Ask Slashdot: the State of Free Video Editing Tools?

New submitter Shadow99_1 writes I used to do a lot of video editing (a few years ago, at an earlier job) and at that time I used Adobe Premiere. Now a few years later I'm looking to start doing some video editing for my own personal use, but I have a limited budget that pretty well excludes even thinking about buying a copy of Adobe Premiere. So I ask slashdot: What is the state of free (as in beer or as in open source) video editing tools? In my case... I support a windows environment at work and so it's primarily what I use at home. I am also using a camcorder that uses flash cards to record onto, so for me I need a platform that supports reading flash cards. So that is my focus but feel free to discuss video editing on all platforms. I've been looking forward to the Kickstarted upgrade to OpenShot; based on the project's latest update, early versions of an installer should start appearing soon. Video editing is a big endeavor, though, and ambitious announcements and slipped schedules both seem to be the norm: an open-source version of Lightworks was announced back in 2010. Some lighter open-source options include Pitivi (raising funds to get to version 1.0) and Kdenlive, also in active development (most recent release was in mid-May). Pitiviti's site links to a sobering illustration about many of the shorter- and longer-lived projects in this area.

Comments

What about Lightworks?

[myoparo]

It's free and pretty powerful.

Resolve

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking for free but not "libre" check out BlackMagic's "DaVinci Resolve". It started out as a color correction software. Now it's a full fledged editor. It's free unless you need uber advanced noise reduction etc.

i just migrated to it from Adobe Premiere because premiere isn't great for team work.

-S

Re:CS2

[thedbp]

This isn't actually true. Technically, you still need to own a copy of CS2 to legally use the software:

http://blogs.adobe.com/convers...

Will it work? Yes.

Are you supposed to do this if you don't own CS2? No.

It is ethical? That's for you to decide.

It still sucks.

[Lumpy]

Nothing is really useable and stable enough. Lots of people dabbling, NONE doing feature length or even 30 minute tv episodes.

I go down this road every year and crawl right back to the single Windows box with Sony Vegas and After Effects on it. I really wish I could replace it with a linux system but it will never exist as the open source options are still not as good as even Adobe Premiere in 2004.

All pro and prosumer cameras record in MOV or AVCHD and if your editor can not handle those natively it is a major failure. I have no interest in spending 8 hours converting video and introducing generational losses right off the bat.