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."

Comments

Re:Open source names

[Tom]

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. :-)