Yet Another Open-Source Video Editor: Novacut

There's a number of open-source non-linear video editor programs that have been going for a few years, including Cinelerra, OpenShot, and PiTiVi, among others. None of these projects have been particularly promising and yet comparable to the proprietary competition in the video editing world. Lightworks is an option since it's a professional software product that was then open-sourced, but it's Linux client isn't expected until late 2011. There is though another new option coming in the Linux video world and that's Novacut. Novacut is an open-source video editor, but at least it's taking a slightly different approach than the other projects.

Novacut is trying to be a next-generation open-source video editor that's catered around HDSLR camera content, broadcast/movie production requirements, and is even trying to be cloud-enabled. Being developed as part of the Novacut efforts is Dmedia, which is a distributed media library. This media library uses CouchDB for meta-data and media files are stored in the cloud or locally.

Some may have heard of Novacut last year, which seemed promising at the time with many of the same goals as they have now. Back then they were trying to raise $25,000 for their development efforts, but only managed to take in $11,133 from 141 donors. Since then, Novacut has basically fallen off the radar without any major announcements.

They've now relaunched a Kickstarter page where they're working to pull in $25,000 USD. As of right now, this distributed video editor project with ambitions to be professional grade has only pulled in $1,487 from 34 backers.

Those interested in learning more about this open-source video editor project, see their Launchpad page, this page talking about its development and user experience design, or the Novacut blog. There's also a video embedded below that talks about Novacut for just over eight minutes.

In our forums you can share whether or not you think this project will come to fruition or be like all of the other open-source video editor attempts with high ambitions.