main point. Make up your mind and decide what you want to be - scratching your own itches or making a mainstream product. You can't do both. And no, you can't do both no matter how much you try to argue that you can.
Interesting, because that's the reason why I don't bother to use Windows anymore.
*nod* yes, once you've been outside of the windows mindset for a while, you start to wonder how anyone can get any work done on that abomination of user masochism. I just found that Linux is better but not by enough, and especially that it copies way too much from windos, probably in an attempt to "win over" windos users, so I moved on to OS X and I've not looked back.
I still love Linux to death - everywhere that doesn't have a GUI. All my servers run Debian, which means my company runs on Linux - but my development happens on OS X.
And I love Free Software, I couldn't do without it. Firefox beats Safari any day. It's UI is still crap. It's ok because there aren't any better alternatives right now, apparently nobody has yet figured out how to do a really great browser UI. But ever since I've done some actual research and work on HCI, ironically started by an overlap of Gnome and my other professional interest, computer security (which suffers massively from the same "the user is stupid" hybris), I've become very sensitive to failures in UI design, many of whom most users probably don't notice consciously.
But if you've ever used Keynote vs. Impress you know just how much of a difference some effort into UI design can make. And Keynote is far from perfect - but compared to Impress, you spend a considerable amount of time less on fighting with the interface. And don't even get me started on PowerPoint - if there's one piece of software that Dr. Who should throw into one of those gaps that eradicate it from all of history so nobody even remembers it, this is it. :-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org