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Open source HD video editing software

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ppe1700

Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2007
I have recently got into video editing. I've used Sony Vegas which seems way over the top from what I want to do right now, but the software is a little out of my price range. I am wondering if anyone has any knowledge of similar software preferably open source within a Linux distro that I can use for similar purposes?
 
The 2 most popular are kdenlive and cinelerra.
You may be disappointed in their stability and usability, though. The lack of good audio/video editing software, image editing software and a competitive office suite have always been weak points of the GNU/Linux platform.
 
The 2 most popular are kdenlive and cinelerra.
You may be disappointed in their stability and usability, though. The lack of good audio/video editing software, image editing software and a competitive office suite have always been weak points of the GNU/Linux platform.

I'll give you the video editing software, although I dont find them too bad (especially since they are free) however image editing and office suites I quite strongly disagree.

If its not a photoshop clone people seem to automatically discount it (no matter who makes it) I have never quite understood this. And on the office front, I have yet to bump into anything that couldnt be accomplished with OO (save for some very complex excel sheets)
 
Thanks guys. I have photoshop so I'm familiar with that. May be people need to feel familiar !
Video editing however is something I am completely new to. So, I feel I should try and use a free one first before getting familiar with Sony Vegas or Final Cut. Sony Vegas is borrowed and seems to work pretty well but I don't know how to use it fully yet. Final cut is on a mac and I've not yet used it but the outcome for little work is fantastic from what I have seen others achieve.

Again, thanks for your input. What distro would you recommend for these works? I am familiar with ubuntu and kubuntu - these seem the easiest to use out of what I have tried.
 
I'll give you the video editing software, although I dont find them too bad (especially since they are free) however image editing and office suites I quite strongly disagree.

If its not a photoshop clone people seem to automatically discount it (no matter who makes it) I have never quite understood this. And on the office front, I have yet to bump into anything that couldnt be accomplished with OO (save for some very complex excel sheets)

I understand your point. I think it comes down to how much you typically squeeze out of your software. In the areas I mentioned, the proprietary offerings are simply more powerful, aside from being the benchmarks and de-facto standards.
Sadly, Photoshop is more powerful than gimp. The same is true of Adobe Premier, and Microsoft Office for that matter.
IMO, the opensource counterparts can be considered 'lite' versions, when stable.
 
Thanks guys. I have photoshop so I'm familiar with that. May be people need to feel familiar !
Video editing however is something I am completely new to. So, I feel I should try and use a free one first before getting familiar with Sony Vegas or Final Cut. Sony Vegas is borrowed and seems to work pretty well but I don't know how to use it fully yet. Final cut is on a mac and I've not yet used it but the outcome for little work is fantastic from what I have seen others achieve.

Again, thanks for your input. What distro would you recommend for these works? I am familiar with ubuntu and kubuntu - these seem the easiest to use out of what I have tried.

Ubuntu works well for these because they have most if not all the software in the repos. Although I am partial to Linux Mint and their "Mint Install" is very nice too.


I understand your point. I think it comes down to how much you typically squeeze out of your software. In the areas I mentioned, the proprietary offerings are simply more powerful, aside from being the benchmarks and de-facto standards.
Sadly, Photoshop is more powerful than gimp. The same is true of Adobe Premier, and Microsoft Office for that matter.
IMO, the opensource counterparts can be considered 'lite' versions, when stable.

I cant really argue the strength of photoshop as I am not a power user, I like Premier and think you are correct there. However I don't honestly find Office to be "powerful" by any sense. It does its job, and it does it well, but again I fail to see anything in it that is more "powerful" that any of the viable alternatives.

Granted in each program there may be some oddball thing that you specifically need that program X does better then program Y. But for the most part I dont know that it is fair to say that openoffice is "M$ Office Lite"
 
... I don't honestly find Office to be "powerful" by any sense. It does its job, and it does it well, but again I fail to see anything in it that is more "powerful" that any of the viable alternatives.

Granted in each program there may be some oddball thing that you specifically need that program X does better then program Y. But for the most part I dont know that it is fair to say that openoffice is "M$ Office Lite"

I suppose here is where we disagree. I do find it more powerful. Aside from the ability to spread projects in shared userspace across a network with Groove, (I know of no OOo counterpart to this) Office also offers a more polished, (I find OOo ugly) customizable and robust GUI with the ribbon, and in my experience is faster, by orders of magnitude, than OOo.

You raised a good point though, in indicating that this is free (as in beer) software we're comparing.
My point is simply that, at least for now, the proprietary counterparts seem to have the wheel..IMHO.
 
..Again, thanks for your input. What distro would you recommend for these works? I am familiar with ubuntu and kubuntu - these seem the easiest to use out of what I have tried.
If you are familiar with them, then use them. The distro you run on makes little difference if you are simply using it for applications.
If you want to customize, or fiddle with your OS, then I would recommend something like Arch or Slackware.
 
I suppose here is where we disagree. I do find it more powerful. Aside from the ability to spread projects in shared userspace across a network with Groove, (I know of no OOo counterpart to this) Office also offers a more polished, (I find OOo ugly) customizable and robust GUI with the ribbon, and in my experience is faster, by orders of magnitude, than OOo.

You raised a good point though, in indicating that this is free (as in beer) software we're comparing.
My point is simply that, at least for now, the proprietary counterparts seem to have the wheel..IMHO.

But luckily with all of these programs you mention, they can be ran in a virtual machine. My only reason to have a windows partition now is games, which can't be run in a virtual machine :(
 
I did some HD video work last year with an AVCHD camera, and spent some serious time trying to get editing working right, and WELL.

And then I found AVLinux.

I have still not finished working on my stuff, and AVLinux is not... well, a "normal" style of distro, so I don't know how well the newest version works, but I have absolutely ZERO problems editing that are caused by the os or KDEnlive.

Problems caused by me are another matter....
 
There are no OS linux non-Linear editors that currently match final cut, vegas or premiere.

Unfortunately.
 
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