Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor
358 points by susi22 7 years ago | 138 comments- nkkollaw 7 years agoShotcut (on Linux at least) just doesn't work.
I've used pretty much all amateur video-making software for Windows and some for Mac, Screenflow, FinalCut Pro, etc.
The best by far is FinalCut Pro (Mac-only), because it automatically creates proxy files and allows you to edit everything in real time with no lag, even when adding complicated effects.
The situation on Linux is dismal. The only good one is https://kdenlive.org/. It's actually I'd say at par to FinalCut in terms of performance, although the UI could use some clean up. It's the one I use because the other ones would either keep crashing, or be impossibly slow.
- mattl 7 years agoBlender is the best free software video editor across GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac. I've used it to edit a feature length movie. It's not perfect at all, but doesn't crash and doesn't crap out when you give it a slightly unusual formatted file.
- oregontechninja 7 years agoI third this. It's one of the best tools out there for video, and it's hidden in what most people refer to as a 3D content creation suite. I've used it professionally to good result.
- kamranjon 7 years agoCan confirm that blender is incredibly light on resources and in contrast to most NLEs doesn't seem to crash or get unexpectedly bogged down.
- nkkollaw 7 years agoThey don't even mention video editing though, only 3D.
I wonder why (really, have no idea)?
- rawfan 7 years agoI edited lots of screencasts in Blender. Can confirm it's more than suitable and above basic. There is a complete series on Youtube on how to use Blender for video editing.
- mrguyorama 7 years agoLooking at the documentation, I was under the impression that all it could do was basic cutting and simple things like cropping. Can it do simple effects, like video overlays?
- oregontechninja 7 years agoYea, there are lots of effects and tools hidden in there! I've been able to implement every effect I've ever needed without much effort. I actually have been using blender since I was a kid so I know my way around better than most. I'll edit this comment later with some quick tips or examples.
- f_g_g 7 years agoThere is a nice tutorial video series (31 videos so far!) here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjyuVPBuorqIhlqZtoIvn...
- oregontechninja 7 years ago
- supernintendo 7 years agoBlender is an amazing piece of software, although I've only used it for the 3D modeling and animation features. The flexibility of the UI is something I wish more software would adopt.
- oregontechninja 7 years ago
- kamranjon 7 years agoI share the same frustrations but I think honestly at this point Davinci Resolve 14 is the best video editor for Linux - nothing really competes. It is a bit of resource hog, but they have added a ton of capability in the last few years in regard to non-linear editing and I think if you seriously need to edit video on Linux that is where you should be looking. Also it's free. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/
- Joeboy 7 years agoNo h264 / h265 import on Linux though, which is a shame as that's pretty much what all consumer cameras produce.
- dotdi 7 years agoI'm a marketing sucker, I'll admit it, and this looks amazing, and it's free.
- dotdi 7 years agoForget that. It's not working properly (read: at all) on Linux.
- dotdi 7 years ago
- wazanator 7 years agoI've used Resolve quite a bit and think outside of maybe blender it's the best free editor, plus it's not intimidating like blender can be.
- djsumdog 7 years agoI didn't realize there was a Linux version. I've been using this on Windows for years.
- Joeboy 7 years ago
- morsch 7 years agoI recently used Lightworks on Linux. It worked fine. Quite a bit more powerful and hence complicated than the tools I used before.
It's proprietary and the free as in beer version is limited to 720p mp4 ("YouTube") export, which was sufficient for my use case.
- neves 7 years agoDaVinci Resolve free edition also looks nice: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/
The tool started to work on color, but it looks like they've made a decent editor also.
- contingencies 7 years agoI was a paying Pro customer for Lightworks but when I had a very important and conceptually simple project come up - conversion of a large archive of globally unique, 8mm film reels that had been pre-digitized in to cut and labelled portions - the software couldn't cut the mustard and they literally came back to me with a reply like "that is not our use case".
The content was super important stuff - early footage of many areas of the world not otherwise filmed - and was destined for Wikimedia Commons.
It was the worst experience I've ever had with commercial software since Windows 'corrected' an NTFS volume in ~2005 and nixxed the lot. From memory it was something to do with the input codec (beyond my control as lossless was a requirement), the output codec, and the aspect ratio. The software just couldn't cut the stuff. I was left to go back to ffmpeg and VLC. I will never again waste time learning a commercial UI.
- spuz 7 years agoLightworks is a good editor but I found its performance on my desktop on 1080p footage could sometimes be worse than editing 4k footage with Final Cut Pro on my macbook (that could be because FCPX generates proxies but I'm not certain about that as it seems very fast scrubbing through footage even when its still on my SD card. FCPX is also amazing at accepting most video formats and dimensions. Good luck getting Lightworks to do something unusual like export at a 1:1 aspect ratio for instagram.
- neves 7 years ago
- Cntrl-Frk 7 years agoHave you tried Flowblade[1]? It is a Linux only video editor that is frequently missed or forgotten. They had some great releases last year that greatly improved the editor. They also keep running plans for future releases in their release notes.
- helb 7 years agoDid you try Lightworks[0]? No affiliation with the company, i'm just curious how it compares with the others.
- trynewideas 7 years agoLightworks has a very narrow use case, heavily focused on cutting feature films and longform video with a very different workflow than most non-Avid NLEs.
It shines with large video asset databases, and once you get a few weeks of muscle memory behind it (or a few months if you're coming from FCP or FCPX), it's a fast tool when making lots of simple cuts. It has a well-earned reputation for cutting stuff like drama and comedy, where effects and pre-rendered sequences take a back seat to well-timed cuts between takes and fast iterative editing feedback. The node-based compositor is... unique, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to say it's an objectively easier or better workflow than AE — YMMV.
It's also capable of doing other things like handling basic A/V effects and compositing, but not as well as other NLEs or compositors. Its best output formats are behind a licensing wall, though they're still far cheaper than Adobe, Apple, or Avid, and you can do almost all your actual cutting with the free version. While it's more stable than some FOSS NLEs, it's still shakier than Avid or Premiere on well-supported hardware, with the distinct advantage that it's got native Linux support.
The weirdest part, though, was that it was supposed to have been open-sourced after EditShare acquired it, then they didn't, and they've been saying "it'll be open sourced when it's ready" for almost 4 years now.[1]
[1] https://www.lwks.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&c...
- trynewideas 7 years ago
- Anarch157a 7 years agoThe few times I had to edit video with Kdenlive, it was very prone to crashing. That was about a year ago, so it might have changed.
- arximboldi 7 years agoKdenlive crashes _a lot_. But recently I discovered that it crashes much less if GPU effects are disabled and the binaries from their webpage (not from Debian, etc.) are used. Still it can be frustrating to use just because of the crashing, otherwise a quite nice program...
- ben_bai 7 years agoEver tried blender? Yes, it has an (Standalone) video editor build in. https://www.blender.org/features/video-editing/
- benoliver999 7 years agoIt does crash, but it's sane. I have rarely lost work because of it.
- ben_bai 7 years ago
- nkkollaw 7 years agoI think Linux varies a lot according to distro and packages/libs installed, it might be that, too.
Shotcut wouldn't keep working with XFCE4 Xubuntu 16.04 for me. If I applied any heavier effect it would freeze, then crash.
- arximboldi 7 years ago
- skykooler 7 years agoOpenShot is far less crashy in recent years than it used to be.
- Xeoncross 7 years ago> because it automatically creates proxy files and allows you to edit everything in real time with no lag
With even cell phones shooting 4k I would think this would be a standard feature. It's not super complex.
- benoliver999 7 years agoKdenlive is what makes the situation on linux not dismal at all in my opinion. It's bad that it's the only good option, but it is so good that I use it weekly at work now.
- nkkollaw 7 years agoYes, sorry--I meant that it's dismal because there's only 1 that actually works! :-)
- nkkollaw 7 years ago
- neves 7 years agoThe lack of a decent video editor was one of the 2 main reasons that I've come back to Windows after 20 years using Linux as my main machine.
- mistermann 7 years agoAnd what's the best for Windows, without getting too spendy?
- snvzz 7 years agokdenlive is unfortunately also using the MLT Framework, which is terrible (does basic things like scaling horribly).
- metalliqaz 7 years agoWhat about OpenShot?
- Girlang 7 years agoAnother paid Apple astroturfer.
- mattl 7 years ago
- papanoah 7 years agoI used it recently to edit large video files around around 1h 1080p; Shotcut is rather slow and freezes often when editing big files. But nonetheless its a great project and I hope it will improve in the future.
- djsumdog 7 years agoAs long as it doesn't crash constantly. Openshot, Pitivi, Cinelerra and many of the others I've tried are totally unusable because they crash. All the time. Constantly. (Granted I haven't tried any of these in over a year, so hopefully they've gotten better).
The only tool in Linux that's really decent at editing video isn't even a video editing tool. It's Blender.
For the past few years I've just used Resolve in Windows. I'd be excited to try Shortcut and see if it handled better.
Video editing is a though medium though, even if you're just calling ffmpeg a lot. It's worth watching the Vimeo talk and video encoding and how a lot of cameras and cellphone encoders are so crappy they can change framerates on every frame.
- Joeboy 7 years agoI don't know if Shotcut supports it, but in almost all cases it makes sense to edit with smaller proxies rather than massive full-size video files. Obviously this gets truer if your footage is 4k or more, but it's still true of 1080p.
- djsumdog 7 years ago
- nickjj 7 years agoHow does it compare directly to Camtasia in a real world comparison?
For example with Camtasia, you can click 1 button and have your desktop + audio + optional webcam all being recorded to your video project, and then you can hop in and edit it with a bunch of great tools and presets. This includes complex animations and tooltips with doing nothing more than dragging around a few sliders.
Basically you can get up and going with an excellent work flow as 1 single person who isn't a video editing god.
Where does Shotcut stand compared to that?
At this point price isn't an issue for people in a position to create videos. It's all about how fast it is to go from an empty folder to a high production quality video.
Camtasia is one of the only reasons why I run Windows so if your project can solve all of those problems, that would be an incredible feat since Camtasia seems to have no intent on supporting anything but Mac / Windows.
Also if it helps gauge the comparison I have tried kdenlive about 6 months ago and compared to Camtasia I would rate kdenlive a 0.001 and Camtasia a 9.5 on the sole task of "quickly create a nice looking screencast".
- pjc50 7 years ago> At this point price isn't an issue for people in a position to create videos
There's an awful lot of people who want to break into Youtube with no money.
There's also a small but well-represented on HN market of people who want to have an OSS/Free Software only workflow.
- nickjj 7 years agoI'm all for OSS too but when it comes down to it, if you're serious about video editing, this isn't really a tool you can make compromises on (and trust me, I spent a lot of time trying before pulling the trigger on buying Camtasia).
This is after having recorded about 50 hours of real-time video over a few years. There's just so many things you absolutely need to be happy and productive when recording -- especially if you plan to do this for a living.
Using a bad video editor (and I'm not saying Shotcut is bad because I haven't installed it yet) is just a really draining and time wasting experience.
It takes me around 70 minutes of real life time to produce 10 minutes of video after years of work flow optimizations and using what I think is one of the best tools available to make screencasts. Almost all of that time is spent editing in Camtasia (stopping and starting the recording, correcting mistakes, adding post-production effects, etc.).
I would love to switch to an open source tool (for many reasons) but the reality of the situation is, I wouldn't switch unless it was remarkable because it's such an important tool if you're livelihood depends on making videos.
- tjoff 7 years agoAnd there are way more video recorders than people on earth, lots of people want to create videos from their children, family gatherings, vacations etc. if only they knew how.
- nickjj 7 years ago
- beojan 7 years agoWhere would you rate Movie Maker, and where would you rate Premiere Pro?
Shotcut and Kdenlive are fundamentally video editors, which happen to be able to do screen recording. Camtasia is specifically a screen recorder.
- nickjj 7 years agoCamtasia is much more than a screen recorder.
Look at a couple of Youtube videos on Camtasia 9. It is a full fledged editor (and also does audio / video recording too). That's the winning property of it.
You just click a button to start recording, deliver your video content, press stop and then you can immediately start editing your content. Then you export and you're done.
With something like premiere you would have to record your audio and / or video with a different tool and spend a lot of time importing. I also found premier's UI to be crazy complex (in a very non-intuitive way). I haven't tried movie maker.
Camtasia's editing effects are just enough to make really nice screencast style videos without being overwhelming. I've gotten hundreds of positive reviews on my tech courses that were related to the production quality of the videos.
For example, the video on this course page[0] was made fully with Camtasia 9. All of the animations and even the slides / tooltips.
That whale animation and text dropping effect took around 5 minutes to make from scratch once I figured out what I wanted to do. All I had to do was pick some things from a few drop down boxes and drag 2 or 3 sliders around.
- beojan 7 years ago> Camtasia is much more than a screen recorder.
Sure, but fundamentally, Camtasia is a screen recorder. It's purpose is to make screencasts. If you were editing video filmed with a camera, you would find Kdenlive, Premiere etc. more useful than Camtasia.
- beojan 7 years ago
- nickjj 7 years ago
- banderman 7 years agoOBS is fantastic for screencasting: https://obsproject.com/
- pjc50 7 years ago
- ollybee 7 years agoDoes anyone know how this compares to Openshot? Which is also cross platform and open source.
- rhodysurf 7 years agoIve tried both and OpenShot was 100 times better for me. Shotcut was slower for me and I didnt like the UI as much.
- rhodysurf 7 years ago
- rwx------ 7 years agoFor short video editing it is perfect. For large projects I prefer Blender.
- alok-g 7 years agoInteresting. I had not realized Blender could be used for video editing too.
- Joeboy 7 years agoFor a decade or so the situation seemed to be that there were dozens of FOSS editors, all of which claimed to work perfectly but none of which was usable in reality. Blender was the first thing I found that actually worked properly. Having found something that works I'm a bit reluctant to return to the historically infuriating task of evaluating FOSS video editors, but maybe it's time to check out some of the other options again.
- bringtheaction 7 years agoSame here, except I gave up on video editing all together because all of the FOSS video editors I tried were trash (I don't use that word lightly but they really were -- completely unusable). Never tried video editing with Blender, have only used it for 3D modeling and rendering.
- benoliver999 7 years agokdenlive is the only FOSS competitor you can actually use, but I would not recommend it if you are happy with your blender setup, it's not that much better.
There are some closed source options out there like Lightworks that are decent.
- bringtheaction 7 years ago
- ben-schaaf 7 years agoAfter trying out multiple different video editors for simple editing on linux, I've ended up sticking to Blender. There's just no beating the fluidity with which you can throw video and audio channels around, group them, apply effects to groups, etc. It probably helps that I taught myself how to 3d model in blender so I was familiar with the shortcuts: Like every other feature of blender, it has a steep learning curve.
- pjmlp 7 years agoYep, there are quite a few movies done with it, all 3D though.
- neves 7 years agoThe problem with Blender is that its UI is completely different of the other editors. You'd have to invest a lot of time learning it.
- HelloNurse 7 years agoA better deal than investing a lot of time in recovering from crashes and redoing the same editing project with different software.
- HelloNurse 7 years ago
- Joeboy 7 years ago
- alok-g 7 years ago
- pjc50 7 years agoI'll have to try this. There's a big gap for the "I just want to make a few cuts to this 10 minute video and fix the audio levels" tool. Until now I've been using avidemux which isn't really ideal.
- pankajdoharey 7 years agoBeing a hobby blender user i have used many Video editing softwares but i keep coming back to blender as my one stop shop for everything. Effects, Video Editing, Sound sync.. Other editors i use are KDenlive, Pitivi, Openshot and lesser known VLMC from the creators of VLC player.
- snvzz 7 years agoDid you ever try cinelerra[1]?
- pankajdoharey 7 years agoOhh yes cinelerra too long time back, it is very nice. But as i said Blender i just the stuff for me. Shortcuts and everything.
- pankajdoharey 7 years ago
- snvzz 7 years ago
- tambourine_man 7 years agoMaking cross-platform video editor is no easy task, kudos. I'll definitively check it out.
May I suggest working on your logo and loosing the AdSense ads on your page? Unfortunately, AdSense ads are borderline malware these days. I got one for MacKeeper and another for a fishy VPN.
- otterpro 7 years agoI've used Shotcut, and it was easy to use, and its simplicity reminded me of iMovie, which I also recommend for beginners. KDENlive was also good enough for most projects. As stated by others, the biggest weakness is that these editors are based on MLT framework. But if you cut videos once in a while, these are fine.
As for me, I edit a lot more videos, and I spend a quite of time on doing it. I've tried to work with a lot of different FOSS video editors, except Blender, and my conclusion was always the same -- it's usable, but a little rough on the edge, and has just enough minor bugs or quirks to be irritating and sometimes frustrating. I'm not talking about just crashes, since that happens on all video editors even on Premiere Pro.
Video editing is somewhat similar to coding, as it requires a lot of concentration, intensity, and creativity... There's nothing more frustrating than having the software/tools that gets in your way and block your flow and progress. Also time is money in video production house, often with tight deadlines. Some wedding videographers are offering same-day edits, which sounds insane to me, since video editing takes a lot of time. As for me, it takes about 7 hours to edit 1 hour video.
Currently I'm using Davinci Resolve 14 (on both Mac and Windows but haven't used on Linux yet). So far, it has worked surprisingly well. I really like the built-in audio editing and coloring tools. All this is free, with exception of some features for pro/studio version.
Some have complained the lack of h264/265 import on Linux version of Davinci Resolve, but you can always transcode to "pseudo-lossless" codec such as DNxHR/DNxHD (or ProRes if on Mac) using ffmpeg first. This step is usually automated using script to convert raw footage. Most pro workflow also involves this extra step, because editing on h264 source is really painfully slow and inefficient.
As a side note, the last time I checked, in LA/Hollywood, Avid was still the king of editor, but it may be changing. Anywhere except Hollywood, Premiere Pro CC is definitely the most popular editor, especially when it's used in conjunction with After Effects. However, I didn't need AE and I didn't like subscription-based payment model. Avid Composer First is free version of Avid, but it can't output 4k, and Avid UI is horrible.
- Joeboy 7 years ago> Some have complained the lack of h264/265 import on Linux version of
> Davinci Resolve, but you can always transcode to "pseudo-lossless"
> codec such as DNxHR/DNxHD (or ProRes if on Mac) using ffmpeg first. This
> step is usually automated using script to convert raw footage. Most pro
> workflow also involves this extra step, because editing on h264 source is
> really painfully slow and inefficient.
The preferred workflow would be import h264, edit using proxies, then render the result from the original files. A pro workflow shouldn't involve a gratuitous transcoding step. Mind you a real pro workflow wouldn't involve ingesting h264 files at all.
But it might be true that I should just get over myself and transcode the files before editing.
- Joeboy 7 years ago
- tomcooks 7 years agoUsed to use this beautiful piece of sw, i only wished it worked on slower pc's and that it was more easily scriptable. Had to drop it for a cli handmade solution[0]
- 72deluxe 7 years agoI've used this on the Mac and it is good enough for me - putting titles on videos before uploading to YouTube (I sometimes do a video of playing an instrument).
It is better than iMovie in this regard because it doesn't require copying the giant file into some "project" directory like iMovie seems to.
- babuskov 7 years ago> It is better than iMovie in this regard because it doesn't require copying the giant file into some "project" directory like iMovie seems to.
This is my biggest gripe with iMovie. You need to have double the space just to start editing.
I guess their idea was to allow users to move their video files around and delete them at will without being able to mess up the iMovie project.
However, iMovie has great screen transitions. Is there any other free or open source program that compares in that regard?
- babuskov 7 years ago
- ColonialMakery 7 years agoAfter evaluating various OSS video editors, I settled on Shotcut, and have been using it to make daily videos.
Its simple, functional, and does exactly what I need to do: cut, arrange, and splice clips and audio and export video.
I'm not going to say its the best, I'd really like to have the ability to dub in app instead of running audacity in the background, and I find its ability to put titles and text kinda wonky.
But its a simple tool that does exactly what I need to do and is Open Source.
- Daviey 7 years agoPlease could you make the Linux version easier to consume? Either a deb/rpm package and perhaps a docker image? :)
At the moment, it is pretty unclear of the exact install process!
- phaemon 7 years agoYou just unzip the bz2 file and then double click the Shotcut.desktop icon. There isn't an install procedure as such.
If you're on Ubuntu or similar, then once you're running it you can right click on the Icon and choose "Lock to launcher"
- fahadkhan 7 years agoThere is a snap package, does that not work for you?
- Daviey 7 years agoFrom the description, that is just the app.. not the dependencies... So the snap doesn't really add anything (other than confinement) compared to the tar.
- fahadkhan 7 years agoThanks, I see. Unfortunately I don't have my Linux machine with. I'll try it later and report my experience.
- fahadkhan 7 years ago
- Daviey 7 years ago
- phaemon 7 years ago
- Nelkins 7 years agoGitHub repo: https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut
- unicornporn 7 years agoDoes this have proxy editing? This is an absolute must in the age of UHD resolution and up. I believe Kdenlive has proxy editing.
- ggambetta 7 years agoKdenlive definitely has proxy editing.
- ggambetta 7 years ago
- dotdi 7 years agoI'm currently doing all my editing in iMovie and I'm not very happy with it since it has a few glitches I frequently run into.
Anybody got a link to a comparison between this and iMovie? "Shortcut" seems to be quite ungoogleable.
- davefp 7 years agoThe name is 'shotcut' but I definitely read it as 'shortcut' the first time too
- davefp 7 years ago
- rajaravivarma_r 7 years agoIt uses both GTK and Qt, someone knows why? And what different purpose they solve?
- zacharygrafton 7 years agoI could be wrong, but it looks like it is an optional dependency that adds additional image format support to MLT, which is a dependency of Shotcut. Also, some Qt builds require at least glib for event loop integration and some even require GTK as dependency to enable GTK styling in Qt apps. The build script for Shotcut appears to have an option to disable this dependency.
- zacharygrafton 7 years ago
- disordinary 7 years agoI wish this was good but it isn't, unfortunately I have to run a windows partition just for vegas, seems like a complete waste when everything else that I use runs in linux.
- foi 7 years agoHow cut video and save it's fragment without full rencoding?
- grx 7 years agoYou can use ffmpeg for this, using "copy" for audio and video, but setting "-ss <hh:mm:ss.0>" for the start time and "-t <seconds>" for the length of your cut beginning from the start timestamp given with -ss.
- Mister_Snuggles 7 years agoavidemux can do this as I recall. It can also re-encode video if you decide you need that.
- grx 7 years ago
- Klasiaster 7 years agoI'm looking forward for the Pitivi 1.0 release because it feels quite natual to work with (and uses GStreamer) and I expect some minor bugs to be solved until 1.0
- softawre 7 years agoInteresting name. I worked on an app called "ShotPut Pro" as an intern years ago that did the opposite (snatch video from big cameras).
- bfors 7 years agoThe speaker configuration on the front page is not correct. Those are M-Audio AV-40's and only one of them should have the volume knob, aux input, and headphone output.
- snvzz 7 years agoOh dear, another MLT-based video editor. MLT is seriously bad. They can't even do scale properly.
- Ciantic 7 years agoI would like to have a simple free video editor that can cut and append files together without re-encoding. It's doable with avidemux, but it is just pain to manage.
- barrkel 7 years agoI wrote one. It's actually a script driven by a video player that prints timestamps on standard out for specific keystrokes, along with a bunch of key combos for jumping back and forth, frame by frame if required. Ffmpeg is invoked at the end to cut the bits out and string them together, using 'copy' codecs.
Works well for the mp4 streams from my helmet camera, reliable key frames etc. For video that's been more highly compressed you'll need to compromise on the cut points if you want to avoid reencoding. And the cuts are abrupt, no fades or transitions.
- dracodoc 7 years agoMy use case is to cut segments from one video file and append the segments together. This way I can trim ads or parts I don't want.
The aged virtualdub does this as long as the container is avi (the codec could be avc/h.264 etc). I used avidemux to convert mp4 to avi without reencoding (just change the container format), then use virtualdub to trim it.
Actually I just write time stamps in a text file then use a groovy script to generate a script can be read by virtualdub, run virtualdub with the script to do the trimming.
It has worked for me for many years.
- mrec 7 years agoThere's an app called Machete that can do this, but it has obvious constraints - can only cut/paste at keyframe boundaries, video/audio streams must be compatible. In practice it's useful for editing one source video, but not for combining separate vids from different sources.
Not free but cheap.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7 years agoI'm surprised that that's technically possible, actually. Does it just shove the streams into a container format that allows both?
- Aissen 7 years agoIf you cut at I-frames, you don't need to reencode:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_type...
If you need more resolution, you can apply more tricks, recompose i-frames from the same data, etc.
- ygra 7 years agoI think the usual assumption is that both files have the same codec. In that case you can sometimes actually append the streams, or, with things like cuts, only re-encode a few frames until things line up again.
- Aissen 7 years ago
- barrkel 7 years ago
- blattimwind 7 years agoOn the free, closs-platform video editor side of things (-open source) Da Vinci is worth a look or two as well.
Kdenlive is another foss editor based on MLT, like Shotcut.
- ggambetta 7 years agoI've been using Kdenlive for moderately complex projects (now editing an action short and my first feature film!), and I've found it surprisingly good. It does crash every once in a while but generally does what it's supposed to do.
It's a shame that interop with Shotcut isn't great, even though both save their projects as MLT XML. I think there's just one property that you need to add to a Kdenlive XML to make it readable by Shotcut (something like shotcut="1"). That said, I think Shotcut makes much cleaner XMLs.
Tried Davinci Resolve as well. I generally like it, but find it less intuitive to use than Kdenlive (surprisingly, given one is commercial and the other is open source).
One thing I'm working on in my spare time is a MLT <-> FCPXML converter. I collaborate with people who use Final Cut Pro or Premiere, so it will be necessary to exchange projects both ways. I'm surprised that none of the open source video editors support this natively :(
- PetitPrince 7 years ago> Tried Davinci Resolve as well. I generally like it, but find it less intuitive to use than Kdenlive (surprisingly, given one is commercial and the other is open source).
Initially Davinci Resolve was born a color grading tool, not a non-linear editor (that's why there a whole tab dedicated to color). The NLE capabilities were added after it was bought by Black Magic Design. That may explain this lack of intuitiveness.
- PetitPrince 7 years ago
- BlackLotus89 7 years agoOpenShot https://www.openshot.org/ is also worth a "shot" haha...
- mmjaa 7 years agoDa Vinci just crashes for me, over and over. Its been one of the least stable apps I've ever encountered .. so, ymmv.
- alok-g 7 years agoMost of the video editing programs I have used (Sony, Corel, Cyberlink, Panasonic) crash often. On this HN, it looks the same for FOSS also. Is there some specific reason behind this?
- baldfat 7 years agoI do some video editing contract work from time to time. I never know what I will have to use so I have pretty much used all of them. They are unstable because they require huge amount of resources, especially if your looking for 4k source material.
You must have a very powerful machine. I don't have many crashes when working on high end custom built machines, but they do happen.
From most stable to least stable for me have been:
1) Lightworks (2010 announced they were moving to Open Sourcing the code, still hasn't really happened) It has been used for decades now to make Oscar winning films. If you understand the analog way of editing video this makes a lot more sense. Its basically free but has a HUGE learning curve
2) DaVinci Resolve (Most people use it only for color correction but they have added editing recently) My preferred and the one I recommend to everyone when asked what to use.
3) Sony now Magix Vegas Pro - My previously recommended and preferred video editor does a great job on keeping the work flow the work flow and not getting in your way (Lightworks actually does this best but man it is hard to get through the learning curve)
4) Adobe Premier - This thing is a BEAST but it is the defacto standard. Moderate learning curve but it is cross compatible and has every tool available. Great eco-system.
105) Final Cut Pro - I cringe when I have to use it. Only reason this thing has such a following is it is so hard to learn another video editor. Premier was the standard and somehow Final Cut Pro took over around 2008. Boy I really never liked it, but I was always in the minority till the Final Cut X came out. I have lost hours of work and I have also lost hours of work because case sensitivity is optional on OS X and MacOS.
- mkl 7 years agoI think it's that, by their nature, video editing programs need to use lots of very fast low-level code (C and assembly), and it's really hard to write safe low-level code.
- baldfat 7 years ago
- blattimwind 7 years agoIf you're on Linux, this is probably caused by the graphics drivers.
- mmjaa 7 years agoNope, MacOS. Just doesn't work on my system, and I have no idea why.
- mmjaa 7 years ago
- alok-g 7 years ago
- Joeboy 7 years agoConsumer cameras generally record video to h.264, which DaVinci Resolve doesn't read on Linux. So that's a deal breaker for me. Which is a shame as it seems like an extremely capable app (if you're not a FOSS purist).
- natch 7 years agoOr h.265 now...
- natch 7 years ago
- ggambetta 7 years ago
- pjmlp 7 years agoVideo editing is not my thing, but thumbs up for doing it as native app across all three major desktop OSes.
- no1youknowz 7 years agoNot really on-topic. But the same folks who have an interest in the subject might know.
I'm looking for a timeline editor in javascript which allows me to build an object to pass to ffmpeg to inject content at certain intervals.
Much like what gifs.com [0] does.
I have found this [1]: but it's not really what I am looking for.
If anyone has come across something similar, let me know. Thanks
- feikal 7 years agoi am love it long time
- philipov 7 years agoWhen I saw their front page features a screenshot with only a sliver of the screen devoted to the sequencer, I knew they aren't serious about video editing.
