[gentoo-user] Recommend a simple video editor?

[Grant Edwards]

I've got a handful of mp4 video clips (a minute or two each). All I
want to do is

1) Concatenate them with fade-in at beginning of each clip and fade-out
at the end of each clip.

2) Superimpose a title at the beginning for a few seconds.

Can anybody recomment a simple video editor?


So far I've tried Openshot and Cinelerra and niether is usable even
for my trivial task.

Openshot 2.07

The native amd64 build segfault a _lot_. Any time you try to move
the "playback head" or whatever it's called it segfaults. Various
other GUI operations also cause a segfault. Sometimes it gets the
project file into some broken state and then can't even start up and
load the project file without segfaulting.

Oh, and it "auto saves" periodically, so you can't even rely on it
not borking a working project file even though you never clicked
"save".

The AppImage binary at least allows the GUI to work, but it can't
render a 5 minute video. It either aborts part-way through or just
locks up burning 100% CPU until you send it a SIGKILL.

I was finally able to set up the edits using the AppImage binary,
then open the project using the native Gentoo binary and render the
video. The resulting video quality was terrible. The video
stuttered, pixellated, and in some spots even appeared to jump
forward/backward repeatedly. That was with the highest quality
setting (the output file size was acually significantly larger than
the sum of the input file sizes). Even though the video quality was
severly degraded.


Cinelerra 2012 (stable).

I used Cinelerra for a small project once before, and though it
_worked_ I hated every second of it. The GUI is a nightmare. It
uses some home-made widget set that I find incomprehensible.

I could probably grit my teeth long enough for this simple task,
except Cinelerra seems unable to deal with AAC audio. It
misidentifies as some other PCM format, and all of the imported
files just have a short burst of noise at the beginning followed by
silence. Cinelerra also doesn't seem to be able to play the
imported.mp4 video files at the proper framerate it's bog-standard
Android phone video: H264 1280x720 30fps, but Cinelerra insists on
playing at a some higher frame-rate.

I may try Cinelerra 2014, but I'm not optimistic -- Cinelerra is known
for it's slow rate of change.

[Dale]

Here is a couple more video editors that you may want to look into.

Kdenlive kde-apps/kdenlive

Avidemux media-video/avidemux

The first one is KDE based. Last time I used it, it was large but had
lots of fancy stuff it could do. The second one has both a gtk and qt
based version. I'm guessing that is controlled by USE flags. I seem to
have both of them here. :/

Maybe one of those will help.

Dale

:-) :-)

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-06-11, Dale <rdale...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:

>> I've got a handful of mp4 video clips (a minute or two each). All I
>> want to do is
>>
>> 1) Concatenate them with fade-in at beginning of each clip and fade-out
>> at the end of each clip.
>>
>> 2) Superimpose a title at the beginning for a few seconds.
>>
>> Can anybody recomment a simple video editor?

> Here is a couple more video editors that you may want to look into.
>
> Kdenlive kde-apps/kdenlive
>
> Avidemux media-video/avidemux
>
> The first one is KDE based. Last time I used it, it was large but had
> lots of fancy stuff it could do.

Yea, I was hoping not to install KDE.

> The second one has both a gtk and qt based version. I'm guessing
> that is controlled by USE flags. I seem to have both of them here.
> :/

Thanks. I may try avidemux.

Right now I'm experimenting with mlt's "melt" command line editor. It
seems to produces small, high-quality output files. I've figured out
how to do video fade-in, fade-out, but can't get audio fade-in/out to
work yet.

--
Grant

[Dale]

Well, if it does the video, it should have a audio option to one would
think.

Dale

:-) :-)

[James]

Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards <at> gmail.com> writes:



> Right now I'm experimenting with mlt's "melt" command line editor. It
> seems to produces small, high-quality output files. I've figured out
> how to do video fade-in, fade-out, but can't get audio fade-in/out to
> work yet.

Hello Grant,

A good thing to search out is "non-linear" with your video editing search
strings, to find those very flexible and feature right video editiing
applications.

ON winblows, I use Vegas Pro. On linux the latest packages that are under
extreme development, usually have the best time-saving, features.

media-video/cinelerra
Description: The most advanced non-linear video editor and
compositor. The First Free 4K Editor in the World.


http://cinelerra.org (great home page).

Might be to heavy for your needs? Clusters are a fantastic environment
to run heavy video development/editing codes on; that's how lucas films
and the other 'big boys' do their work.

hth,
James

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-06-11, James <wire...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Right now I'm experimenting with mlt's "melt" command line editor.
>> It seems to produces small, high-quality output files. I've
>> figured out how to do video fade-in, fade-out, but can't get audio
>> fade-in/out to work yet.
>

> A good thing to search out is "non-linear" with your video editing search
> strings, to find those very flexible and feature right video editiing
> applications.
>
> ON winblows, I use Vegas Pro. On linux the latest packages that are under
> extreme development, usually have the best time-saving, features.
>
> media-video/cinelerra

Yep, I've used cinelerra in the past. The UI drove me up the wall, and
I was hoping to avoid it if possible (I don't need anything at all
powerfull or fancy).

I gave up trying to get the "stable" 2012 version to recognize AAC
audio in an MP4 file (which is what my phone produces). I may try the
2014 "unstable" version if all else fails.

> Might be to heavy for your needs?

Yes, it's definitely more editor than I need.

--
Grant

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-06-11, Dale <rdale...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> Right now I'm experimenting with mlt's "melt" command line editor.

>> It seems to produce small, high-quality output files. I've figured

>> out how to do video fade-in, fade-out, but can't get audio
>> fade-in/out to work yet.
>
> Well, if it does the video, it should have a audio option to one would
> think.

It does, and I've found examples claiming to show how to do audio
fades. The examples just don't seem to work for me.

--
Grant

[Dale]

Just a thought to see if this may help. Could it be that you are
reading some older docs and the version you have is done with a
different option, name maybe? As we know, sometimes the very last thing
to get updated is the docs.

Also, could it be that another option has to be passed on for the audio
option to work?

I've said this before, when grasping at straws, grab all you can and
hold on tight. ;-)

Dale

:-) :-)

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-06-11, Grant Edwards <grant.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've got a handful of mp4 video clips (a minute or two each). All I
> want to do is
>
> 1) Concatenate them with fade-in at beginning of each clip and fade-out
> at the end of each clip.
>
> 2) Superimpose a title at the beginning for a few seconds.
>
> Can anybody recomment a simple video editor?
>
>
> So far I've tried Openshot and Cinelerra and niether is usable even
> for my trivial task.

[...]

> I may try Cinelerra 2014, but I'm not optimistic -- Cinelerra is known
> for it's slow rate of change.

I tried the 2014 (~amd64) version of Cinelerra, and it still doesn't
recognize the AAC audio in the MP4 files my Moto G phone produces.

I also tried the downloaded binary of Shotcut, but it it requires old
versions of libraries and wouldn't run. So, I tried building it using
the shotcut-9999 ebuild and the mlt-9999 ebuild from

https://gpo.zugaina.org/media-video/shotcut
https://gpo.zugaina.org/media-libs/mlt

The git version of MLT installed fine, but shotcut failed to compile:

cd src/ && ( test -e Makefile || /usr/lib64/qt5/bin/qmake /var/tmp/portage/media-video/shotcut-9999/work/shotcut-9999/src/src.pro 'PREFIX={D}/usr/' -o Makefile ) && make -f Makefile
Project ERROR: Unknown module(s) in QT: websockets
Makefile:95: recipe for target 'sub-src-make_first' failed

I could probably figure out what's wrong and fix it, but...

Meanwhile, I was experimenting with the "melt" command-line video
editor that's included in the MLT library.

https://mltframework.org/twiki/bin/view/MLT/MltMelt
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcUid3OP_4OWC-GJ6KfHK7dIK_yRKKn0e

It's pretty cool, if somewhat cryptic. The documentation is a little
scarce, and what exists is somewhat hidden from Google by the use of a
common English word as the program name.

But, the developer was kind enough to offer a couple hints on the
mailing list, and it did a great job.

Using the x264 codec it produce an output file that was 1/3 the size
of that produce by Openshot and the improvement in video quality over
Openshot was Yuge(tm)! I cranked up the x264 bitrate some (filesize
is now a little over half of that produced by Openshot), and the video
quality is great -- it's indiscernible from the input files which are
almost twice as large.

The interesting thing is that Openshot and melt both use the same MLT
backend, so Openshot _should_ be able to generate the exact same
output -- assuming it exposes all the required codec selections and
settings.

--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I have a TINY BOWL in
at my HEAD
gmail.com

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-06-14, Grant Edwards <grant.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The git version of MLT installed fine, but shotcut failed to compile:
>
> cd src/ && ( test -e Makefile || /usr/lib64/qt5/bin/qmake /var/tmp/portage/media-video/shotcut-9999/work/shotcut-9999/src/src.pro 'PREFIX={D}/usr/' -o Makefile ) && make -f Makefile
> Project ERROR: Unknown module(s) in QT: websockets
> Makefile:95: recipe for target 'sub-src-make_first' failed
>
> I could probably figure out what's wrong and fix it, but...

The shotcut ebuild above is missing dependancies on qtwebsockets and
jack-audio-connection-kit. Once I added those, it built cleanly. It
doesn't _work_, but it builds.

When I run it it just dipslays a small balck rectangle in the middle
of the display and then locks up.

I must say I'm pretty unimpressed with the state of GUI video editors
on Linux (or at least on Gentoo).

There are probably three or four more I could try, but I think I'll
stick with the command-line rather than waste any more time on trying
to build and use half-finished apps.

--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I'm using my X-RAY
at VISION to obtain a rare
gmail.com glimpse of the INNER
WORKINGS of this POTATO!!

[Deven Lahoti]

kdenlive is apparently usable, though I haven't tried it

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-06-14, Deven Lahoti <dey...@mit.edu> wrote:

> kdenlive is apparently usable, though I haven't tried it

I was sort of hoping that Shotcut would work, since it was
specifically recommended by the MLT developer as the best way to use
melt.

That was going to be my last resort, since I didn't really want to
install KDE stuff. Openshot and Shotcut both required Qt, but not
KDE. Flowblade would probably be next on my list to try, since it's
Gtk based and wouldn't pull in the 30-40 packages that a Qt app does
(or Dog-only-knows how many for a KDE app).

--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! In 1962, you could buy
at a pair of SHARKSKIN SLACKS,
gmail.com with a "Continental Belt,"
for $10.99!!