The Current State of Linux Video Editing

An anonymous reader writes: The VFX industry has for most of the last 30 years been reliant on Macs and Windows machines for video editing, primarily because all of the Linux-based FOSS tools have been less than great. This is a shame, because all of the best 3D and 2D tools, other than video, are entrenched in the Linux environment and perform best there. The lack of decent video editing tools on Linux prevents every VFX studio from becoming a Linux-only shop. That being said, there are some strides being made to bridge this gap. What setup do you use? What's still missing?

Comments

Attitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

Things won't improve until two things are addressed. First FOSS devs drop the attitude that "It crashes sometimes" is an acceptable condition for software intended for productive work. This is compounded by FOSS users being tolerant of crashy software because it suits their ideology. Second, UI/UX need to be more than an afterthought or secondary consideration. People tolerate KiCad and Audacity's god-awful UIs because they're FOSS. There's no reason FOSS can't have consistent operation and polished presentation, other than clashes of ego.

Re:Attitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

Consistent and polished doesn't necessarily mean beautiful. To pick on KiCad some more, sometimes you right-click to end a command, sometimes you push escape, sometimes you push a specific letter. Sometimes moving an object will bring the connections with it, sometimes not. "Grab" and "Move" are slightly different, but this isn't explained or illustrated within the UI. Sometimes dragging a selection fence includes elements that overlap the fence boundary, sometimes not. There is no visual or audible feedback (save for some cryptic text in the status bar) when you try to place an object within the clearance zone of another object, doubly useless if the interference is caused by a generated element somewhere off screen. The whole of KiCad is split into separate executables that look and behave slightly differently. Sometimes you're alerted that a file will be overwritten when saving/exporting, sometimes it does it silently.

You're mistaken if you think I'm saying applications need to be visually appealing or "pretty". I don't care what it looks like, but I do expect applications to behave in a consistent fashion, and explain their current state clearly and unambiguously.

Re:Attitudes

[arglebargle_xiv]

Second, UI/UX need to be more than an afterthought or secondary consideration. People tolerate KiCad and Audacity's god-awful UIs because they're FOSS.

This. This is why FOSS video editing sucks beyond compare. I recently had to perform a simple video editing task which consisted of extracting a short segment from the middle of a longer clip, removing the audio, and saving it so it could be played in the background as someone was speaking. I'm a sysadmin, so I don't have years of experience in using these things, I just wanted to do a quick cut&paste of a video segment and save it without audio.

After about three or four hours of trying one FOSS video editing app after another I gave up. Utterly incomprehensible user interfaces, constant crashes, wading through tedious processes that seemed to do the right thing but didn't produce the expected results, it was a nightmare. Eventually I fired up a Windows machine and did it in about five minutes with some commercial trial-ware that nagged me with ads when I installed it.

That was the result from the point of view of a computer geek (specifically one with no prior experience in video editing software who couldn't fall back on years of experience in using this stuff). The person who wanted the video clip, a retired neighbour, wouldn't have made it past the first FOSS video-editing app before giving up. My conclusion from the experience was that if you're a typical user wanting to do video editing, use commercial software on a Mac or Windows.

Re:Attitudes

[PRMan]

What developers care about:

1. 1. Cool
2. 2. Fast
3. 3. Works
4. 4. Maintainable
5. 5. Reliable

What businesses care about:

1. 1. Works
2. 2. Reliable
3. 3. Maintainable
4. 4. Fast
5. 5. Cool

This is why FOSS will always be buggy and crashy.

Re:Attitudes

[TheRealMindChild]

Eventually I fired up a Windows machine and did it in about five minutes with some commercial trial-ware that nagged me with ads when I installed it.

The reason being that Windows is more than an OS and a collection of predictable platforms. A video on Windows is a video, accessed through the appropriate API. You don't dynamically link to half a dozen libraries, hope they are there, and crash (or demand installation) when it isn't. You install the codec and now everything can deal with it.

This is ultimately the problem with linux. There is no defined platforms anywhere. Software that wants to use anything can't ever guarantee that it will be there. They aren't part of the OS, but rather, part of the users defined installation.

Re:Attitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

What businesses care about:

1. 1. Making money
2. 2. Making money
3. 3. Plausible deniability
4. 4. Charging customers to fix bugs
5. 5. In order to make more money

Lightworks, anyone? Not FOSS, but not expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Lightworks is a Linux-first NLE that added Windows and recently Mac versions. It is the editor of choice for many in the "major motion picture" realm. You've seen its results at your local multiplex. Operationally, it emulates a Steenbeck flatbed film editor. www.lwks.com

No video on Linux

[theheadlessrabbit]

Linux has the super low end and the super high end well covered, but it has a few serious areas that are lacking.

On the low end, OpenShot definitely beats windows movie maker, and it's about as good as iMovie, so for vloggers, it's all you'd need.

On the high end, Lightworks and Cinelerra are both powerful, comparable to Avid, but less stable, and the learning curve is steep; too steep for an amateur who is just messing around to master quickly.

But for a start up or mid-range video production company, neither option is acceptable. OpenShot is simply not good enough for their needs, and the high end is too much, the training costs for employees would be significant. There is no Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut 7 for the mid range companies to work with.

I've also had trouble rendering to h.264 in Linux. The files are sometimes corrupt - refusing to load in anything other than VLC, sometimes lacking features, like progressive upload that is youtube friendly, or just plain poor quality - not all renderers are made equal, some look better at a given bit rate than others.