Pitivi 2020.09 Video Editor Released With Better Stability, Many New Features

[Leprechaunius]

This is ridiculous. Why do we need so many opensource video editors that do the same? Openshot, Shotcut, Pitivi, Kdenlive, Olive, Flowblade, Something Something...

[ed31337]

One thing that bugged me about Linux video editors was that none of them seem to support lossless video editing. Most of the time, I just want to cut out one part of a video that I liked and found worth saving. Doing this causes the content to get re-encoded in all of these video editors though. The result is a file that is not only inferior in quality from the original, since video compression is lossy, but also often turns out to be bigger than the full original video file! At that point, what's the point of editing the file in the first place?

When I searched around, I only came up with one lossless video editor, and it required electron or something. I passed on that.

Now I use ffmpeg command line options to cut my video files down losslessly. But ffmpeg from the command line is kind of mind numbing.

[Mike Frett]

These editors are too complex and busy for me, all those buttons are scary. I use Avidemux for everything.

[linuxgeex]

What are missing:
- Stabilizer for some shaking clips
- Text editor could include more typography effects (still unable to edit outlines, shadow)

2 glaring errors / omissions I found when I tried the flatpak:

1) no way to scale the time scale of a group, and no way to set the default import duration of an image. This makes working with imported images extremely tedious
2) transitions only use linear time (no easing) and rounding errors in the compositing math. These lead to jarring transitions, which is very unpleasant. When your non-linear video editor can't perform a crossfade as smoothly as your web browser... ouch.

The preview also detached itself from the editor, and became a separate window which ends up behind the editor when you interact with it. Making that window always on top allows you to scrub, but each time you render the window is closed and re-opens, losing that property. That's a pretty big papercut.

[jntesteves]

I'm really in doubt who is brave enough to be an early adopter of pitivi. When I was trying 0.995 It crashed everyday and may ruin my whole afternoon's effort.
Stability should be production applications' top priority, and unfortunately pitivi failed to meet this requirement.

So, you're saying that a unstable version of Pitivi was... unstable.

Yesterday's release is supposed to be the first stable release of Pitivi. Hence the news post.

[edwaleni]

For those looking for open source video editors, Olive is worth checking out as well: https://olivevideoeditor.org/

I was not aware of this, thanks I will give it a run.

[Charlie68]

So, you're saying that a unstable version of Pitivi was... unstable.

Yesterday's release is supposed to be the first stable release of Pitivi. Hence the news post.

I remember years ago that Pittivi was the pre-installed video editor in Ubuntu, I highly doubt it was a version in development, otherwise they have a problem with development, since I speak of at least 10 years ago.

[xAlt7x]

One thing that bugged me about Linux video editors was that none of them seem to support lossless video editing. Most of the time, I just want to cut out one part of a video that I liked and found worth saving.
...
Now I use ffmpeg command line options to cut my video files down losslessly. But ffmpeg from the command line is kind of mind numbing.

Try Avidemux.
Most distros don't want to package (probably because some built-in codecs are considered "non-free") it but there's always official Appimage or 3rd-party repositories

[Calinou]

One thing that bugged me about Linux video editors was that none of them seem to support lossless video editing. Most of the time, I just want to cut out one part of a video that I liked and found worth saving. Doing this causes the content to get re-encoded in all of these video editors though. The result is a file that is not only inferior in quality from the original, since video compression is lossy, but also often turns out to be bigger than the full original video file! At that point, what's the point of editing the file in the first place?

When I searched around, I only came up with one lossless video editor, and it required electron or something. I passed on that.

Now I use ffmpeg command line options to cut my video files down losslessly. But ffmpeg from the command line is kind of mind numbing.

You can use lossless-cut for this purpose. It's available as a Flatpak as well

[QwertyChouskie]

One thing that bugged me about Linux video editors was that none of them seem to support lossless video editing. Most of the time, I just want to cut out one part of a video that I liked and found worth saving. Doing this causes the content to get re-encoded in all of these video editors though. The result is a file that is not only inferior in quality from the original, since video compression is lossy, but also often turns out to be bigger than the full original video file! At that point, what's the point of editing the file in the first place?

When I searched around, I only came up with one lossless video editor, and it required electron or something. I passed on that.

Now I use ffmpeg command line options to cut my video files down losslessly. But ffmpeg from the command line is kind of mind numbing.

There's an app called literally "Video Trimmer" that does exactly what you want. (https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/07/...-app-for-linux, https://flathub.org/apps/details/org...R.VideoTrimmer for download) I've used it quite a bit and it does exactly what it says in the tin, no fuss, no crashes. (Also it adheres nicely to the Gnome HIG, so it fits in nicely with my desktop.)