![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaOkay, so, as you all know, I switched operating systems last October/November from Windows to the Ubuntu GNU/Linux Operating System and mostly I've been really happy with that decision. To be honest, the only place which required even a small amount of readjustment has been with vidding (I imagine that there'd probably be a similar adjustment in any area which requires specialised computer programs, it's just that I don't, for instance, use in depth graphics programs almost ever).
SO. When I switched, I was worried about vidding because I'd heard that Linux didn't really have a strong suite of video editors. I have discovered that this is...not really true, but it is true to an extent. What it lacks is a midlevel vidding program such as Ulead or Vegas. The choice seems to be something akin to WMM/iMovie vs something that offers levels of functionality akin to something like Premiere but without much of the user-friendliness for newbies.
There really is no need for Yet Another Linux Video Editor Review, since if you google "linux video editor review," I'm sure you'd find much more in-depth reviews, certainly more accurate reviews (since I'm explaining things through my rather untechy personal experience, and particular computer setup). Especially since I don't think anyone reading this blog is a Linux Vidder, but hey. Maybe one day you will be. Maybe this will entertain you; it's certainly entertaining me as I currently lack the focus to do any actual vidding after a long day at work.
Anyway, mostly this is just me musing on Cinelerra, noting a few resources for it, and noting the other Video Editors I am aware of along with brief comments on them and why I didn't choose to use them as my primary vidding program. This is ungodly long, cus in large part it's here for me so I can one day look back on it. But if you're curious, look closer...
Cinelerra
Overview of the look
While GNU/Linux is not devoid of high level video editing suites, Cinelerra really is the only horse in town if you want anything that performs at a high level. I mean, I'm not complaining here, it's almost a professional level video editor made available for complete free. Which is pretty amazing.
That said, it looks like ass. Seriously, it looks like the interface was invented in 1995. More than that, it's in four separate windows (GIMP, the open source photoshop equivalent also has this multi-window display setup by default). Which means that if you click on any other window, you have to bring ALL FOUR back to the front to keep on vidding. It's like, there's a separate window for the timeline, the clip-preview window, the resources window and the compositor (timeline playback) window.
Fortunately, this really isn't a big deal because of another Ubuntu (well, pretty much EVERY Linux OS) feature - multiple desktops. At first I really wondered why the hell I needed four desktops. Even if I have a lot of programs open at once, I have Ubuntu set up with a Mac-style dock, so I can just click on it from there. Hell, it's what the toolbar at the bottom of the screen in Windows is for.
Then again, I used to have that response to tabbed browsing, and now I would hate to lose it. And in situations like this it's invaluable. I can flip over to the next desktop along, open Cinelerra so that it's the only thing open on that desktop, then flick back to my primary desktop to do other stuff.
So, yeah. I'm actually generally forgiving of the 1990s look and the multiple windows thing since it's not like it impacts on its functionality, I just feel I ought to note it as an issue. Here's a screencap of my current project:
SEE HOW UGLY AND SCARY THIS PROJECTFILE LOOKS?! Really, I promise, it's not so bad. (And the place where I have four tracks running at the same time is only because I was trying a bunch of different things to put there and didn't want to replace stuff in case I wanted to go back to it, so kept "painting over" it; that's not normal for me, honest!)
So, like, that's number one on the negative side - it looks intimidating and it kind of is intimidating.
Basics & tutorials
I actually didn't have too bad a time adjusting to it. There are two really good tutorials that I read the whole way through before I started using Cinelerra - that's not the sort of thing I usually do, but in this instance I'm really glad I did. It explained a few things I probably wouldn't have understood otherwise (like how you have to set the size of your project file and ALSO the size of each video track, because you can set them to different sizes/aspect ratios). It also gave me the heads up on some fundamental program issues that I wouldn't otherwise have understood, like the difference between "drag and drop" mode and "cut and paste" mode.
The idea behind that difference is actually pretty simple and useful. You have two modes, and in one, you grab whole clips and drop them elsewhere, in the other, you control highlighting along the timeline allowing you to copy/paste/delete parts of clips. You swap modes by pressing a button just above the timeline. But...if I hadn't know that and I'd been stuck in "cut and paste" mode, I'd've been like, WTF WHY CAN'T I DRAG A CLIP AROUND?! and if I'd been stuck in "drag and drop" mode, I'd've been like, WTF WHY CAN'T I DELETE THIS SHIT?!
So, the two tutorials I found really useful are:
http://robfisher.net/linux/video/cinelerra1.html (the one I found most useful)
and
http://www.akiradproject.net/cinelerra_is_very_easy_1
There are also a shitload of tutorials on YouTube if you search for them. Though I don't usually use them and they're of varying quality.
These tutorials will not explain everything, however. And in fact, if all you want to be able to do, ever, is the sort of stuff these tutorials explain, you may be better off with a different program (as detailed below). But if you do want a vidding program that has some more advanced capabilities - even if, like me, you're not planning on constantly using them - then there is another place that's worth noting as a resource. The Cinelerra CV manual:
http://cinelerra.org/docs/split_manual_en/cinelerra_cv_manual_en_toc.html#SEC_Contents
The Cinelerra manual, much like Cinelerra itself, suffers from being both ugly and intimidating. It's not something I would recommend reading through in order to learn how to use the program. It's aimed both at the technically proficient and those more familiar with video editing than I am.
However, it is a pretty damn complete piece of documentation and if you're having a specific problem, loading the whole thing up in a single page and using the "Find" function has been my friend on several occasions.
In fact, lower down I list the things I wish were possible/easier in Cinelerra but a good deal of things that initially annoyed and baffled me were things that were actually completely possible, and even easy to do, just...not immediately obvious before I stumbled across them/searched for them in the manual, due to a combination of it being an unfamiliar type of interface, after years of getting used to Windows, and also due to it LOOKING LIKE ASS.
(A sidenote on Cinelerra vs Cinelerra CV)
I would also note, don't confuse the Cinelerra CV manual with the Cinelerra manual. There are TWO versions of Cinelerra; apparently their penchant for confusingness knows now bounds. Basically Cinelerra is distributed by the company Heroine Virtual - still for free, but it has no official support once you've installed it and the person who makes it refuses to use shared libraries with other software, meaning the installation is much larger, and in addition, you have to compile the source code yourself. Which okay, I'm sure I could manage it if I followed a tutorial, but...it's more complicated than the way I'm used to installing things on Ubuntu, which is either to use a .deb file (a .exe equivalent) or, preferably, to point my computer at an online "repository" and say GO, COMPUTER, GO! :D And then the computer goes and installs everything and keeps it updated FOREVER.
Cinelerra CV stands for Cinelerra Community Version which is a version that does get regularly updated, for which there is community support (albeit on IRC chat and a mailing list rather than my preferred method of forums, though if you ask around, say, the Ubuntu forums you might well get some help), sensible methods of installation (both .deb and repositories) and I think uses shared libraries too.
The two versions are mostly identical, but there are enough minor differences that if you get the wrong manual you might end up getting the wrong information. For example some shortcut keys are changed around, so shift+click in one program might be shit+alt+click in another, for example. Also some of the effects available are different, etc.
Installation & settings
I had no trouble installing Cinelerra. I had some slight issues getting it to work with my soundcard but I think that had more to do with the way Ubuntu is set up than Cinelerra itself. I saw lots of technical sounding stuff surrounding sound card and driver related...stuff that I can't remember and don't particularly care for. I found the solution pretty simply by googling and trying something someone else tried, which was to go into the settings and like...change two things and then it worked. So it was hardly that terrifying.
Honestly it was probably easier to resolve than that ridiculous issue WMM had with divx that meant if you didn't disable half the codecs it turned half your rendered vid green.
A LOT of people say that Cinelerra crashes often and unpredictably and that its only saving grace on that front is that it saves a backup file after every edit decision you make so if, when you restart it, the first thing you do is hit "load backup", you won't lose anything.
I mention that because a lot of people mention that as an issue (including the tutorials above), but it is honestly not something I have issues with. Actually, Cinelerra is probably the least crashy program I've ever used. The only time it flat out crashes (and even then it has the decency to just immediately shut itself off rather than staying frozen and hanging forever), is when I've loaded and then tried to play certain unsupported media types.
The only ongoing technical issue I have is that sometimes, after I've mucked around on the timeline, when I go back to preview a clip to find a bit I want to add to the timeline, the preview freezes and I only get sound. Then when I hit stop, the image moves to the frame I stopped on. If I select part of the clip when it's doing this and drag it to the timeline, it still plays fine though, so it's an issue with the previewer. The only fix I've found is to restart Cinelerra. But frankly I can't find myself feeling annoyed about that when I remember that Cinelerra takes 5 seconds to start (literally) and half a second to load my file once it's started, while Ulead used to take about 5 minutes (literally). And while Ulead rather miraculously didn't crash all the time, it did used to hang like a bitch.
So, in general, I've found Cinelerra pretty good going in terms of reliability.
Stuff it does that I like
Here's a list of stuff that Cinelerra does that I have come to really appreciate, along with a quick note about whether or not Ulead had that function. I can't comment on Vegas, which was slightly more advanced than Ulead, because my computer hated it, nor can I comment on Premiere or Final Cut Pro cus I've never used them/don't have a Mac, though they're even more advanced than Vegas even so I'd be surprised if it, at least, didn't have these functions and probably even at a higher level.
This is not a comprehensive list of all the functions of Cinelerra, just a skewed perspective of stuff I appreciate:
- Ability to fade tracks in and out using a histogram, so I can just pull up and down, adding keyframes as I go. Makes for very easy overlays and also easy to compensate when certain parts of an overlay are darker than others and thus need less transparency. (Not available in Ulead, in fact fading in and out of the start of a clip when there was no clip before it was made ridiculously fiddly.)
- Ability to pan and zoom with histograms. I hated this at first because it wasn't tied to the clip, it just moves smoothly between the keyframes you set. So if you have it zoomed in to 1.5 at the start of Clip A, then you put it back to 1.0 at the start of Clip B, it will spend the whole of Clip A zooming out from 1.5 to 1.0. The way you avoid this is to put a 1.5 zoom keyframe at the end of Clip A, then a 1.0 keyframe on the next frame, the start of Clip B. This is, however, kind of fiddly and annoying, hence my early hatred of it. Then I realised that multiple tracks were my friends, since Cinelerra has an infinite number of them. Many issues I initially had reservations about were ultimately fixed by just remembering I needed a secondary "scrap" track. If your zoomed clip is on another track, with space on each side, that lets you zoom in to the clip, then zoom back out to normal afterwards with plenty of "space" so it's not fiddly. And at this point, I really like the fact that I can tweak the zooms/pans just but pulling a little line up or down, and that I can see a visual representation of where I'm panning/zooming. Though I would note that most of the time I want more control than that, so I use the camera controls in the compositor window to specify the amount of pan/zoom numerically. Um, that sounded confusing. But...trust me. I's weird but you get used to it. (Not available in Ulead but also there wasn't really anything wrong with how Ulead panned/zoomed).
- Slip and Roll edits. Frankly I can't remember which is which, but I will explain. If you want to trim a clip, you can just drag the edges in or out, as you can in most programs. If you left-click while doing this, that's what happens in Cinelerra, and all the other clips ahead move backwards or forwards depending on what you do to the clip. If you right-click while doing it, your clip remains a static length, but it affects the in/out points in the source. So like, if you have a clip that's the right length, but you really want it to start a little earlier, you don't have to drag it to make it longer, then cut it back down to size, you can just make the whole clip a little earlier or later. Finally, if you click the middle mouse button (or left and right at the same time on a laptop), you shorten/lengthen your clip while - if there's nothing connected to the edge you're shortening, leaving a gap but NOT disrupting other edits in the timeline. If there is something connected to the edge of the clip, then the clip ahead either lengthens or shortens itself so that all other clips are still unaffected overall. If you want to make a gap when you've got two touching clips then no, you can't do it this way, but you can just highlight the area you want the "gap" in and choose "mute" from the edit menu. Similarly "paste silence" adds "blank" space and nudges everything forward. (Ulead doesn't have this, really. It does have the ability to lock tracks together so if you move one thing forward other things "ripple" forward too, like a nudge, though it's imperfect in many ways as, if there's a "gap" in the timeline, the "nudge" stops and things get out of sync).
- Keyframes on almost all effects. I really like this, it means I can change the parameters of an effect over the course of a clip. This isn't really that surprising a feature since Ulead has it and I imagine Vegas, Premiere and just about every other editing suite that's not really basic has it, but it is something that's either completely lacking, or lacking to the degree that I would prefer, in all other Linux video editors I've found so far.
- Multiple insert options. When you select a section of a clip in the Viewer, by setting in and out points (a similar way to Vegas, I think?) you can do one of several things. Firstly you can hit the clip button and send that chunk of video to the "clips" folder in your Resources window. So to an extent you can do your own clipping in Cinelerra. Or, you can insert it straight to the timeline in one of three ways. 1) straight insert at the point where your cursor is. This pushes everything else forward. 2) Overwrite, which is what it sounds like. It overwrites what's there. If that's blank timeline, then fine, it just doesn't push future clips forwards. If it's clips, then they're gone. 3) by choosing the overwrite option, but also defining in and out points on the timeline you overwrite but ONLY for the length you've defined on the timeline, which means that you won't overwrite a clip you want to stay in place. Note: Option three is a very good example of something I wanted to be able to do, was frustrated I couldn't work out how to do, fumbled along by using a second track and then resizing the clip to the exact length on that second "scrap" track, then dragging it into the free space, then FINALLY stumbled across the answer in the manual. See above and below for commentary on how this is a great editor that's not great on layout. Ulead didn't really have a good equivalent to this, though it didn't totally suck either.
- MASKS! You can draw your own masks (that's when you "cut out" a bit of a track to overlay on the tracks below). You can also make those masks move. (This is how I did the split-screens in my SW vid). You can also feather the edges of the mask to make the edges blurry to do...blurred split screens and overlays that focus more on one area than another. It's really good. Ulead didn't have this - you could only use a mask if you had a pre-made black-white-grey image to us, and it remained static. I have no idea about other programs. I think that Vegas has something similar to this, though to what degree I couldn't say...
- A really good chromakey now that I know what one is. Though I can't use it much just cus so much of BSG is similar in colour...
Stuff it does that I'm indifferent to
So there's also some stuff that's different, that I don't love and don't hate:
- "Arming" tracks. By default, all tracks are "armed". This means that the little red button next to them is highlighted and you can affect those tracks with editing decisions. If you're inserting stuff then the highest level track that's armed is where the clip ends up. If you're deleting, trimming, highlighting, adding effects, etc., then your decisions apply to ALL ARMED TRACKS. Which gets real confusing real fast when you realise you've accidentally cut three seconds out of your audio track or put an effect on a track you didn't mean too, or trimmed the wrong clip. It's VERY IMPORTANT to only arm the tracks you're using at that time. Usually just one at a time unless you're moving a clip from one track to another. There are times when this is very useful, like if I do have two adjacent clips on different tracks and want to nudge them both back or forward without losing their adjacency. Or if you want to make sure more than one track fades out at exactly the same time, or has the exact same effect (including keyframes) applied. But also it is often confusing. I often have more tracks than I can comfortably see in the size of the timeline window that I'm comfortable using. If I forget what I'm doing, I might accidentally screw up another track and then I have to go find where how and what the hell I've done after I've rendered it all screwed up. I don't hate this method. Because when I do remember what I'm doing (which is most of the time), it really does help make sure that tracks you aren't currently using are "safe" from getting screwed up. You can lock things down tight. But equally I'm not in love with it.
- Effects affect a stretch of time on the timeline, not a clip. When you draft an effect onto a clip, by default the effect shows up, under the clip, the same length as the clip. But you can drag that effect around, pull the edges on either side to make it longer or shorter, etc., and it just affects whatever video is above it on the track at the time. This can be useful for affecting multiple clips with a single effect - especially since each effect you put on a track adds to the height of the track (when you have it expanded). It can also be useful for sprucing up transitions (see below). But it's a little counterintuitive at first and can make things more fiddly if you're transitioning between a clip you want the effect on and one you don't. For instance if I'm fading between a grayscale and a colour clip, if I just extend the effect over the transition then even if I slowly reduce the level of the grayscale throughout that transition it won't look right because I won't have a grayscale clip fading into a colour clip, I'll have both of the clips grayscale at the start of the transition and both colour by the end of it. The solution is to use multiple tracks; a fade can be added to the start or end of a clip with nothing before/after it, and it just uses the next track down as its target for the transition. You can even keyframe and mask the parts of the clip that occur during the transition after the end of the clip on the timeline (see below for what that means). But, it's fiddlier.
- Transitions don't overlap the same way. When you add a transition in most video editors, the program physically overlaps the clips, moving the second clip back halfway onto the clip before it. Cinelerra doesn't do this. It extends the clip you're currently using beyond the point you've finished it. Meaning I had to get used to ending my clips where I wanted the crossfade to start, not at the point I wanted it to be at its apex. But I honestly have no strong feelings about this. Just thought it was worth noting.
- You can't split clips in the timeline. The only way to do this is to delete a single frame, so that you then effectively have two clips that you've split, cus no one notices a single lost frame (if you try to "add" that frame again between the two clips, it'll automatically rejoin). I thought this was weird at first (okay I still think it's weird, I just no longer think it's a big deal), until I realised a few things. Firstly, in this program, why would you NEED to split a clip? If it's because of an effect, keyframing removes the need. If it's because you want to move that part of the clip to a later point in the timeline, you might as well just highlight that part of the clip, cut it, then paste it further down the road, no need to split it then drag it. Secondly, if you really, REALLY need a clip split, but continuous, without even a single frame missing, just put the second half of the clip on the next track.
Stuff it does that I don't like
- The biggest issue is its limitations in importing media. Most other linux editors are better at this. It claims to support divx .avi files - and weirdly, will export to them without difficulty, but doesn't like reading them unless - near as I can tell - the type of file reads DIVX (in caps) rather than divx. Yeah. IDK either. All I know is that it's very, very picky about avi files and won't read .mp3 files at all - I have to convert my .mp3s into .wavs. I have to convert my clips into .mp4 format with something other than mp3 audio if I want to hear what they're saying too. Really, this is silly at this point and I hope they fix it eventually. I don't lose a lot of quality since I convert at a fairly high level and, okay, they're just vids, but I do lose some, I'm sure, and dammit, I shouldn't have to!
- Resizing stuff. You can't render in certain formats unless your file is in a certain size/aspect ratio. While you CAN tell Cinelerra to resize your project file, it's fiddly, and involves changing both the track sizes and the project sizes; if you only change one then you end up with it compensating by adding black letterboxes or cropping stuff away. It's not a horrible design feature, but it is one I find confusing; perhaps moreso than I should.
- Effects & Transitions. I would note that Cinelerra is excellent for many effects. Stuff like chroma-keying, masking, crazy shit I'm never going to use like motion tracking, control of saturation and hue, etc. But where it fails is those cheesy premade effects that nonetheless sometimes make for useful vidding. Like, for example, if I wanted to do a shaky-came effect, I'd have to manually program the "translate" effect to move the image left and right every few frames. There's no shortcut. If I wanted sepia, I'd have to go find the right hue/saturation levels. Perhaps most horribly the fact that their old film effect is not only ugly and terrible but completely unadjustable. Also its transitions are pretty basic. That's mostly okay for me since I'm not a fan of most fancy transitions, and because you can turn any grayscale image into one, it's actually not that limited in terms of shapewipes. Similarly, it has regular wipes, and masks also mean this is something you can play with. But one of the few transitions I use other than a straight crossfade is "flash" transitions and Cinelerra's is bland and unadjustable. I'll have to see if I ever want to use one if I can spruce it up myself with some effects. :(
- The Reframe effect which is used for speeding stuff up or slowing it down, is all well and good but I dislike the way it leaves the original clip at its original length. This isn't so bad with slo-mo because, fine, that's maybe useful and you can always drag the clip to make it longer if you want to see more of the clip. But it's a real pain with speeding up the clip because you end up with "blank space" at the end of your clip. But if you trim your clip, the blank space doesn't get trimmed, it's just like it recalculates the whole speeded-up section and the blank space just moves earlier. So okay, fine, you just put the next clip on another track, and make sure it starts when the blank space starts, but it's fiddly and silly and puts me off using it. (Not that it really stopped me from vidding that SW vid, which was both my first Cinelerra vid AND time-toggle city in places).
- TITLES! Goddamn, Cinelerra, your titling system is crappy and you make people put fonts in a special folder just for you if you want more than the 9 or so lame basic ones. Fortunately, I've just been making titles in GIMP on a transparent background and putting them in another track. But that's still kind of a pain.
UM. I THINK I AM DONE.
Other GNU/Linux Video Editors
I don't claim this is a comprehensive list and frankly, I'm probably not doing half of them justice, but, here are some other alternatives, some of which really do offer great basic video editing if you don't want to put up with Cinelerra's weirdness in order to get a few extra high-end effects and editing options, from weirdest to most usable, by my subjective standards:
LiVES: http://lives.sourceforge.net/
I'm starting with this one because I don't like it. I have a feeling it might actually be quite good and flexible, but when I got it, I could not make head nor tails of it. It was really weird and I think I had it in a different mode to the picture on that link or something. Anyway it was bizarre and I struggled to find an easy text-based tutorial and stuff so I gave up.
It's worth noting that it's also a VJ tool, the idea being to mix video performance style which might be part of the reason I couldn't understand it.
Blender: http://www.blender.org/
Blender 3D is actually NOT a video editor. It's a full-on professional grade 3D modelling tool, which is pretty amazing, I think. It also has a section of the program which can function as a video editor, and which is apparently pretty competent. I haven't tried it because I didn't really want to learn how to navigate a complex 3D modelling program just for one minor part of it, and also reviews say that as an editor, it is kind of different to other editors and you have to get used to that. Though there are some tutorials about using it as an editor out there.
Pitivi: http://www.pitivi.org/
This is an interesting project which focuses on being simple to use and also on being able to read and export to pretty much any format. When I tried it it was both simple to use and gave me absolutely no shit about reading any file I threw at it. That said, it's this low down on the list because, while not "weird" like the other two, it's still in an early stage of development and while it's stable, it doesn't currently come with any effects or transitions. Though those are said to be forthcoming.
Open Movie Editor: http://www.openmovieeditor.org/
Okay, hands up here - I haven't actually tried this one as I ended up trying OpenShot (see below) instead. Reviews are good though? It does have the downside of, I think, making you install effects separately as it works with the frei0r plugins. Some may come with the package but I think most of the effects it uses are third-party plugins. I do not believe it currently has keyframe support, though. I think that's a future goal of the developer but also the project is currently developing along a slower track than previously.
Kdenlive: http://www.kdenlive.org/
This one I have tried and was my Big Hope for not having to learn Cinelerra. Firstly I couldn't get along with it well because it kept crashing on me, though that doesn't seem to be an issue for most (there goes my computer being contrary again...) It's a multitrack editor with some keyframing ability (though if I recall correctly, many effects were not available to use with keyframes) and some overlay capabilities. Certainly in terms of complexity and ability it's probably the best here, but I had severe issues not only with the crashing but also with the fact that I couldn't attach transitions to the ends of clips with nothing ahead/behind them, nor could I seem to get a clip to fade in and out of a transparent still image (a trick I learned from Ulead), which meant that much like in WMM, overlays were on/off things, with no elegant fades in and out. That, plus crashing. So, better than the others mentioned here (that aren't weird half-editor-half-something-else programs), but still kind of tricksy.
OpenShot: http://www.openshotvideo.com/
If I had to recommend a linux vidding program to someone who didn't want to fight with Cinelerra, it would probably be OpenShot. It doesn't quite have the functionality of Kdenlive (yet - it is developing very quickly), but it's stable, imports a lot of formats, has a lot of transitions and effects and has multiple tracks. I don't believe it currently has keyframing, though I believe that overlays, including fades in and out of them, are possible due to its ability to turn a transition into a "mask" for the clip - one could turn the dissolve transition into a mask then set the opacity. I'm not 100% certain how fading in/out would work though - I haven't experimented with that, but you can, at least, attach transitions to isolated clips.
I actually HAVE OpenShot installed on my computer in case I ever really, really want a decent oldfilm effect or a few others that it offers that Cinelerra has no easy way of replicating.
Conclusion
Cinelerra is an incredibly impressive piece of software for a free release. It's very powerful and frankly, the more I get to grips with it, the faster and more effectively I feel I'm able to edit. That said, it isn't amazingly user friendly. I got to grips with it reasonably fast, to the point I felt comfortable editing in it pretty much straight away, but it's worth noting two things. Firstly, that my use of other video editors definitely helped me understand a lot of basic concepts I otherwise would have been completely at sea about, so it's maybe not so great for total newbies (though also not insurmountable; perhaps OTHER issues I had wouldn't have arisen as I would have brought no preconceptions), and secondly, I was happy to just get on with it and learn as I went. A LOT of stuff confused and frustrated me and I fell back on my habit of coming up with complicated work arounds. However, unlike say, WMM, or even Ulead to a degree, in Cinelerra, more and more I'm learning the sensible way to do things that doesn't require these workarounds.
Which both confirms to me that it's an excellent piece of software and that it's not very user friendly at first. ;)
If you're looking to start vidding, or continue vidding in a simpler environment that requires less of a steep learning curve, I'd recommend getting either OpenShot or Kdenlive.
FIN.
:)
SO. When I switched, I was worried about vidding because I'd heard that Linux didn't really have a strong suite of video editors. I have discovered that this is...not really true, but it is true to an extent. What it lacks is a midlevel vidding program such as Ulead or Vegas. The choice seems to be something akin to WMM/iMovie vs something that offers levels of functionality akin to something like Premiere but without much of the user-friendliness for newbies.
There really is no need for Yet Another Linux Video Editor Review, since if you google "linux video editor review," I'm sure you'd find much more in-depth reviews, certainly more accurate reviews (since I'm explaining things through my rather untechy personal experience, and particular computer setup). Especially since I don't think anyone reading this blog is a Linux Vidder, but hey. Maybe one day you will be. Maybe this will entertain you; it's certainly entertaining me as I currently lack the focus to do any actual vidding after a long day at work.
Anyway, mostly this is just me musing on Cinelerra, noting a few resources for it, and noting the other Video Editors I am aware of along with brief comments on them and why I didn't choose to use them as my primary vidding program. This is ungodly long, cus in large part it's here for me so I can one day look back on it. But if you're curious, look closer...
Cinelerra
Overview of the look
While GNU/Linux is not devoid of high level video editing suites, Cinelerra really is the only horse in town if you want anything that performs at a high level. I mean, I'm not complaining here, it's almost a professional level video editor made available for complete free. Which is pretty amazing.
That said, it looks like ass. Seriously, it looks like the interface was invented in 1995. More than that, it's in four separate windows (GIMP, the open source photoshop equivalent also has this multi-window display setup by default). Which means that if you click on any other window, you have to bring ALL FOUR back to the front to keep on vidding. It's like, there's a separate window for the timeline, the clip-preview window, the resources window and the compositor (timeline playback) window.
Fortunately, this really isn't a big deal because of another Ubuntu (well, pretty much EVERY Linux OS) feature - multiple desktops. At first I really wondered why the hell I needed four desktops. Even if I have a lot of programs open at once, I have Ubuntu set up with a Mac-style dock, so I can just click on it from there. Hell, it's what the toolbar at the bottom of the screen in Windows is for.
Then again, I used to have that response to tabbed browsing, and now I would hate to lose it. And in situations like this it's invaluable. I can flip over to the next desktop along, open Cinelerra so that it's the only thing open on that desktop, then flick back to my primary desktop to do other stuff.
So, yeah. I'm actually generally forgiving of the 1990s look and the multiple windows thing since it's not like it impacts on its functionality, I just feel I ought to note it as an issue. Here's a screencap of my current project:
SEE HOW UGLY AND SCARY THIS PROJECTFILE LOOKS?! Really, I promise, it's not so bad. (And the place where I have four tracks running at the same time is only because I was trying a bunch of different things to put there and didn't want to replace stuff in case I wanted to go back to it, so kept "painting over" it; that's not normal for me, honest!)
So, like, that's number one on the negative side - it looks intimidating and it kind of is intimidating.
Basics & tutorials
I actually didn't have too bad a time adjusting to it. There are two really good tutorials that I read the whole way through before I started using Cinelerra - that's not the sort of thing I usually do, but in this instance I'm really glad I did. It explained a few things I probably wouldn't have understood otherwise (like how you have to set the size of your project file and ALSO the size of each video track, because you can set them to different sizes/aspect ratios). It also gave me the heads up on some fundamental program issues that I wouldn't otherwise have understood, like the difference between "drag and drop" mode and "cut and paste" mode.
The idea behind that difference is actually pretty simple and useful. You have two modes, and in one, you grab whole clips and drop them elsewhere, in the other, you control highlighting along the timeline allowing you to copy/paste/delete parts of clips. You swap modes by pressing a button just above the timeline. But...if I hadn't know that and I'd been stuck in "cut and paste" mode, I'd've been like, WTF WHY CAN'T I DRAG A CLIP AROUND?! and if I'd been stuck in "drag and drop" mode, I'd've been like, WTF WHY CAN'T I DELETE THIS SHIT?!
So, the two tutorials I found really useful are:
http://robfisher.net/linux/video/cinelerra1.html (the one I found most useful)
and
http://www.akiradproject.net/cinelerra_is_very_easy_1
There are also a shitload of tutorials on YouTube if you search for them. Though I don't usually use them and they're of varying quality.
These tutorials will not explain everything, however. And in fact, if all you want to be able to do, ever, is the sort of stuff these tutorials explain, you may be better off with a different program (as detailed below). But if you do want a vidding program that has some more advanced capabilities - even if, like me, you're not planning on constantly using them - then there is another place that's worth noting as a resource. The Cinelerra CV manual:
http://cinelerra.org/docs/split_manual_en/cinelerra_cv_manual_en_toc.html#SEC_Contents
The Cinelerra manual, much like Cinelerra itself, suffers from being both ugly and intimidating. It's not something I would recommend reading through in order to learn how to use the program. It's aimed both at the technically proficient and those more familiar with video editing than I am.
However, it is a pretty damn complete piece of documentation and if you're having a specific problem, loading the whole thing up in a single page and using the "Find" function has been my friend on several occasions.
In fact, lower down I list the things I wish were possible/easier in Cinelerra but a good deal of things that initially annoyed and baffled me were things that were actually completely possible, and even easy to do, just...not immediately obvious before I stumbled across them/searched for them in the manual, due to a combination of it being an unfamiliar type of interface, after years of getting used to Windows, and also due to it LOOKING LIKE ASS.
(A sidenote on Cinelerra vs Cinelerra CV)
I would also note, don't confuse the Cinelerra CV manual with the Cinelerra manual. There are TWO versions of Cinelerra; apparently their penchant for confusingness knows now bounds. Basically Cinelerra is distributed by the company Heroine Virtual - still for free, but it has no official support once you've installed it and the person who makes it refuses to use shared libraries with other software, meaning the installation is much larger, and in addition, you have to compile the source code yourself. Which okay, I'm sure I could manage it if I followed a tutorial, but...it's more complicated than the way I'm used to installing things on Ubuntu, which is either to use a .deb file (a .exe equivalent) or, preferably, to point my computer at an online "repository" and say GO, COMPUTER, GO! :D And then the computer goes and installs everything and keeps it updated FOREVER.
Cinelerra CV stands for Cinelerra Community Version which is a version that does get regularly updated, for which there is community support (albeit on IRC chat and a mailing list rather than my preferred method of forums, though if you ask around, say, the Ubuntu forums you might well get some help), sensible methods of installation (both .deb and repositories) and I think uses shared libraries too.
The two versions are mostly identical, but there are enough minor differences that if you get the wrong manual you might end up getting the wrong information. For example some shortcut keys are changed around, so shift+click in one program might be shit+alt+click in another, for example. Also some of the effects available are different, etc.
Installation & settings
I had no trouble installing Cinelerra. I had some slight issues getting it to work with my soundcard but I think that had more to do with the way Ubuntu is set up than Cinelerra itself. I saw lots of technical sounding stuff surrounding sound card and driver related...stuff that I can't remember and don't particularly care for. I found the solution pretty simply by googling and trying something someone else tried, which was to go into the settings and like...change two things and then it worked. So it was hardly that terrifying.
Honestly it was probably easier to resolve than that ridiculous issue WMM had with divx that meant if you didn't disable half the codecs it turned half your rendered vid green.
A LOT of people say that Cinelerra crashes often and unpredictably and that its only saving grace on that front is that it saves a backup file after every edit decision you make so if, when you restart it, the first thing you do is hit "load backup", you won't lose anything.
I mention that because a lot of people mention that as an issue (including the tutorials above), but it is honestly not something I have issues with. Actually, Cinelerra is probably the least crashy program I've ever used. The only time it flat out crashes (and even then it has the decency to just immediately shut itself off rather than staying frozen and hanging forever), is when I've loaded and then tried to play certain unsupported media types.
The only ongoing technical issue I have is that sometimes, after I've mucked around on the timeline, when I go back to preview a clip to find a bit I want to add to the timeline, the preview freezes and I only get sound. Then when I hit stop, the image moves to the frame I stopped on. If I select part of the clip when it's doing this and drag it to the timeline, it still plays fine though, so it's an issue with the previewer. The only fix I've found is to restart Cinelerra. But frankly I can't find myself feeling annoyed about that when I remember that Cinelerra takes 5 seconds to start (literally) and half a second to load my file once it's started, while Ulead used to take about 5 minutes (literally). And while Ulead rather miraculously didn't crash all the time, it did used to hang like a bitch.
So, in general, I've found Cinelerra pretty good going in terms of reliability.
Stuff it does that I like
Here's a list of stuff that Cinelerra does that I have come to really appreciate, along with a quick note about whether or not Ulead had that function. I can't comment on Vegas, which was slightly more advanced than Ulead, because my computer hated it, nor can I comment on Premiere or Final Cut Pro cus I've never used them/don't have a Mac, though they're even more advanced than Vegas even so I'd be surprised if it, at least, didn't have these functions and probably even at a higher level.
This is not a comprehensive list of all the functions of Cinelerra, just a skewed perspective of stuff I appreciate:
- Ability to fade tracks in and out using a histogram, so I can just pull up and down, adding keyframes as I go. Makes for very easy overlays and also easy to compensate when certain parts of an overlay are darker than others and thus need less transparency. (Not available in Ulead, in fact fading in and out of the start of a clip when there was no clip before it was made ridiculously fiddly.)
- Ability to pan and zoom with histograms. I hated this at first because it wasn't tied to the clip, it just moves smoothly between the keyframes you set. So if you have it zoomed in to 1.5 at the start of Clip A, then you put it back to 1.0 at the start of Clip B, it will spend the whole of Clip A zooming out from 1.5 to 1.0. The way you avoid this is to put a 1.5 zoom keyframe at the end of Clip A, then a 1.0 keyframe on the next frame, the start of Clip B. This is, however, kind of fiddly and annoying, hence my early hatred of it. Then I realised that multiple tracks were my friends, since Cinelerra has an infinite number of them. Many issues I initially had reservations about were ultimately fixed by just remembering I needed a secondary "scrap" track. If your zoomed clip is on another track, with space on each side, that lets you zoom in to the clip, then zoom back out to normal afterwards with plenty of "space" so it's not fiddly. And at this point, I really like the fact that I can tweak the zooms/pans just but pulling a little line up or down, and that I can see a visual representation of where I'm panning/zooming. Though I would note that most of the time I want more control than that, so I use the camera controls in the compositor window to specify the amount of pan/zoom numerically. Um, that sounded confusing. But...trust me. I's weird but you get used to it. (Not available in Ulead but also there wasn't really anything wrong with how Ulead panned/zoomed).
- Slip and Roll edits. Frankly I can't remember which is which, but I will explain. If you want to trim a clip, you can just drag the edges in or out, as you can in most programs. If you left-click while doing this, that's what happens in Cinelerra, and all the other clips ahead move backwards or forwards depending on what you do to the clip. If you right-click while doing it, your clip remains a static length, but it affects the in/out points in the source. So like, if you have a clip that's the right length, but you really want it to start a little earlier, you don't have to drag it to make it longer, then cut it back down to size, you can just make the whole clip a little earlier or later. Finally, if you click the middle mouse button (or left and right at the same time on a laptop), you shorten/lengthen your clip while - if there's nothing connected to the edge you're shortening, leaving a gap but NOT disrupting other edits in the timeline. If there is something connected to the edge of the clip, then the clip ahead either lengthens or shortens itself so that all other clips are still unaffected overall. If you want to make a gap when you've got two touching clips then no, you can't do it this way, but you can just highlight the area you want the "gap" in and choose "mute" from the edit menu. Similarly "paste silence" adds "blank" space and nudges everything forward. (Ulead doesn't have this, really. It does have the ability to lock tracks together so if you move one thing forward other things "ripple" forward too, like a nudge, though it's imperfect in many ways as, if there's a "gap" in the timeline, the "nudge" stops and things get out of sync).
- Keyframes on almost all effects. I really like this, it means I can change the parameters of an effect over the course of a clip. This isn't really that surprising a feature since Ulead has it and I imagine Vegas, Premiere and just about every other editing suite that's not really basic has it, but it is something that's either completely lacking, or lacking to the degree that I would prefer, in all other Linux video editors I've found so far.
- Multiple insert options. When you select a section of a clip in the Viewer, by setting in and out points (a similar way to Vegas, I think?) you can do one of several things. Firstly you can hit the clip button and send that chunk of video to the "clips" folder in your Resources window. So to an extent you can do your own clipping in Cinelerra. Or, you can insert it straight to the timeline in one of three ways. 1) straight insert at the point where your cursor is. This pushes everything else forward. 2) Overwrite, which is what it sounds like. It overwrites what's there. If that's blank timeline, then fine, it just doesn't push future clips forwards. If it's clips, then they're gone. 3) by choosing the overwrite option, but also defining in and out points on the timeline you overwrite but ONLY for the length you've defined on the timeline, which means that you won't overwrite a clip you want to stay in place. Note: Option three is a very good example of something I wanted to be able to do, was frustrated I couldn't work out how to do, fumbled along by using a second track and then resizing the clip to the exact length on that second "scrap" track, then dragging it into the free space, then FINALLY stumbled across the answer in the manual. See above and below for commentary on how this is a great editor that's not great on layout. Ulead didn't really have a good equivalent to this, though it didn't totally suck either.
- MASKS! You can draw your own masks (that's when you "cut out" a bit of a track to overlay on the tracks below). You can also make those masks move. (This is how I did the split-screens in my SW vid). You can also feather the edges of the mask to make the edges blurry to do...blurred split screens and overlays that focus more on one area than another. It's really good. Ulead didn't have this - you could only use a mask if you had a pre-made black-white-grey image to us, and it remained static. I have no idea about other programs. I think that Vegas has something similar to this, though to what degree I couldn't say...
- A really good chromakey now that I know what one is. Though I can't use it much just cus so much of BSG is similar in colour...
Stuff it does that I'm indifferent to
So there's also some stuff that's different, that I don't love and don't hate:
- "Arming" tracks. By default, all tracks are "armed". This means that the little red button next to them is highlighted and you can affect those tracks with editing decisions. If you're inserting stuff then the highest level track that's armed is where the clip ends up. If you're deleting, trimming, highlighting, adding effects, etc., then your decisions apply to ALL ARMED TRACKS. Which gets real confusing real fast when you realise you've accidentally cut three seconds out of your audio track or put an effect on a track you didn't mean too, or trimmed the wrong clip. It's VERY IMPORTANT to only arm the tracks you're using at that time. Usually just one at a time unless you're moving a clip from one track to another. There are times when this is very useful, like if I do have two adjacent clips on different tracks and want to nudge them both back or forward without losing their adjacency. Or if you want to make sure more than one track fades out at exactly the same time, or has the exact same effect (including keyframes) applied. But also it is often confusing. I often have more tracks than I can comfortably see in the size of the timeline window that I'm comfortable using. If I forget what I'm doing, I might accidentally screw up another track and then I have to go find where how and what the hell I've done after I've rendered it all screwed up. I don't hate this method. Because when I do remember what I'm doing (which is most of the time), it really does help make sure that tracks you aren't currently using are "safe" from getting screwed up. You can lock things down tight. But equally I'm not in love with it.
- Effects affect a stretch of time on the timeline, not a clip. When you draft an effect onto a clip, by default the effect shows up, under the clip, the same length as the clip. But you can drag that effect around, pull the edges on either side to make it longer or shorter, etc., and it just affects whatever video is above it on the track at the time. This can be useful for affecting multiple clips with a single effect - especially since each effect you put on a track adds to the height of the track (when you have it expanded). It can also be useful for sprucing up transitions (see below). But it's a little counterintuitive at first and can make things more fiddly if you're transitioning between a clip you want the effect on and one you don't. For instance if I'm fading between a grayscale and a colour clip, if I just extend the effect over the transition then even if I slowly reduce the level of the grayscale throughout that transition it won't look right because I won't have a grayscale clip fading into a colour clip, I'll have both of the clips grayscale at the start of the transition and both colour by the end of it. The solution is to use multiple tracks; a fade can be added to the start or end of a clip with nothing before/after it, and it just uses the next track down as its target for the transition. You can even keyframe and mask the parts of the clip that occur during the transition after the end of the clip on the timeline (see below for what that means). But, it's fiddlier.
- Transitions don't overlap the same way. When you add a transition in most video editors, the program physically overlaps the clips, moving the second clip back halfway onto the clip before it. Cinelerra doesn't do this. It extends the clip you're currently using beyond the point you've finished it. Meaning I had to get used to ending my clips where I wanted the crossfade to start, not at the point I wanted it to be at its apex. But I honestly have no strong feelings about this. Just thought it was worth noting.
- You can't split clips in the timeline. The only way to do this is to delete a single frame, so that you then effectively have two clips that you've split, cus no one notices a single lost frame (if you try to "add" that frame again between the two clips, it'll automatically rejoin). I thought this was weird at first (okay I still think it's weird, I just no longer think it's a big deal), until I realised a few things. Firstly, in this program, why would you NEED to split a clip? If it's because of an effect, keyframing removes the need. If it's because you want to move that part of the clip to a later point in the timeline, you might as well just highlight that part of the clip, cut it, then paste it further down the road, no need to split it then drag it. Secondly, if you really, REALLY need a clip split, but continuous, without even a single frame missing, just put the second half of the clip on the next track.
Stuff it does that I don't like
- The biggest issue is its limitations in importing media. Most other linux editors are better at this. It claims to support divx .avi files - and weirdly, will export to them without difficulty, but doesn't like reading them unless - near as I can tell - the type of file reads DIVX (in caps) rather than divx. Yeah. IDK either. All I know is that it's very, very picky about avi files and won't read .mp3 files at all - I have to convert my .mp3s into .wavs. I have to convert my clips into .mp4 format with something other than mp3 audio if I want to hear what they're saying too. Really, this is silly at this point and I hope they fix it eventually. I don't lose a lot of quality since I convert at a fairly high level and, okay, they're just vids, but I do lose some, I'm sure, and dammit, I shouldn't have to!
- Resizing stuff. You can't render in certain formats unless your file is in a certain size/aspect ratio. While you CAN tell Cinelerra to resize your project file, it's fiddly, and involves changing both the track sizes and the project sizes; if you only change one then you end up with it compensating by adding black letterboxes or cropping stuff away. It's not a horrible design feature, but it is one I find confusing; perhaps moreso than I should.
- Effects & Transitions. I would note that Cinelerra is excellent for many effects. Stuff like chroma-keying, masking, crazy shit I'm never going to use like motion tracking, control of saturation and hue, etc. But where it fails is those cheesy premade effects that nonetheless sometimes make for useful vidding. Like, for example, if I wanted to do a shaky-came effect, I'd have to manually program the "translate" effect to move the image left and right every few frames. There's no shortcut. If I wanted sepia, I'd have to go find the right hue/saturation levels. Perhaps most horribly the fact that their old film effect is not only ugly and terrible but completely unadjustable. Also its transitions are pretty basic. That's mostly okay for me since I'm not a fan of most fancy transitions, and because you can turn any grayscale image into one, it's actually not that limited in terms of shapewipes. Similarly, it has regular wipes, and masks also mean this is something you can play with. But one of the few transitions I use other than a straight crossfade is "flash" transitions and Cinelerra's is bland and unadjustable. I'll have to see if I ever want to use one if I can spruce it up myself with some effects. :(
- The Reframe effect which is used for speeding stuff up or slowing it down, is all well and good but I dislike the way it leaves the original clip at its original length. This isn't so bad with slo-mo because, fine, that's maybe useful and you can always drag the clip to make it longer if you want to see more of the clip. But it's a real pain with speeding up the clip because you end up with "blank space" at the end of your clip. But if you trim your clip, the blank space doesn't get trimmed, it's just like it recalculates the whole speeded-up section and the blank space just moves earlier. So okay, fine, you just put the next clip on another track, and make sure it starts when the blank space starts, but it's fiddly and silly and puts me off using it. (Not that it really stopped me from vidding that SW vid, which was both my first Cinelerra vid AND time-toggle city in places).
- TITLES! Goddamn, Cinelerra, your titling system is crappy and you make people put fonts in a special folder just for you if you want more than the 9 or so lame basic ones. Fortunately, I've just been making titles in GIMP on a transparent background and putting them in another track. But that's still kind of a pain.
UM. I THINK I AM DONE.
Other GNU/Linux Video Editors
I don't claim this is a comprehensive list and frankly, I'm probably not doing half of them justice, but, here are some other alternatives, some of which really do offer great basic video editing if you don't want to put up with Cinelerra's weirdness in order to get a few extra high-end effects and editing options, from weirdest to most usable, by my subjective standards:
LiVES: http://lives.sourceforge.net/
I'm starting with this one because I don't like it. I have a feeling it might actually be quite good and flexible, but when I got it, I could not make head nor tails of it. It was really weird and I think I had it in a different mode to the picture on that link or something. Anyway it was bizarre and I struggled to find an easy text-based tutorial and stuff so I gave up.
It's worth noting that it's also a VJ tool, the idea being to mix video performance style which might be part of the reason I couldn't understand it.
Blender: http://www.blender.org/
Blender 3D is actually NOT a video editor. It's a full-on professional grade 3D modelling tool, which is pretty amazing, I think. It also has a section of the program which can function as a video editor, and which is apparently pretty competent. I haven't tried it because I didn't really want to learn how to navigate a complex 3D modelling program just for one minor part of it, and also reviews say that as an editor, it is kind of different to other editors and you have to get used to that. Though there are some tutorials about using it as an editor out there.
Pitivi: http://www.pitivi.org/
This is an interesting project which focuses on being simple to use and also on being able to read and export to pretty much any format. When I tried it it was both simple to use and gave me absolutely no shit about reading any file I threw at it. That said, it's this low down on the list because, while not "weird" like the other two, it's still in an early stage of development and while it's stable, it doesn't currently come with any effects or transitions. Though those are said to be forthcoming.
Open Movie Editor: http://www.openmovieeditor.org/
Okay, hands up here - I haven't actually tried this one as I ended up trying OpenShot (see below) instead. Reviews are good though? It does have the downside of, I think, making you install effects separately as it works with the frei0r plugins. Some may come with the package but I think most of the effects it uses are third-party plugins. I do not believe it currently has keyframe support, though. I think that's a future goal of the developer but also the project is currently developing along a slower track than previously.
Kdenlive: http://www.kdenlive.org/
This one I have tried and was my Big Hope for not having to learn Cinelerra. Firstly I couldn't get along with it well because it kept crashing on me, though that doesn't seem to be an issue for most (there goes my computer being contrary again...) It's a multitrack editor with some keyframing ability (though if I recall correctly, many effects were not available to use with keyframes) and some overlay capabilities. Certainly in terms of complexity and ability it's probably the best here, but I had severe issues not only with the crashing but also with the fact that I couldn't attach transitions to the ends of clips with nothing ahead/behind them, nor could I seem to get a clip to fade in and out of a transparent still image (a trick I learned from Ulead), which meant that much like in WMM, overlays were on/off things, with no elegant fades in and out. That, plus crashing. So, better than the others mentioned here (that aren't weird half-editor-half-something-else programs), but still kind of tricksy.
OpenShot: http://www.openshotvideo.com/
If I had to recommend a linux vidding program to someone who didn't want to fight with Cinelerra, it would probably be OpenShot. It doesn't quite have the functionality of Kdenlive (yet - it is developing very quickly), but it's stable, imports a lot of formats, has a lot of transitions and effects and has multiple tracks. I don't believe it currently has keyframing, though I believe that overlays, including fades in and out of them, are possible due to its ability to turn a transition into a "mask" for the clip - one could turn the dissolve transition into a mask then set the opacity. I'm not 100% certain how fading in/out would work though - I haven't experimented with that, but you can, at least, attach transitions to isolated clips.
I actually HAVE OpenShot installed on my computer in case I ever really, really want a decent oldfilm effect or a few others that it offers that Cinelerra has no easy way of replicating.
Conclusion
Cinelerra is an incredibly impressive piece of software for a free release. It's very powerful and frankly, the more I get to grips with it, the faster and more effectively I feel I'm able to edit. That said, it isn't amazingly user friendly. I got to grips with it reasonably fast, to the point I felt comfortable editing in it pretty much straight away, but it's worth noting two things. Firstly, that my use of other video editors definitely helped me understand a lot of basic concepts I otherwise would have been completely at sea about, so it's maybe not so great for total newbies (though also not insurmountable; perhaps OTHER issues I had wouldn't have arisen as I would have brought no preconceptions), and secondly, I was happy to just get on with it and learn as I went. A LOT of stuff confused and frustrated me and I fell back on my habit of coming up with complicated work arounds. However, unlike say, WMM, or even Ulead to a degree, in Cinelerra, more and more I'm learning the sensible way to do things that doesn't require these workarounds.
Which both confirms to me that it's an excellent piece of software and that it's not very user friendly at first. ;)
If you're looking to start vidding, or continue vidding in a simpler environment that requires less of a steep learning curve, I'd recommend getting either OpenShot or Kdenlive.
FIN.
:)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 11:39 am (UTC)Frankly, a lot of the stuff made available by Cinelerra is probably already available even in midlevelish Vegas - cus I always thought of Vegas at the higher end of midlevel. Plus...if you're not going to use the stuff, then what's the point?
But I can absolutely promise you that the program is not as complicated as that screencap makes it look. It's just ugly and scary looking which was the point of the illustration.
For example, as I said, the only reason there are four tracks there is because I kept trying new stuff behind the Starbuck Mask and since I didn't want to have to *re-* do it if I wanted to go back to an earlier version, I just used the track above to vid "over" it temporarily.
As to the lines running along the tracks - the white one is the fade in-fade out line. The blue one is zoom, the red one is left/right panning and the green one is up/down panning. Those are the histograms I talk about above.
On the Starbuck Mask track, the green...blobs are keyframes where I've moved the mask in some way.
All these things can be easily displayed or hidden if you don't want the track cluttered. For instance, in the above screencap I've also chosen to hide the effects which usually show up beneath the clips like...long, thing brownish red strips with the title of the effect printed on them.
And, now that you know what all that crap is, I imagine it looks a lot more like an ordinary timeline? I hope?
Basically next time I see you, if you want, I can walk you through it a little, just for curiosity's sake and you'll see that...it's not confusing just...confusingly designed at first?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 04:50 pm (UTC)Oooh I don't think I would like the track-length histograms for everything. Vegas does a track-length histogram for fade-in/fade out, but I really prefer to do it on each clip whenever possible (which is possible when fading from black). I'm sure that's just because I'm not used to it for everything else, but even for pan/zoom etc., it's hard enough for me to get it all right anyway that I'm sure I would frak stuff up unintentionally with histograms. Of course, this all goes back to the way I edit like a total maniac, laying all the clips in first, scrambling them up, and THEN doing 75% of the editing. I would half-assed pan/zoom on the first run through and then redo it ALL later, and it would be sad for me. At least if it's just clip by clip, I can mostly just delete it and start over, whereas I find histograms more finnicky for no rational reason.
Speaking of multiple tracks to "paint over" things, it occurred to me that you would find a screencap of my ongoing project hilarious. Because I use multiple tracks to paint over things, but I also use them to generally store clips I don't want to forget that I was thinking about using, or to move a set of clips from one section to another. But MOSTLY I use multiple tracks for NO REASON AT ALL, as you shall see. Just because for SOME reason I'll get started there for a section, and then...I'm off. Or something. So when I'm done, inevitably I have like...12 tracks or something ridiculous, and I go through and delete everything I'm not going to use and consolidate it all, and then, you know, do my editing thing. I think Poker Face wins cause I think it literally did have 12 tracks before I cleaned it up, but here's the current timeline for Where I End...
AHAHAHA I am not a real vidder.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 06:18 pm (UTC)The one thing that is different is that the pan/zoom is set by TRACK, not by clip. Which is...sometimes annoying and different. So like, if you want to only zoom for ONE clip, you have to set camera keyframes on the last frame of the clip BEFORE the zoomed clip, then keyframes for the new pan/zoom parameters on the first frame of the NEXT clip, then on the last frame of the zoom clip so that the zoom stays static (cus otherwise it'll just move between keyframes) and then on the very first frame of the next clip so that the camera resets itself. O_O
Which is ridiculous, and why, when I have a clip that is being zoomed or panned on, I put it on a different track, in like, my Scrap Camera track (the "check camera" track above). So I have plenty of space on each side of said clip to like, reset the camera before and after it without the fiddliness of having to do it on EXACTLY THE FRAME BEFORE.
Though yes, I can see how this might cramp you, "eeeeh, panning, zooming, I'll sort it out later!" style? Though if you're still rearranging on a spare track, it wouldn't be so bad?
It's really weird because, yeah, I've started randomly using more tracks too, to do stuff like rearrange clips and all sorts of other crap. As I said, 90% of my issues with Cinelerra were solved by kicking my desire to ALWAYS USE AS FEW TRACKS AS POSSIBLE. So this totally doesn't make you not a real vidder and I LOOOOVE your timeline! :D
As to programs and stuff it was fear of changing programs that for a long time made me think that WMM was just going to be my limiting factor and to get over it. Eventually, I was motivated enough to move beyond it. The same will happen with you, I think. If you ever get to the point where Vegas is stopping you from doing things you want to do, you'll either learn to do them in Vegas, or if you can't, you'll make a decision about whether to live with the limitation or learn with a different program.
I can say that after being TERRIFIED of changing programs for a long time, I'm now much calmer about it, having done it a bunch of times, but I needed my own motivations to go ahead an do that? So...seriously, don't stress it too much. Especially since you obviously loooove Vegas.
Plus it's stable for you which is a benefit that CANNOT be underestimated. As I said above, Cinelerra isn't stable for many people, but it is for me and it's just...such a relief?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 03:57 am (UTC)(Linked here by
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 09:03 pm (UTC)Cinelerra does take some getting used to, but I didn't find the transition too taxing and it's been really rewarding in the long run; I've been able to pull off things I was never previously able to pull off as I was stuck with a mid-level vidding program for Windows. I did consider switching to Vegas for a while back then but my computer just...wouldn't run the free trial without crashing every minute or so and I kind of found the interface even more confusing then Cinelerra. ;)
Anyway, thanks again for letting me know you found this useful!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 02:56 am (UTC)I use a seven-and-a-half-year-old laptop with Ubuntu, and I recently got bitten by a vidbunny for the first time. So for about a week I've been teetering on the terrifying precipice of deciding to learn how to vid--terrifying mainly because I knew that of the many very helpful resources and tutorials vidding fandom has made available, there were like none for programs I could use. And then here you are with amazing amounts of information about Cinelerra! Thank you so, so much.
Since I am a total n00b to vidding, I may follow your advice and try OpenShot first. Even if I don't end up using Cinelerra, the bare fact that you and your effects tutorials are here makes me much more comfortable about the prospect of learning how to vid in linux. Yay, vidding!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 08:26 am (UTC)As to using OpenShot first, yeah, it's certainly a much more intuitive and simpler interface. The only real downside is that you can't import a long clip then cut it down to size before dropping it on the timeline - once the clip is imported to OpenShot, you just have to resize on the timeline. It's something I hope they change in future versions but so far no joy. It's a shame because that's something of a dealbreaker for me since I hate clipping (I just use the ripped episodes and search through them and select sections of the episode to drop onto the timeline).
As another option, I've become more impressed with Kdenlive since writing all this up. It still crashes some on my computer but not as much as it used to and I hear that most others have very good stability. It offers a mid-level of usability above OpenShot and below Cinelerra. Accordingly its interface is less userfriendly than OpenShot but still an absolute dream compared to Cinelerra - it's really pretty usable. The only thing I'd say is that some things it can do - for example, annoyingly, dropping only parts of imported clips onto the timeline, aren't immediately obvious (though are usually pretty easy once you know how). However, it does have a fairly comprehensive wiki that usually offers easy instructions on this.
Cinelerra is still my choice because of it's powerful capabilities should you want them, and because once the learning curve is learned it's no harder than any other program. But it is a little intimidating at first and I probably learned as easily as I did because I had already used a few other programs.
Anyway, thanks for letting me know you found this useful! :D