An Update On OpenShot! OpenShot 2.0 Hopefully Out In Next Year

[phoronix]

Phoronix: An Update On OpenShot! OpenShot 2.0 Hopefully Out In Next Year

Yesterday I wrote about it being a long time since the last update on OpenShot, a popular non-linear open-source video editing application that hasn't seen a major release in years, while today (coincidentally?) there's some big improvements to share...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenShot-2.0-Update

[weej]

@Michael - I think you're jumping the gun a little. The way he phrased his sentence was in mild jest, he hoped it *wouldn't* take till his next birthday to release Open Shot 2.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Don't pour all talents into Pitivi and get it to 1.0. Let's have several half-ass solutions.

[kenjitamura]

Don't pour all talents into Pitivi and get it to 1.0. Let's have several half-ass solutions.

I don't think Pitivi even has feature parity with Kdenlive yet. If we were to focus on one video editor I'd vote for it to be Shotcut and have all the Kdenlive developers move over to that.

And to have your computer broke in a move must suck. I've had to pack and move my main computer rig like 5-6 times and was always super careful to wrap up the desktop and monitor with blankets before putting them in sturdy oversized boxes.

[Luke]

Kdenlive is far more powerful than Pitivi, meant for a different job

I don't think Pitivi even has feature parity with Kdenlive yet. If we were to focus on one video editor I'd vote for it to be Shotcut and have all the Kdenlive developers move over to that.

And to have your computer broke in a move must suck. I've had to pack and move my main computer rig like 5-6 times and was always super careful to wrap up the desktop and monitor with blankets before putting them in sturdy oversized boxes.

Pitivi is designed to edit video using a simple inteface, appears to be meant for users to pick up quickly and use for simple tasks. Kdenlive is considered a "prosumer" video editor with far more features and more of a learning curve. They are not the same kind of software in this sense.

Not sure where Openshot fits in this: The versions I have tested were nowhere near Kdenlive for features, seemed like Pitivi to be meant for anyone to pick up quickly. Some featured were counterintutitive, however, and the backend is MLT, same as Kdenlive. If Openshot is dumping Gtk for Qt5, some of this work will duplicate the work of porting kdenlive (same backend) to QT5 (same toolkit).

[kenjitamura]

Pitivi is designed to edit video using a simple inteface, appears to be meant for users to pick up quickly and use for simple tasks. Kdenlive is considered a "prosumer" video editor with far more features and more of a learning curve. They are not the same kind of software in this sense.

I always thought Kdenlive's features and interface seemed pretty intuitive. I've made great use of the animation features, keyframes, and compositing with affine to greatly speed up my process for making special effects. I used to do all that by writing scripts in avisynth and a hundred lines of code for ~10 seconds of video was not fun. Though to be fair I haven't tried Pitivi to see how simple its interface is in comparison.

Not sure where Openshot fits in this: The versions I have tested were nowhere near Kdenlive for features, seemed like Pitivi to be meant for anyone to pick up quickly. Some featured were counterintutitive, however, and the backend is MLT, same as Kdenlive. If Openshot is dumping Gtk for Qt5, some of this work will duplicate the work of porting kdenlive (same backend) to QT5 (same toolkit).

I think the developer actually dropped MLT for his 2.0 release:

Cross-Platform Engine

The engine has been built from the ground up for cross-platform, multi-threaded performance. It is written in C++, uses cross-platform build tools, and utilizes many amazing open-source libraries, such as FFmpeg & LibAV, JUCE Audio Library, and ImageMagick.

For the first time in OpenShot's history, it will spread its wings, and include Windows and Mac versions. Our project was originally built to address the lack of open-source video editors available on Linux, but over time, we have come to realize that Windows and Mac also have a serious lack of quality open-source video editor options. Not to mention, we receive a constant stream of requests for Windows and Mac compatibility.

On his kickstarter page he also mentions he has been working on the engine on his own since 2011 so I'm assuming it's not MLT. I also think he at some point explicitly stated he is not using MLT anymore but I can't find the quote so I'm not certain.

The amount of changes that will be present in the overhaul are pretty big: Switch to Qt5, more compositing features, lots of integration with Blender for 3D animation and titles, video render server to have the rendering done on a central server, video render queue, GPU hardware acceleration, and animation presets to cause things to easily bounce or move around in commonly desired patterns already pre-defined.

If Openshot 2.0 were to come out now and meet all the kickstarter goals it'd undoubtedly be the best open-source video editor around but it looks like it could be another year for its release. Kdenlive was mostly stagnant for ~1.5 years because the main developer, JBM, was having health issues and he just came back a few months ago and has been working hard on Kdenlive since. They've almost finished porting Kdenlive to Qt5, then they plan to finish the code refactoring to make it more manageable and reduce the size of the code by removing obsolete functions no longer used, and I think after that they plan on finishing the GPU acceleration. JBM has stated the porting to Qt5 could be done in as soon as 2 months and at that point it will be functionally stable for production use, and that refactoring could then be done in another 2-4 months after that.

Additionally, Kdenlive may be in the process of becoming the exclusive video editing server for Wikipedia which will mean Wikipedia authors would need to start using Kdenlive for editing Wikimedia sources which would greatly increase adoption. With the increased adoption and exposure it wouldn't be unthinkable for Kdenlive to also get some new blood/developers. I'm not sure where the effort is right now for making Kdenlive the Wikipedia video editing server but here are the proposal pages for it:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe.../Specification , https://github.com/ddennedy/wikimedi...-Specification

[hajj_3]

There are 3 professional non-open source linux video editors already out - Blackmagic Da Vinci Resolve, Nuke Studio and Lightworks. Open source doesn't really benefit us with this type of application.

[curaga]

There are 3 professional non-open source linux video editors already out - Blackmagic Da Vinci Resolve, Nuke Studio and Lightworks. Open source doesn't really benefit us with this type of application.

How about arbitrary limitations? Ie, you don't get codec C at resolution Y unless you pay us an extra $1500. Codec D is not available even if you pay.

[schmidtbag]

There are 3 professional non-open source linux video editors already out - Blackmagic Da Vinci Resolve, Nuke Studio and Lightworks. Open source doesn't really benefit us with this type of application.

I was about to add Cinelerra to the list until I realized it is actually open source (but it is professional).


It would definitely be nice if there was less fragmentation for video editors. I feel that a few projects could be abandoned in order to help with others. I'm sure Kdenlive was almost forever abandoned because of the lack of community support and challenges to overcome. I feel like at most, there should only be 3 open source video editors for linux: one for beginners and has no major dependencies, one for intermediate users with many optional dependencies (and maybe both a Qt and GTK variant), and one for advanced users.

[Remdul]

I hate to be pessimistic, but I don't think open source video editing is going to happen in this decade. Of all of the editors out there currently, they all struggle to do even the basics. Just forget about any advanced features.

I once tried to erase some wobbly lens dirt from a short clip, but it just isn't possible, even with the arguably most complete package (kdenlive). There's all sorts of completely useless filters, but none that can track a small clump of pixels and fill it with surrounding color. Sure, I can pixelize an area (if static), or blur the full frame, or put some 70's psychedelic effect on it, but nope, no actual footage cleaning tools. Pointless.

The most advanced thing you can do today is cut some clips/sound together and change the colors/brightness a little. That's about it.