In the past in order to make good home movies one needed either a Mac or a Windows PC. There were no good video editors for Linux in the past. Today with Jahshaka and Main Actor the things that could only be done on a Mac or a Wintel machine can now be done on a Lintel machine as well. I use these tools now and I find them to be excellent for what I do. I am not however into professional animation, film production or any other type of multimedia authoring so I cannot speak on how these tools will work or how they compare to the tools that professionals use. This review is done from the perspective of a home desktop user.
Enter Jahshaka
Jahshaka is a real time editing and effects program. It is comparable to Apples Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects and is located here. It is still in its alpha stages and is nowhere near the finished line, but, my experience with it is that its a pretty solid project even in Alpha. With this you can add music, add special effects if you want to put in subtitles and credits and subliminal messages this is the program for you. It is written in the excellent QT crossplatform development environment so it has a very attractive interface and it it not GNOME like at all. The interface on Jahshaka reminds me of Shake. It features a Desktop that you can use to put all your clips and materials on and use the drag-drop-fuctionality, it also includes a painting program. The tool layout is quite good and something I would consider on par with most commercial products, it can be understood by a novice like me and and is quite intuitive. This program was founded and is maintained by a man in Jamaica. It is licensed under the GPL and is freely available for download. This is one project i will be taking on to help them make it better.
MainActor
MainActor is a video editing tool similar to Apple iMovie, its not quite as intuitive as Jahshaka but for the job it needs to do it is excellent. MainActor can be found here. MainActor comes free with SuSE Linux 8.2 and right now a preview is offered on their website for users of other distributions to try out. The interface on this application looks like it may be QT as well. It also is good but for a person not used to working with it may have some trouble navigating it, and a iMovie user will have to retrain himself on how to use this Application. This product is made in Germany and that may explain why SuSE got it before anyone else did. It is very easy to use and works with most codecs and Digital Camcorders. If SuSE continues to offer this application for free with its OS, this application might make buying SuSE just enough reason. This application for other distributions is only in preview as I said and this application is a commercial product, meaning you have to pay for it and the source is not available. Pricing to be announced soon according to MainConcept.
Why SuSE?
SuSE is an excellent operating system even at 8.2, it beats other Linux distributions in ease of use, functionality and stability. The YaST configuration utility is light years ahead of other conventional system tools and makes the days of having to edit config text files a thing of the past. In my opinion, SuSE is easier to use and configure than Windows XP and is almost right on par with Mac OS X, in fact if a Mac user has to jump on the PC side I would reccomend SuSE more than any other distribution. It has its flaws and by all means is not a perfect OS, but its benefits outweigh any faults SuSE may have and I have never had a SuSE Linux distribution leave me with an unusable PC, Red Hat has left me with an unusable PC and it happened with Lindows. Unlike Lindows, SuSE in my opinion, has more choice and has the utilities to delight the geek and the home user alike. They ship more than enough end space user applications to make any user feel like a kid in a candy store. Its technical merits are also noteworthy, unlike other distributors, SuSE is actual plug and play. All my external devices, Camera, Camcorder, MP3 player and FireWire drives work, and since we are talking about movie making, my camcorder works flawlessly with FireWire, with Red Hat I had to go retrieve all these tools and software stacks in order to get my FireWire devices to even be seen with Red Hat 9, SuSE was just plug in and let it go. Now, no name brands of devices may not work with SuSE or it may load the wrong driver but to the point that SuSE just works, the rest of it is negligible. SuSE is very excellent quality.
SuSE has a free version of its Linux, installable over FTP. SuSE is a very good product and I hope they do continue to sell a product this good because I for one will continue to buy it. No one gives anything away for free. You either pay $79.95 for outstanding quality and service, or you get just “good enough” for free. Plus you are supporting their developers and making sure they have enough cash flow to keep operating. Besides, when price compared to Windows XP and even Mac OS X SuSE’s price is really small. And find me a version of Windows XP where you get over 3,000 applications and a free Office Suite that is comparable to the best Office software out there in the world today.
Conclusion
I would suggest these tools to anyone. Installation is done by RPM and compiling, for someone who doesnt know how to compile an application I suggest you either learn how to do it or get someone who knows what they are doing. Linux is catching up to the rest of the Operating Systems of the world today. I firmly believe that if developers keep developing quality applications we will see a significant number of Linux desktops in the next couple of years, regardless of what MS says. With ease of use in place and applications becoming more available for the Linux platform, people will have more choice than they ever dreamed possible.
About the Author:
Roberto J. Dohnert is a Unix/Linux Consultant and software developer. His first introduction to UNIX based systems dates back to NEXTSTEP. He is a member of the GNU Darwin Distribution and has made several contributions to that and other projects. His personal webpage is here.
“In the past in order to make good home movies one needed either a Mac or a Windows PC.”
You need a Mac to do it easily and without hardware incompatibilities and other problems.
“Jahshaka is a real time editing and effects program. It is comparable to Apples Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects”
Adobe has Premiere for editing and After Effects for effects.
In order to really make the case, I would like to see a link to a sample movie edited with these tools.
Regards,
Mark Wilson
Now that is what I call a brief article.
Personally never used Suse, but I might have to try out at least Jahshaka on my new 2.6test6 kernel box – the extra responsiveness has been lovely but I am yet to give it a decent stress test.
Q.
Sounds like a typical my distro is better then yours article, which features a lack of details and a general ignorance of the other distributions that are oh soo bad. Throw in a few guarded jabs at Gnome and gtk and you have a troll my friends.
Nice slam at the end to people who don’t know how/don’t want to know how to compile. That’s the elitist attitude keeping linux out of the main stream. So now a few more socially challenged geeks will be able to say Linux does everything they need and don’t need mac os x/xp whatever is geek vogue to hate today.
Those are ok for effects, I’d like to find a nice mpeg2 editor for linux. I record mpeg2 from my tv and would like to cut out the commercials before re-encoding them.
Anyone know of one?
I agree with the previous poster on the lack of content. Having reached the end of the article I was like, “Where’s page 2, 3, … ?
There have been articles on this forum which covered SuSE 8.2 pretty well (hardware support & all), so giving us a sample of some editing done with this new software would have been nice.
I agree the slam at end of the article is way off base. That sort of stupid attitude doesn’t help anyone.
However, it is normal in the *nix world for an alpha piece of software to require compiling to use.
While obviously a biased article and maybe an outright sales pitch, we’ve heard comments like this from Mac users for too long:
“So now a few more socially challenged geeks will be able to say Linux does everything they need and don’t need mac os x/xp whatever is geek vogue to hate today.”
Why do Mac users always feel like they need to defend themselves? God forbid anybody should ever make a product which might compete with Mac software…
I must admit, I learned absolutely nothing from this article.
Please, stop trolling and actually write. I learned more in 15 minutes on each webpage. Why slam GNOME and other Distros? That had absolutely no relation to the topic. Just to spite you, i feel like compiling these apps while running GNOME on RedHat.
But on the topic of these applications – they look pretty good, at least Jashaka does. some polish could benefit it, but for being alpha, not bad at all. Personally I can’t wait until adobe / macromedia start porting (isn’t that supposed to happen as part of Sun Java Desktop? – I thought I saw macromedia mentioned in articles about it), but for the moment these apps easily fulfill any requirements i’d have.
I currently use Windows to back up my DVD movies onto DVD-R. I will extract a DVD into a non-encrypted ISO using DVD Decrypter, then use Alcohol 120 to mount the ISO as a drive.
From there, in order to get a dual layer (9.4GB) movie to a 4GB DVD-R, I use Nero Recode to delete certain portions of the DVD (such as audio commentaries, extra scenes, etc) and also set the compression rate (you lose a little in the transition to make it fit), then burn to a DVD-R straight to the DVD.
If I could find apps to do that with Linux, that would be spiffy. I’m sure there may be ways of doing it, but they’re certainly not well advertised … seems that most distro makers would rather just whore ‘bread and butter’ apps such as Mozilla and OpenOffice, leaving many to wonder just what else is possible.
Take a look at Transcode or DVD::RIP.
They will rip a DVD very easily. There are even GUI frontends for them.
For mounting ISOs, Linux has that built in.
For editing, there’s virtualDUB for simple editing, or Cinelerra, or the apps mentioned in this article.
And free of course. 😉
Re: thumbs down for me
Anonymous wrote:
“Sounds like a typical my distro is better then yours article, which features a lack of details and a general ignorance of the other distributions that are oh soo bad. Throw in a few guarded jabs at Gnome and gtk and you have a troll my friends.”
I didn’t think the article was a troll, and while I prefer Gnome to KDE, I can understand the different aesthetic preference.
Re: Waste of Space
Trekkie wrote:
“Nice slam at the end to people who don’t know how/don’t want to know how to compile. That’s the elitist attitude keeping linux out of the main stream.”
Or a suggestion that you buy a distribution with support or hire an experienced programmer to configure a Linux system for you.
Re: content
Anonymous wrote:
“I agree with the previous poster on the lack of content. Having reached the end of the article I was like, “Where’s page 2, 3, … ?”
I did learn some new thinks in this article about Suse’s ability to work with consumer electronics.
“so giving us a sample of some editing done with this new software would have been nice.”
I agree. I hope the author or someone else will provide a link to a movie edited with one or more of these tools.
Regards,
Mark Wilson
Interesting thing is… a lot of the core DVD-ripping/”backup” utilities were available on linux before they were ported to Win32.
Those products looks very very interesting.
But one remark, i have not tried Jahshaka, but if the author is talking about home desktop user, i don’t think that it can be compared to FinalCutPro4, which is a pro application. Or even is it as complete as AfterEffects?, if so it is better to describe it as a pro software.
Jahshaka seems more a product which mix some features of AfterEffets and FinalCutPro in a powerful home desktop package. But it seems to be far comparing to a FinalCutPro in the editing activity or AfterEffetcs in the compositing.
Concerning MainActor, i thinks it looks more complete than IMovie, so it would be better to compare it to FinalCutExpress. I did not try it, but according to the web site of the product, maybe it targets more advenced user than Imovie.
Thanks for making us all aware of these applications.
Another excellent free 3d program for Linux. There ar ea lot of good commercial ones for Linux though such as Maya and Hudinii.
From the fake digital font to the buttons… truly this is an interface of champions.
These interfaces are highly specialized. Have you ever seen the interfaces to Shake or XSI? They’re not much different, though the buttons are curvier in XSI.
Nice slam at the end to people who don’t know how/don’t want to know how to compile. That’s the elitist attitude keeping linux out of the main stream.
1) I didn’t see anything in Roberto’s comments about compiling that came across as condescending. And there is a wider variety of up-to-date software and options available for those who learn how.
2) The article was written for OSNews.com readers, many of whom are developers and techies more experienced than the average Joe User.
Sounds like a typical my distro is better then yours article
A comment like this ALWAYS comes up when somebody recommends a certain distro. As if you just couldn’t express an opinion without a 10-page review and detailed comparison of competitors.
Jahshaka seems to be an project that is trying to immitate with Shake, and that is good. Shake runs for more than 4 years on Linux. Jahshaka is open and free but it is hardly new for Linux. Cinnerella is just to complicated for home use but Kino not mentioned however, its the only open/free package i would recommend to home users for the moment.
MainActor ALWAYS crashes when loading big and complicated files i hope they have fixed that in v5.
Softimage and Houdini, no home products
, have built in dar/dvr/dvp and montage modules too.
The statement that both programs aren’t GNOME-like does actually make sense. SuSE is quite a KDE-distribution, so it is nice when the movie-editor uses the same toolkit as KDE does. And of course it is nice for a home user that when he buys SuSE, he gets MainActor for free, and that his camcorder is auto-detected and “just works”.
Now what I feel missing is a more detailed review about Jahshaka and MainActor. How do they look like? Are there things you feel are missing? Is it crashy (MainActor on SuSE 7.3 was _very_ unstable and not even the full version!)? How fast are they compared to Windows? And so on.
I’d like to find a nice mpeg2 editor for linux. I record mpeg2 from my tv and would like to cut out the commercials before re-encoding them.
Check out avidemux: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
It’s great, you can edit and encode mpeg, divx, xvid and I’m sure other formats as well. I think it’s similar to virtualdub although I haven’t tried that one.
MainActor was an AMIGA program. I remember because it came with my Villiage Tronic VGA expansion card.
Cool. It is nice to see AMIGA stuff still around. People still don’t believe me when I say that the AMGIA has this stuff in the late Eighties early Nineties.
MainActor was an AMIGA program. I remember because it came with my Villiage Tronic VGA expansion card.
IIRC, there were quite a few video editing tools. Some of the music related ones were really impressive for their times, such as those *.mod files which could have a whole song but only a few KB’s.
Cool. It is nice to see AMIGA stuff still around. People still don’t believe me when I say that the AMGIA has this stuff in the late Eighties early Nineties.
I believe you. I remember using AMOS many years ago. They were the good old days. Unfortunately the Amiga of today resembles nothing of the Amiga from 15 years ago 🙁 The Amigas back then were compact, speedy and simple. Want to add a HDD to an Amiga 500, slot it onto the side of the computer, same goes for memory as well.
At one point I was going to buy an Amiga 1200 but then decided to go with a PC.
Does anyone know where I can find some introduction to Jahshaka? I tried the Windows version a while ago, but I couldn’t figure out how to do anything in it.
MythTV:
http://www.mythtv.org/
no software which is as powrful and usable like finalcut, avid, premier, after effects, combustion, logic, nuendo, protools, mx, director,… no solutions for dvd video and audio authoring…
there is missing a lot. linux is great for a server or nice for a internet desktop, but the killer apps for media production are missing.
why is this? it seems that the open source community is not able to code software which is as good as the commercial software. commercial applications have just much more money and programmers behind it.
we have to wait until the commercial software is ported to linux.
right now that companies are willing to support this on the linux desktops these sort of arguments pop up. nice.
afaik multimedia is covered by maya, houdini, blender, filmgimp, adobe is covered through the recent wine releases, gimp which is perfectly usable for webgraphics.
as for the dvd editing part i might just aswell pass on that remark since i don’t have any insight into that part of the computing industry.
It seems to me that it’s more the high end packages that actually get ported to Linux. What’s really missing is packages targeting the newbie of video editing.
What basic commercial packages try to do is hold your hand, to get quick results and begin to understand what the production process is like.
The best so far is Kino, able to capture DV, edit it and encode it. It is pretty stable and ready packaged for Mandrake and other distros.
Main actor5 seems to be willing to improve on that but the linux version is still not very stable in my experience but is getting there.
Cinelerra is said to be the best but capture is unstable for me and the use of Quicktime for linux as a default format has made it impossible so far to use the files obtained by DV grab and Kino so I can’t comment on that.
So called desktop distro should help the kino and cinelerra projects integrate better and reach stability if they seriously want to compete with Windows and MacOS.
some strange sense of humor? FinalCut Pro is great pro level application, Jahshaka, umm… ????
)
I was surprised to see no mention of Cinelerra in an article on video editing on Linux.
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
While it’s interface is a pain IMHO, it is quite mature and stable. Also, the audio side is strong, with LADSPA support and a decent virtual desk+routing.
There’s an easier way to backup your dvd’s. Firstly, use DVD Decrypter to run all files on the DVD to your hard drive, then run those files through DVD2One. It squeezes the video, menu’s, special features and all onto one dvd-r and you’d never even notice the difference. Digital soundtrack and all. The only way to go
My goodness. How the heck could an article like this possibly get posted without screen shots?
OsNews–;
No offense, Roberto, but this article does read more like a “why SuSE is better distro”. Since when did the configuration of YaST or compiling have to do with the actual functions of the video editing programs themselves?
Your article, while I did learn a little more about the video editing/capture programs available for Linux, should have been more focused on the pros and cons of the different programs with examples. Also, screenshots are a must for this type of article… I would like to see how allegedly non-GNOMEish it is, as well as the layout of the programs so that I may judge for myself.
I personally appreciate your effort though. I did learn a thing or two myself, as I am planning on getting a digital camcorder sometime in the future.
Yes, Suse is a nice distribution, and these are both capable editors, but does Suse support SATA drives, and/or the Raid0 setups coming out on most 875/Canterwood-based boards yet?
This’s really the biggest problem I’ve ran into w/Linux in the past several years. In the past, I’ve known that with enough determination, time, and research, I can get Linux to run on and talk to just about every hardware component I can throw at it.
However a few months ago I purchased a new 3Ghz box w/a couple of SATA drives, which I’ve setup in a Raid 0 config., specifically for video editing (Raid 0 is a blessing when you’re dealing with several gigs of video to edit down!).
While XP handles the hardware and the editing with finesse and speed, Linux refuses to even see the SATA drives, much less recognize them and their Raid config.
And don’t even get me going about the lack of support for one of ATI’s current best sellers, the 9600 vid. card.
Until Linux catches up with the Canterwood chipset, and the power & speed it brings to the table, it’s (unfortunately) Windows for me when it comes to video editing.
“While XP handles the hardware and the editing with finesse and speed, Linux refuses to even see the SATA drives, much less recognize them and their Raid config.”
That’s because the SATA-Raid that you are doing is not real hardware raid. The “driver” is actually a windows utility that emulates the RAID functions. If you want real RAID on Linux, SATA or otherwise, go with a 3ware card. If you are using your computer in a professional setting, either research the stuff properly or have a professional put it together for you.
By the way, I hope dangerous RAID-0 is in terms of data integrity. But, then again, some people like living on the edge and RAID-0 does provide a moderate sustain transfer rate boost when doing video editing.
I do agree with you about the ATI driver situation, though. I hear very good drivers will be out in 2 week’s time.
The “driver” is actually a windows utility that emulates the RAID functions. If you want real RAID on Linux, SATA or otherwise, go with a 3ware card.
I understand this, but I also don’t see why Linux couldn’t emulate the same functionality and allow me access to the drives. Seeing as Canterwood chipsets are selling so well these days, I’d think that this would be a priority for someone, but evidently not. 8(
what’s your thoughts on Linux software-based RAID?
By the way, I hope dangerous RAID-0 is in terms of data integrity. But, then again, some people like living on the edge and RAID-0 does provide a moderate sustain transfer rate boost when doing video editing.
Yeah, I only keep my OS, program installs and “scratch space” on the Raid 0 drives just for that reason. Raid 0’s performance is fairly impressive, but the fact that if one drive flakes, I lose the data on both has always kept me from utilizing it for more permanent storage.
I’ve planned my setup with the thought of “what if”, thus my data’s still kept on plain ol’ IDE drives. If my Raid setup dies, the worst I’ll have to do is reload the OS and program installs. Good point for newbies though! Store your data on slower, more reliable drivespace, and use Raid 0 for your work area and non-critical files!
I do agree with you about the ATI driver situation, though. I hear very good drivers will be out in 2 week’s time.
That is really good news, but I have to admit that I’ll believe it when it’s running on my box. You can currently use the FireGl drivers for the 9600, and while I’ve had some success in using these, it’s always been without 2-d or 3-d accelleration, and without both monitors running independantly (ie, without the same desktop being mirrored on each monitor).
ATI has come out with new official drivers for all their recent cards, including that. Just go to the ATI website and download them, they work pretty well.
I remember that from the Amiga… those were the days
“no software which is as powrful and usable like finalcut, avid, premier, after effects, …”
You are absolutely right if Premiere and FinalCut are ever regarded as “professional” software. At moment Linux lacks such highend consumer NLE apps like Prem. and FCP, and MainActor is to fill in the gaps. But for Linux to become a mainstream platform for NLE, we need to wait until Avid port their products to Linux, if it ever does.
“there is missing a lot. linux is great for a server or nice for a internet desktop, but the killer apps for media production are missing.”
No professional in the media industry uses Linux because of the lack of applications. Maybe someone thinks otherwise.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31707.html
someone said knowledge is power. The time “Linux is only for servers” is over, at least from my perspective. One’s lack of knowledge shouldn’t be blamed.
No professionals? Is “Industrial Light and Magic” or “Pixar” or “Disney” professional enough for you?
Linux seems to be a rather popular platform for specific segments of the media industry.
1) Its got high-end 3D covered with ports of both SoftImage XSI and Maya. ILM uses mostly Linux workstations for its 3D pipeline these days.
2) Its got a good start into animation. Toonz (a very high-end animation program) is available on Linux, and tools like Photoshop can be run emulated. Disney used Linux desktops for most of its animators while doing the movie Sinbad They ported their own code to Qt, and ran Photoshop under WINE.
3) Its got a good start into certain aspects of post-production. Shake, one of the most popular high-end compositing programs, has a Linux port. Shake was used in Blade II to composit a scene, and FilmGimp was used in Scooby-Doo.
Check out:
http://linuxmovies.sourceforge.net/linux.movies.gallery.html
Note that the page is missing some more recent movies.
oh yeah, THAT was the point I was making. as I wrote, “linux is only for servers” argument is completely non-sense today.
Not that I am defending this article, but
U Saideth:
“Nice slam at the end to people who don’t know how/don’t want to know how to compile. That’s the elitist attitude keeping linux out of the main stream. ”
Trouble is, for this application (movie making) Linux is about as mainstream as it gets. Maybe not for home movie applications, but in Hollywood, linux is becoming the workstation of choice.
example: http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31707.html
I’m going to guess you’re not actually trolling, although I could be wrong. Final Cut Pro is not a “consumer NLE” except in being cheaper than its traditional competitors; that’s why Final Cut Express was released. With the addition of Cinema Tools in particular, FCP is competitive with Avid–and that’s not in my judgement, but the judgement of (at least some) professional film editors. It’s been used for a fair number of independent feature film releases, and is being used for the forthcoming major studio release (and assumed Oscar contender), “Cold Mountain.”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_conten…
Linux is, as already noted, pretty competitive in this space on the high end–but it’s competitive by having some of the big name commercial packages available for it. If I were developing free-software video editing tools, I’d really choose iMovie as a target, simply because it’s better to get the UI friendly and “right” with an engine of limited capability, then work on improving the engine, than to spend many years making a theoretically blow-your-socks-off engine with an interface that only an MIT researcher could love on the assumption you’ll get around to fixing the interface when the engine hits some arbitrary stage of perfection. You won’t.
” it’s better to get the UI friendly and “right” with an engine of limited capability, then work on improving the engine”
But that’s the boring bit!
I know what you mean though, and the same could be said of many Linux apps. This has lead to seperate projects appearing that just work on front ends though (for mplayer for example) so it’s not necessarily always a problem.
I’m still hoping someone will port ‘Virtual Dub’ to Linux. It’s an easy to use, fast and extremely useful program for format conversion, lossless editing and restoration of video. It’s GPL’d too!
http://www.virtualdub.org/
FCP isn’t *consumer* nl editing app.
Yeah, FCP is a low to mid range professional editor. Premiere is a mid to high range consumer NLE. iMoive is a very basic low end consumer editor. I’d guess Jahshaka (at its current state
) fits closer to Premiere than iMovie or FCP. But That’s just a guess, I haven’t tried it yet.
I have no intention to start NLE war here. I’ve seen many, and they all end up with meaningless frame wars between Mac & PCs. Nor am I trolling.
I understand that many independent film makers and freelance editors are using FCP to edit, but as for feature (post) productions Avid still is the industry standard by a large margin. Although some post houses have FCP stations as well, they are rather considered alternative for those who are not familiar with Avid. I understand your point, (and thank you for the info re:”cold”) but FCP in my understanding is a consumer level NLE with professional level features. Codec is what matters more than features if you are cutting for distribution or broadcast. Not to mention ability to cut in 24fps (yes, FCP has some featrues to handle it in EDL level). If mini-DV can be a “professional” media format, so is FCP. I just don’t think either is and that’s purely my opinion. If “getting paid to do the job” is qualification of professional, even Hi8 can become a “professional” media format. It’s all depending on the definition of the word “professional.”
If I were developing free-software video editing tools, I’d really choose iMovie as a target,… You won’t
My comment was to the original poster, who didn’t have information about use of Linux in the (pro) media industry. There are in fact a number of Linux boxes used in studios. As far as Avid port to Linux I mentioned, I thought that was by far the easiest way for Linux to be accepted by those who are in the post-production. If opensource community can come up with a better solution that attracts and converts tens of thousands of Avid editors currently working in the industry, I would love to see it, of course.
To develop alternatives, you can choose iMovie as a target interface, or other developers can choose something else as the interface. The strength of opensource community is that it doesn’t have strings to one flavor or another. Personally I don’t care what path to be taken; I just want to see Linux based NLE in post houses.
Whether you agree or disagree, I hope this clarifies my points.
was this about movie editing or SuSe?
I liked the article. Learned a bit about an OS I don’t have a lot of familiarity with. But I do take issue with the following statement.
>And find me a version of Windows XP where you get over 3,000 applications and a free Office Suite that is comparable to the best Office software out there in the world today.
Openoffice works in Windows XP and so do many other free applications like AbiWord. The Opensource/free software world doesn’t end at Linux.
FCPro can handle SD, HD or uncompressed 10bit 601 and with Cinema Tools you can work w. film. it depends- hardware matters (of course). Avid isn’t different, they had low-end software-only systems too (not very good ones, IMHO).
but yes, FCP **IS NOT** hi- end
I have heard the comments that Linux is used in high end video editing, however this is only partially true. Linux in the film industry is used for 3D animation and compositing, not video editing.
To some, these are the same thing, however, as a video professional, I assure you, they are related, but quite different activities.
In 3D apps (Softimage XSI, Maya, Blender, etc.), you are creating video footage for later inclusion into a finished product. It is like synthetic shooting in a way. You are creating video content for later editing.
Caracter generation or titling (nothing on Linux really) is making the text you see before, during and after the video. This is usually done in another app that while accessable within the editor, is usually really a stand alone program. For some reason, even on Mac or Windows it is not easy, but possible to find a really good CG application. Again, you are making more footage,
In compositing (Shake, Cinepaint, etc.), you are taking multiple pieces of footage such as rendered 3D images, things you shot earlier, masks made in Cinepaint, titles and combining them in each frame to achieve a new look, erase things you wanted hiden, even change locations. This is very open ended, but in the end, you are still making raw footage for later editing.
Editing (Cinelerra, etc.) is taking all the pieces and putting them together in a finished video. This includes trimming the beginning and ends of video clips (thing you shot or things made from the compositing or 3D steps) to make the timing right, making the audio line up with the video correctly, putting titles in place, everything that is left timing wise.
Editing is the most troublesome part of production on Linux. The upcomming Discreet Smoke 6 is the first “Real” editor I have heard of on Linux but I am sure it will cost close to, if not well over $100,000 and include an IBM workstation. Cinelerra has a vomit inducing interface, is poorly documented, doesn’t work well with standard DV footage last I checked and is known as a buggy, hard to compile package at the authors admission.
There are a few other tiny editing packages available, but they are very early in their development so it is too soon to use them for any real work.
Also note that most programs span many of the previous steps of production. Finalcut Pro does some compositing, Main Actor (more a compositor really) does basic editing, etc. However none of the Linux editors currently shipping are usable by even a Pro-sumer level editor. I call Pro-sumer the FCP/Matrox RT level editor on other platforms. Mild editing with effects, does small local commercials weddings or wedding videos for a price if not for a living. Probably shoots on a 3 CCD DV camera.
For the consumer nothing I have seen is easy to use or has enough of all the various steps listed above to be usable to the consumer. Generally, the more “consumer” the editing application, the easier the interface gets, the more esoteric features get dropped and the more steps in the pipeline are included in one app. iMovie is a great example as is Pinnacle Studio.
Let’s hope someone get video editing on Linux going real soon as it is one of the most glaring sore spots in this otherwise highly usable OS.
Mutiny
FCPro can handle SD, HD or uncompressed 10bit 601 and with Cinema Tools you can work w. film. it depends- hardware matters (of course).
Avid isn’t different, they had low-end software-only systems too
They are smiliar, but they are diffrent. FCP was a prosumer NLE retrofitted so it could do high end work with HD, 10 bit, etc. It doesn’t a decent job at that.
However, Avid was designed for the highend. Then they made scaled down versions of their apps (the xpress line). Avid is a little higher quality than FCP.
(not very good ones, IMHO).
I disagree, I like XpressDV and Pro better than FCP. FCP is still a good NLE, I just like Avid’s better. However, that’s really just a matter of personal preference. There isn’t much diffrence in quality between the two.
but yes, FCP **IS NOT** hi- end
Yep. But if Apple keeps the pace up with FCP, then it could turn into a true high end app.
…but the autor is a hopeless over-self-confident newbie. He mistakes personal opinions for objective truths (like when, in HIS experience, he got an unusable system from Red Hat, but SuSE apparently has the specific sort of magic that makes that impossible), mistakes personal taste for objective value judgements (like when he’s OH! So Happy! that some application is “nothing like Gnome” or something like that) etc.
Essentially, the useful stuff in this pseudo-article could be reduced to a couple of URLs.
It would be nice to see in the future articles with an increased level of professionalism (or at least more articles with at least traces of that).
Thought I’d add that Blender has basic video editing and effects tools built in.
Here’s the manual entry on the subject:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/html/c8160.html
What’s the point in publishing this? The gist of it all seems to be that QT is superior to gtk, KDE to Gnome and SUSE to all other distributions. The author doesn’t seem to be so interested in the programs the article is supposedly about and comparisons with commercial counterparts are inaccurate. I would welcome a real review of the programs in question and maybe also an overview of the currently available programs in this genre.