Video Editing in Linux

[singforme]

The highly knowledgeable Unfa did an insightful rant on video editing in Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PD6Zsh1bo

I highly approve of what he's saying! Audio in Linux is pretty close to its Win and MacOS competition but I find video editing is not very satisfactory compared to my experience on Windows (though better now than five years ago!). Especially on slightly older hardware I find it rather unusable whereas in Windows I can get video editing to work on the same hardware

As Youtube has become the No. 1 music discovery medium I think Video Editing is a very important topic for musicians. Maybe even worth a category on LM? I haven't found any forum on video editing in Linux and I'd love to read about workflows and ideas to make the experience a little smoother.

[GMaq]

Hi,

I think we have some 'extra' problems in Linux that complicate things even further, I have recently discovered that the open source Nouveau nVidia drivers are VERY temperamental and can have major issues with certain Video programs. For example I can edit to the moon for hours on end with multiple Audio and Video tracks with a special build of Cinelerra-CVA (included in AV Linux) but for me Kdenlive of any version has major problems and basically explodes on contact when I click on it's Viewer, on a different laptop with Intel graphics the behavior of the same program version is completely different.



Now you may ask... why use Nouveau when there are 3rd party nVidia drivers? Because they are not compatible with RT patched kernels and for me with my recording hardware (Presonus 1818VSL) the only way to achieve acceptable latency is with full RT preempt. Having to make goofy choices like this when you are someone who does both Linux Audio and Video is quite frustrating and tedious..

I personally have yet to find a better NLE on Linux than Cinelerra, it is ugly, quite misunderstood, and it requires some in-depth learning how it functions and handles media and some older 'CV' versions require pipe exporting to ffmpeg to manage exports in real-world current formats so yes it is not 'point and click' easy, that doesn't mean it is not extremely powerful or lacks professional features.. For anyone who has tried the CV or HV variants in the past and been disappointed I really recommend taking a fresh look at Cinelerra 5.1 (aka Cinelerra-GG)

https://cinelerra-cv.org/download_gg.php

For those who are lazy with lots of internet bandwidth the AV Linux Live ISO comes with Cinelerra-CVA and Cinelerra-5.1 ready to use and try:
http://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

PS I'm not saying Kdenlive is bad, it is simply unusable for my current hardware situation.

[sysrqer]

Ardour also has problems with nouveau drivers, I had a problem where I would be working for a while and then suddenly the whole computer would freeze but music would still carry on playing from ardour. After finding some mentions of nouveau in the kernel log I spoke to rgareus on the ardour irc and he explained that the driver is simply not cut out for audio work (I forget exactly the reasoning but essentially it is tuned for other outcomes and types of work). There is a mention of this on the arch wiki under the nouveau page but the solution it offers makes the graphics driver perform terribly.

[sadko4u]

Now you may ask... why use Nouveau when there are 3rd party nVidia drivers? Because they are not compatible with RT patched kernels and for me with my recording hardware (Presonus 1818VSL) the only way to achieve acceptable latency is with full RT preempt. Having to make goofy choices like this when you are someone who does both Linux Audio and Video is quite frustrating and tedious..

That's not right. I've got NVIDIA proprietary drivers installed on my full-preemptive RT kernel. The installation of NVIDIA proprietary drivers is a bit complicated but not impossible. We have to have the installed kernel's headers, also we need to blacklist nouveau. And installation of NVIDIA drivers should be performed manually by unpacking theirs installation binary. But they work, and it's good.

[GMaq]

Now you may ask... why use Nouveau when there are 3rd party nVidia drivers? Because they are not compatible with RT patched kernels and for me with my recording hardware (Presonus 1818VSL) the only way to achieve acceptable latency is with full RT preempt. Having to make goofy choices like this when you are someone who does both Linux Audio and Video is quite frustrating and tedious..

That's not right. I've got NVIDIA proprietary drivers installed on my full-preemptive RT kernel. The installation of NVIDIA proprietary drivers is a bit complicated but not impossible. We have to have the installed kernel's headers, also we need to blacklist nouveau. And installation of NVIDIA drivers should be performed manually by unpacking theirs installation binary. But they work, and it's good.

Hi,

Yes you are right it is possible, but not with every nVidia release only certain ones... If you change your kernel or nVidia drivers then it breaks again, this is why I don't do it for AV Linux, it would be a full time job to maintain.

In Debian we have a 3rd party utility called sgfxi, it is a script to automate installing nVidia drivers on a Debian system (Debian doesn't maintain Video drivers like Ubuntu does) even it fails with an RT kernel. So you are right it is possible but not simple at all to distribute..

[wjl]

Played around with it lately, when working on a recording of our daughter's piano class. My wife took it on video (and audio from her camera), and I had another and better microphone over the piano.

While video editing with Cinelerra CV was ok, I did all the audio stuff still in Ardour (mostly cross-blending/fading between the microphones). Also the synchronizing of these different audio tracks (one extracted from the camera in Ardour, the other from my company's notebook).

It was an ok experience, could have been worse. But then I'm only using the free Intel video drivers, no nouveau/nvidia stuff.

[Jack Winter]

FWIW, I've been patching the Arch Linux rt kernel (AUR) for a couple of years now, otherwise it would hang with NVIDIA. Suppose I ought to test if that's still needed or if NVIDIA has fixed the issue. This is the patch in use: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ ... h=linux-rt

NVIDIA seems to get quite low kernel scheduling latency, though not as low as the Intel driver. It does cause occasional latency spikes though, like when starting video playback, starting a game, etc.

[trulan]

Thanks for the patch, that's interesting. So NVidia goes and stands in line but doesn't take a number, and we apply a cute little hack to wait for anybody who's in line but hasn't taken a number like they are supposed to? It is frequently possible to hack things so those drivers will work, but you get little support from NVidia and no support at all from the kernel community. Often we're left to guessing that 'maybe this will help your NVidia driver problem', as in the header of that patch. Add to that the fact that people like me tend to use old cast-off hardware, requiring different releases of NVidia's legacy drivers, which all need different fixes to build on different kernel versions... I need to stop, I'm getting OT here and this line of thinking is making me grumpy.

[singforme]

I'm glad I'm not in the nVidia world then;) I always end up with kdenlive. I started out years ago on Cinelerra but it was slow and I never really got into a satisfying workflor. Do you have an idea how it handles multi-thread cpus?

Hi,

I think we have some 'extra' problems in Linux that complicate things even further, I have recently discovered that the open source Nouveau nVidia drivers are VERY temperamental and can have major issues with certain Video programs. For example I can edit to the moon for hours on end with multiple Audio and Video tracks with a special build of Cinelerra-CVA (included in AV Linux) but for me Kdenlive of any version has major problems and basically explodes on contact when I click on it's Viewer, on a different laptop with Intel graphics the behavior of the same program version is completely different.

PS I'm not saying Kdenlive is bad, it is simply unusable for my current hardware situation.

[Brian]

Hi all --

I just recently joined this forum, as I'm in the midst of blowing the dust off all my MIDI and audio gear and (finally!) setting up a home studio again. For the veterans here, to give you an idea of where I'm coming from -- the last time I did any sequencing, I was using CakeWalk Pro 4.0 on a DOS 3.3 computer. ...anyway, while interesting (perhaps) to some, that's off-topic for this conversation..

I've been running Linux exclusively on my home computers for the last 15 years or so. I've done some rudimentary video editing, and suffered through the quirks and crashes of the various mainline video editors available for Linux. Then, I stumbled across a series of YouTube video tutorials about using Blender (the 3D rendering package) for video editing. While not the primary focus of the application, Blender has a fairly capable video editing module, and I've not experienced a single crash, lockup, or anomaly while editing short (~10 - 20 minute) videos. You may want to look into using Blender for your video editing needs; it may turn out to be exactly what you need for your video editing projects. The tutorial for Blender version 2.7x (current) is here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEIkIrY ... Q3x18sNev4

DISCLAIMER: I am not a compensated spokesperson for Blender, YouTube, or for this person's tutorial series -- just a happy user.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got about two and a half miles worth of audio, mic and MIDI cables to build...

[magicalex]

I love using Kdenlive. For simple edits I've found Shotcut to be quite useful. I've also tried Pitivi, Openshot, Blender and Novacut but didn't get far with any of them. I've recently started using Natron for compositing.

The point Unfa made in his video is spot on, though. You can get acceptable performance in Kdenlive by using proxies and making use of the new preview render feature but it still feels like a struggle sometimes, especially if you're working with a lot of effects and transitions.

I recently made a trailer for my YouTube channel, which I think is a reasonable example of what can be achieved https://youtu.be/NuPlWjLXQko

[GMaq]

I'm glad I'm not in the nVidia world then;) I always end up with kdenlive. I started out years ago on Cinelerra but it was slow and I never really got into a satisfying workflor. Do you have an idea how it handles multi-thread cpus?

Hi,

I think we have some 'extra' problems in Linux that complicate things even further, I have recently discovered that the open source Nouveau nVidia drivers are VERY temperamental and can have major issues with certain Video programs. For example I can edit to the moon for hours on end with multiple Audio and Video tracks with a special build of Cinelerra-CVA (included in AV Linux) but for me Kdenlive of any version has major problems and basically explodes on contact when I click on it's Viewer, on a different laptop with Intel graphics the behavior of the same program version is completely different.

PS I'm not saying Kdenlive is bad, it is simply unusable for my current hardware situation.

Any recent version of Cinelerra-CV, HV or 5.1 works with multi CPU's. In fact on my aging Quad core (Q6600) Desktop I can handle and edit up to 3 1080P H.264/AAC Audio and Video streams without using proxies on Cinelerra-CVA and 5.1, the Video decoding is MUCH more efficient than Kdenlive and Openshot by far. Rendering also works and takes advantage of the multi-threading of all codecs that support it.

All of the videos on my channel have been edited in Cinelerra, I can honestly say during the editing of these videos it hasn't crashed once.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRnzR1 ... nJIDMeY2wA

[singforme]

Thank you Glen, this sounds really promising! I will have to give it another shot then! BTW: really cool blues music you guys make! Just one more question: Which Cinelerra Version should I use: Are there three versions now?

[GMaq]

Thank you Glen, this sounds really promising! I will have to give it another shot then! BTW: really cool blues music you guys make! Just one more question: Which Cinelerra Version should I use: Are there three versions now?

Hi singforme,

Currently I very much recommend 5.1: https://cinelerra-cv.org/download_gg.php

It also has a very detailed User Manual here that details the new features in 5.1: https://cinelerra-cv.org/five/Features5.pdf

Thanks for your comments on the videos

[ventosus]

blender is great for short clips and has support for JACK transport. A very nice feature, as you can edit video in blender and at the same time edit audio in your JACK transport enabled DAW and need only to merge them when happy with both in a second step.