[HN Gopher] Flowblade: Open-source video editor for Linux
___________________________________________________________________
Flowblade: Open-source video editor for Linux
Author : ponsfrilus
Score : 259 points
Date : 2024-01-17 05:14 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jliljebl.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (jliljebl.github.io)
| cranberryturkey wrote:
| can you track and object?
| Daub wrote:
| Looks like no.
| FlashBlaze wrote:
| Super cool! Kind of in the similar vein:
| https://natrongithub.github.io/
| miniwark wrote:
| Natron look to me to be more like a tool for Special Effects
| than for video editing with a timeline.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Natron was meant to clone a compositing program called Nuke,
| but it crashed every few seconds. It can't even open and stay
| open without crashing immediately even if doing nothing. I
| don't know why anyone would go to all that work and release it
| in that state, but that was my experience.
| danboarder wrote:
| The UX looks familiar (coming from Final Cut, Premiere, Vegas,
| etc), cool. I also recently learned of Olive:
| https://olivevideoeditor.org/about
| gradstudent wrote:
| Love Flowblade! I use it for post-processing lectures and
| technical talks on my Linux laptop. Tried a bunch of other
| (better known) editors and they were all disappointing in
| comparison (slow, unstable or both). Anyway, wonderful project.
| Thank you devs!
| Loranubi wrote:
| Any good open source video editor for Windows? Top google results
| include https://www.openshot.org/ and https://shotcut.org/, but
| both don't have obvious links to the code repositories and it
| took me a while to find them which is often not a good sign.
| Incipient wrote:
| The github link for shotcut is just on the downloads page. I
| don't find that particularly egregious?
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| So is OpenShot. It's a weird thing to complain about.
| johschmitz wrote:
| You might want to try out the one build into Blender:
| https://www.blender.org/features/video-editing/
| dugite-code wrote:
| kdenlive is cross platform, provides a windows build and is a
| very competent video editor. https://kdenlive.org/en/
| oneZergArmy wrote:
| It's the best one that I've found for Windows, despite the
| somewhat infrequent crashes.
| simulo wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with kdenlive, too.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| I just used openshot for a project. It wasn't terrible, ran
| into one bug where I think it saved over my project without me
| hitting save but can't be sure. Clunky UI meant I accidentally
| overwrote some of what I was doing but it didn't take long to
| fix.
| n3storm wrote:
| Is not a sign of dark patterns if that is what you think.
|
| There is a popular prejudgement (IMHO fact based) that artists
| are picky so FLOSS tools for artists often try to communicate
| secondarily that is FLOSS and where is being developed.
|
| For "picky" I mean statements like "is not photoshop", "is not
| premiere" and if you go to Adobe sites there are no links to
| code repositories. This projects try to sell themselves
| similarilly. (hope I made myself clear)
| BodyCulture wrote:
| No, they are all years behind. Resolve is free, save your time
| and use what is used by pros around the globe.
| hwd wrote:
| One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to
| bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
| K33P4D wrote:
| How does this compare to shotcut, because most video editors are
| just unintuitive unless you know the layout of timeframes and the
| separate frame windows. Why cant we have a single film strip
| where we can trim and splice videos with ease.
| Daub wrote:
| Not sure about Shotcut, but from my experience the layout of
| Flowblade seems pretty standard. Anyone who has used premier or
| DaVinci should be up and running in no time. The NLE interface
| is pretty much a done deal at this point. Major changes in
| interface philosophy would be of doubtfully utility.
| BodyCulture wrote:
| Both are horrible and will crash and you will never finish your
| project. Just use Resolve and get work done.
| chronolitus wrote:
| Adding one datapoint here: I made several projects with
| Shotcut and am glad it exists, but I had to learn to expect a
| crash and work defensively; That's how often it happened. The
| most usual crash was while moving clips around, the
| application died and the window closed, work lost.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| have you tested kdenlive recently? it used to get a lot of
| flack back when but over the last year it has improved and
| lots and lots of bug fixes
| pepa65 wrote:
| I recently used Shotcut and it did crash a few times, but
| both times it still had my changes after reopening.
|
| Not being used to the concepts of video editing, I found it
| easy to find a workflow that worked for me (cutting out
| mistakes and stitching remaining ends).
| Hamuko wrote:
| Resolve definitely can crash on you too.
| wakeupcall wrote:
| I rarely edit videos, so my needs are very basic.
|
| I tested a few such as openshot, flowblade, ... about 10
| months ago.
|
| flowblade has the best UI IMHO (more streamlined), but it was
| annoyingly restrictive for quick edits such as opening a
| clip, apply just a trim and maybe add 1 filter (usually
| crop).
|
| It also wasn't very stable.
|
| I ended up with shotcut for most of my needs. It's very
| flexible and has a good balance in ui/features: intuitive
| enough that I had to spend zero time learning it, yet has
| more than what I will ever need. Although it's not as smooth
| performance-wise as flowblade. It never crashed on me yet.
|
| I didn't like the UI of openshot, but this is a subjective
| thing. Felt space-wasting and oversimplified, which might be
| a plus to some. It also did crash a lot for me.
|
| I use avidemux a lot for cuts. It's the fastest editor for
| this by FAR. UI is minimal. I would say underrated, although
| it's a pretty well-known tool, just in a different class (not
| a NLE).
|
| I was a big fan of "cinelerra" some years ago. It's blazingly
| fast, but very restrictive in the formats it accepts, which
| is why I stopped using it. I mostly cut random videos coming
| from random cameras/phones/etc, so I value free-form over
| standardized workflows.
|
| Don't forget Blender. For some more complex stuff, I
| successfully used blender's NLE to track/mask clips. Worked
| perfectly, absolutely stable even for complex videos,
| although it needed slight more RTFM than the other options
| and noticeably heaver in terms of system requirements.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I love Resolve, but I've rarely been so miserable as when I
| tried to get it working under Linux. I'm a real seasoned
| Linux Sys Admin, but I spent 10-ish hours trying to get it
| installed 3-4 years ago and just totally failed.
|
| I ended up using Windows and had a just barely usable system.
| I had a lot of problems with poor scrubbing performance and
| renders that sometimes had black frames randomly in them that
| I fixed by converting everything to prores (and blowing up
| into huge files).
|
| My long term fix was to get a mac, where it runs flawlessly
| with basically no effort. It's a great tool, but there are
| some pitfalls.
| cowmix wrote:
| I run Resolve (Studio) on Linux/Mac/Windows and, you are
| right, getting it to work on used to be a pain in anything
| but a set version of Centos. However, this project:
|
| https://github.com/fat-tire/resolve
|
| .. allows one to execute Resolve in a container (Docker AND
| Podman)... and now Linux is my go-to env for running
| Resolve. Just being able to run N+1 versions of Resolve on
| the same workstation is a lifesaver.
| jchw wrote:
| I've noticed that a lot of these tools are based on MLT
| framework. One thing I noticed when taking a glance at MLT
| framework is that it seems like it lacks robust end-to-end
| support for hardware acceleration. It makes me wonder if this is
| a broader design problem, or something that could be worked on
| with funding. Surely something like this is far from the top
| priority, but some of these open source video editors are getting
| kind of serious, and being able to scrub 4K timelines smoothly
| and render using GPU accelerated compositing and effects feels
| like it would put these editors much closer to real-world editing
| territory. That said, these are all just musings from someone who
| largely does not use NLEs and has written very little video
| software. Still, seeing the success that Blender has become makes
| me yearn to see their success repeat in more fields...
| shmerl wrote:
| How does it compare to Kdenlive?
| BodyCulture wrote:
| Both are horrible and will crash and you will never finish your
| project. Just use Resolve and get work done.
| Aldipower wrote:
| You are correct. Kdenlive crashes all the time here.
| city41 wrote:
| Weird, it's never crashed on me and I use it extensively.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Just copy/pasting the same butthurt response, eh? Kinda lame.
|
| Yes, Resolve is great. If you're not using it in Linux, at
| least.
|
| IN Linux, however, I've found Kdenlive to be a bit rough, but
| completely reasonable for many medium editing tasks. Yes, it
| occasionally crashes, but not with any frequency where it
| makes it unusable. I haven't really lost much in the way of
| work when it does crash, either. Save early, save often. Etc.
| shmerl wrote:
| Never had it crashing. Are you using it on Linux?
| addandsubtract wrote:
| If you are just looking for an editor to cut and merge videos, I
| can recommend LosslessCut: https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
| petecooper wrote:
| >Windows and OS X are not supported. Flowblade has focused on
| providing the best possible experience on Linux and other free
| platforms.
|
| Perhaps "Flowblade: Open-Source Video Editor for Linux" would be
| a more appropriate title.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| I also see this happening often with Mac only tools here.
|
| I wonder if we should just accept it or if we really want every
| tool to list supported operating systems already in headlines?
| (and nowadays mobile probably counts too)
| petecooper wrote:
| As a desktop Mac user, I see exactly what you're saying.
|
| For clarity, my comment was more along the lines of 'saved
| you a click' than expectations/aspirations for every tool to
| cover every popular-ish environment.
| xigoi wrote:
| Someone who cares about open source will probably not be using
| a proprietary system.
| theultdev wrote:
| I care about open source as a developer.
|
| As a user I want the most polished program available and am
| not against using closed source if it meets my needs as is
| and I don't need to modify it beyond it's supported options.
| wavemode wrote:
| I find that view rather uncharitable. Sometimes real life
| simply necessitates the use of proprietary tech.
| darkflame91 wrote:
| I saw this post hours after I finished a task where this would
| have come in handy. I had a bunch of HQ video clips from a
| professional Sony video camera that I needed to string together,
| with short simple fade transitions. The last time I did this(few
| years ago), I was using a Mac, and iMovie did the job well. This
| time, I was on a Windows NUC, and figured Windows MovieMaker
| should do the trick. Nope.
|
| - Opening Movie Maker redirects to the Photos app, with a note
| that Microsoft Clipchamp has this functionality now and Movie
| Maker is deprecated.
|
| - Install Clipchamp and see that its hilariously bad at batch-
| adding clips to the timeline. Adding 300 clips, one at a time, is
| a dealbreaker.
|
| - Look up reviews for free 3rd party apps to do this on Windows.
| Find everyone recommending DaVinci Resolve. Fine. Install
| Resolve. Looks great. Import my clips, and get only audio. A
| quick Google search tells me that Resolve free version doesn't
| support importing 10-bit video. Welp.
|
| - Let's try FOSS then. Shotcut is supposedly better than
| Openshot. Install Shotcut. Import all clips, add to timeline and
| export. Takes a few hours to export, displays a Success message
| and gives me the first few seconds of video, followed by a couple
| of hours of just audio.
|
| - F** it, let's try Openshot. Hesitant because I've heard a lot
| of crashing happens, but what do I have to lose. Install. Import
| clips. Add to timeline. Let's me add transitions. Export takes a
| few hours. Gives me flawless output file.
|
| Moral of the story: For occasional amateur video editing,
| Openshot is great.
| haunter wrote:
| For simple tasks like this I use Avidemux
| vetinari wrote:
| Avidemux supports XAVC? (That's what I assume was the product
| of the mentioned Sony camera).
|
| I don't know, I'm asking.
| haunter wrote:
| It doesn't, just tried with a sample file
| vetinari wrote:
| Thanks.
| creesch wrote:
| Great that you got it to work. Just to make the list with
| potential tools a bit more complete:
|
| - Kdenlive is also a fairly capable video editor.
| https://kdenlive.org/en/
|
| - From what I have heard the Blender video editor for many
| people is a go to tool as well. In this case it likely would
| have been overkill, but figured it is worth mentioning.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| I used kdenlive recently and it worked very well! Clipchamp
| charges for 4K export which seriously annoys me given we all
| know that's just arbitrary, but kdenlive handled it just fine
| and was actually faster to use anyways
| darkflame91 wrote:
| I completely missed looking up Kdenlive because I (rather
| stupidly, in hindsight) assumed KDE implied for Linux only.
| I'll keep it in mind for the next time.
|
| And yes, Blender would have been overkill, but I might've
| gone that route if Openshot didn't work out.
| sho_hn wrote:
| KDE actually has a lot of software on Windows (and is about
| to even put them on the MS/Windows store, if it hasn't
| already), in particular when it comes to content creation
| and document stuff - Krita, Okular, Kate, to name a few.
| And Kdenlive, of course.
| diggan wrote:
| > - From what I have heard the Blender video editor for many
| people is a go to tool as well. In this case it likely would
| have been overkill, but figured it is worth mentioning.
|
| Blender is great as well if you happen to be a programmer, as
| everything is also callable as Python functions. The "built-
| in docs" in form of hovering over buttons and seeing what the
| equivalent Python code would be, makes it super easy to
| script together one-off scripts for doing things like "Add
| 300 video clips with a 100ms fade-in-out between all of
| them".
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| I recently went through a large video editing project on
| Ubuntu. Really wanted to use DaVinci resolve but it had
| multiple hard crashes and just wouldn't open for some
| reason, doesn't seem like they support Linux as well as Mac
| and windows.
|
| I ended up using Blender, and while it's powerful and super
| useful to be able to link scenes from other files, one huge
| missing feature is support for videos of varying frame
| rates. If your videos don't match, the audio will be either
| much longer or much shorter than the video clips.
|
| Had a few hard crashes too and lots of bugs, but definitely
| usable.
| jimmiles wrote:
| Video editor here. Try Shutter Encoder.
| https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/
| btreecat wrote:
| Kdenlive has been my best FOSS NLE experience
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Blender is a great video editor as well.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| I was looking for this comment. Hard agree. Every time I need
| some casual compositing tasks, or some transitions, Blender's
| never done me dirty. Every time I pull my head out of the
| ground and go hunting for another FOSS compositor, I always
| end up shrugging, "whelp, nothing really all _that_ better
| than Blender, and I know Blender, soooooo . . "
|
| EDIT also, since last I used it, the Blender Compositor has
| gotten a _lot_ better. Dang.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Also to consider: CapCut. Although I don't know if it handles
| 10 bit.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It seems to handle whatever junk I throw at it in whatever
| format it comes in. I guess because it is used to remix all
| kinds of junk video files that people find around the Net.
| xela79 wrote:
| I would say for amateur video editing, that DaVinci Resolve
| free edition is ideal candidate, you can go quite in-depth, or
| just drag & drop and add some transitions; previously I used
| imovie on mac too (even build a hackintosh first and bought
| imovie license $12) but it does not add that small extra that
| was needed.
|
| once I started working with DaVinci.. game changer, from start
| to finish, with some advanced motion tracking, title overlays,
| in less than a few hours. Upside is also that there are plenty
| of tutorials available for DaVinci, from beginner to advanced
|
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/edi...
| darkflame91 wrote:
| I did mention in my original comment that the free version of
| Resolve refused to import my 10-bit video clips. I was fine
| with _exporting_ 8-bit.
| eth0up wrote:
| Not great for vertical cellphone video (1080x1920). The video
| will import horizontally and any efforts to set it vertically
| will either fail, or the exported (vertical 1080x1920) version
| is horrid.
|
| For simple horizontal edits, it can be quite convenient. But
| they really need to fix a bug or two, especially considering
| the amount of footage by phones out there.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Clipchamp is terrible software. I can't believe it made to
| production.
| smolder wrote:
| Agreed. The first time I used Openshot it was a buggy mess that
| ignored my output settings when rendering... Within a year or
| two of that, I gave it another shot, and the glaring issues
| were fixed. It just did what I needed with no problems.
| M911T wrote:
| I use pitivi for very basic stuff.
| geppetto wrote:
| I've tried many of them and I keep turning to kdenlive, both on
| linux (my main driver) and windows. I've been using it for years,
| although occasionally. From my perspective it's the best FOSS NLE
| out there both in terms of features and stability. For the
| occasional user it gets the job done. Kdenlive used to crash a
| lot years ago but I'm not having any issue at all in the last
| couple of years (while Clipchamp, promoted by MS, crashes all the
| time).
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Kdenlive has been my choice too, despite the fact that I am a
| GNOME user and find the UI a little strange. I've really tried
| to like Openshot but it isn't really up to the job.
|
| People sometimes suggest Blender, which is of course high
| quality software, but most people reaching for a video editor
| benefit from a tool with fewer options that is more aimed at
| basic use cases.
| pxtail wrote:
| I like the name, has nice and badass vibe
| papa0101 wrote:
| Davinci Resolve works on Win, Mac and _Linux_. Switching to it
| from Adobe 's Premier and Aftereffects was the best decision I've
| made. Oh, and it's free (not the Studio version).
| dotancohen wrote:
| Please share with us the details. What is great about it?
|
| I do believe that Resolve is not open source, correct? That's
| not an issue for me but it could be for others.
| linsomniac wrote:
| What I like about it is that it is an industrial grade tool
| and pretty reliable, and allows 4K output for free, and the
| full version is fairly reasonably priced. You will not be
| limited by the tool, it can basically do anything you'd want
| to do in this space. There is also plentiful help on the net
| showing you how to do it. The simple stuff is really no
| harder than in any of the other tools I tried, and the hard
| stuff is possible.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Yes, an upgrade path to a quality commerical tool is
| certainly an advantage.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I sometimes edit videos for a raptor conservation charity. I
| found Resolve to be great for standard tasks such as creating
| videos from multiple input clips, trimming / fading /
| transitioning and editing out bloopers. It was also excellent
| for audio editing, e.g. getting rid of background wind noise,
| etc.
|
| Some of its built-in tools are quite sophisticated, e.g.
| setting up key frames that follow a moving object (a bird in
| this case), and then adding tracking 'targeting graticules'
| or changing orientation from landscape to vertical (i.e. for
| mobile), but dynamically changing the screen clipping coords
| so that a bird flying across the landscape view remains
| central when converted to vertical.
|
| This was all with the free version. I've some prior
| experience with video editing software so the learning curve
| wasn't too bad. I did watch some of DaVinci's tutorials to
| understand the basic conventions, e.g. around the major tool
| modes, use of the node-graph editor for assembling effects,
| etc.
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Resolve has a all-in-one approach to movie making: it has a
| NLE (copy/paste/trim/arrange video clip), a very advanced
| color grading tool (in fact it was born as one), an audio
| editor (nee Fairlight), and even a compositor (nee Fusion).
|
| All of those components are production-ready, free (as in
| beer), have a dedicated team working on the product. Plus,
| the parent company seems in very good health and doesn't
| seems to make stupid decision (probably because they're
| making most of their money on hardware ?)/
| petecooper wrote:
| >Davinci Resolve works on Win, Mac and Linux.
|
| Black Magic also provide a custom Rocky Linux ISO with each
| release. It's not widely-advertised and I found it at the end
| of their release notes PDF.
|
| >For users setting up new systems or looking to use a
| standardized DaVinci Resolve environment, a standard Rocky
| Linux 8.6 ISO is available to download at:
|
| >https://downloads.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/DaVinc..
| .
|
| >(MD5: https://downloads.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/Da
| Vinc...).
|
| >The ISO file can be burned to a bootable USB flash drive or a
| DVD for the installation process. Before installation, ensure
| that you have backups of your files, including media and
| Resolve project libraries. Turn off UEFI Secure Boot in BIOS
| configuration and boot from the ISO.
|
| >Selecting the Automatic option will erase all the files on
| your connected drives during installation. Please ensure that
| you only connect a single boot drive to install the OS onto.
| Alternatively, select Manual configuration and customize the
| target drive and partitions when installing the OS.
|
| >The installer takes care of all dependencies - including
| standard libraries, Nvidia drivers and DeckLink drivers. When
| the installation is complete, you can reboot the system once,
| and download and install DaVinci Resolve using the instructions
| above. When upgrading DaVinci Resolve, please check this
| section in the new installer for any special instructions you
| may need for the new version.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| Another comment suggests the free version simply doesn't accept
| 10 bit input files. I use kdenlive for my limited editing and
| was thinking to try Davinci but that seems like a deal breaker
| as 10-bit is coming fast to consumer, prosumer devices.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Another comment suggests the free version simply doesn 't
| accept 10 bit input files._
|
| It definitely does, for certain platforms and formats. I
| don't know if/how Linux supports 10-bit video, but as https:/
| /documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_...
| notes, "For macOS and Windows, DaVinci Resolve will also read
| most formats natively supported by the operating system."
|
| I'm not aware of a Resolve compatibility matrix that
| encompasses every possible platform, host OS, and format, but
| it doesn't take long to just try the free version. Worst
| case, the $300 one-time cost is one of the best deals in
| commercial software for those who need a professional
| solution.
| pregnenolone wrote:
| Is it GPU accelerated?
| lukaqq wrote:
| Online video editor here, https://chillin.online, free export
| with no watermark, easy to use both on desktop and mobile.
| eole666 wrote:
| Should be nice for small projects. But for anything serious
| with large RAW video footage, an online video will quickly fall
| short.
| lukaqq wrote:
| Yes, we found that other online video editors are not very
| usable, pay to remove watermarks, can't be used on mobile and
| export is very slow etc. So we make chillin,if you want to
| simply add effects, keyframes, animations, merge several
| clips, or crop a video, Chillin is a good choice.
| spidermonkey23 wrote:
| I'd be interested in a mobile video editor that is capable and
| open source. There really is a lack of open source video tools -
| at least for Android!
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Flowblade - Free and Libre Video Editor_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19089326 - Feb 2019 (7
| comments)
|
| _Flowblade - Free and Libre Video Editor_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12534245 - Sept 2016 (1
| comment)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-17 23:01 UTC)