Video editing on Linux

Kdenlive 0.7 on Ubuntu

In the past video editing on Linux has been a bit of a no-go area as the only program for it which was sufficiently stable endured (after researching more I found many accounts which said otherwise) and had enough features was Cinelerra which although an excellent professional tool has an interface that would scare of all except the most committed users. In the past I have widely avoided the field, my most recent attempt around 6 months ago leaving me with the conclusion than any usable video editor for Linux was doomed to crash every 5 minutes (kino, I’m looking at you ).

But last week I became involved with a local community project involving compositing several videos and interviews; I decided that it would be the perfect oppertunity to see if much had changed. My first attempts were at using Kino, Lives. Open Movie Editor, Pitivi and Avidemux; most crashed frequently and none made it easy to split the videos as I needed to. Then I tried Kdenlive 0.7 beta as quite a lot of people had positive things to say about it. I was amazed; it actually worked .

It has an attractive kde4 interface (don’t let the kde4 interface put gnome users off, it still functions fully and the default KDE style fits in well with most gnome desktops), many features and best of all, it hasen’t crashed once! It allowed me to seamlessly import my videos (from the arcane WMV format), add titles/overlays + transitions and render in a variety of formats, all with the minimum of hassle. The only problem was a bit of sync troubles with the audio and video (if anyone knows the solution I would be glad to hear). It looks like Linux video editing, while lacking polish in some respects, is finally in a usable state. At last we can join Mac users in mocking Windows Movie Maker!