Live data from Hacker News

Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

shotcutapp.com

121–130 of 141 posts

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#121
post #96

Shotcut (on Linux at least) just doesn't work. I've used pretty much all amateur video-making software for Windows and some for Mac, Screenflow, FinalCut Pro, etc. The best by far is FinalCut Pro (Mac-only), because it automatically creates proxy files and allows you to edit everything in real time with no lag, even when adding complicated effects. The situation on Linux is dismal. The only good one is https://kdenli…

Blender is the best free software video editor across GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac. I've used it to edit a feature length movie. It's not perfect at all, but doesn't crash and doesn't crap out when you give it a slightly unusual formatted file.

I edited lots of screencasts in Blender. Can confirm it's more than suitable and above basic. There is a complete series on Youtube on how to use Blender for video editing.

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#122
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very helpful. I'll look at the suggestions. >> They are unstable because they require huge amount of resources ... This actually is not enough of a reason in theory for the programs to crash. The programs should stop the processing when they run out of resources and allow a graceful exit. The root cause for crashes then, I am guessing, must be lousy code. Either the entire video editing industry has gotten us…

> The root cause for crashes then, I am guessing, must be lousy code. Huh? Almost every application just panics when it runs out of memory. Not least because it's actually difficult to do stuff without using memory within typical application frameworks.

I would seriously blame codecs. The programming from video editors I am sure is 100% about compromises. You can't get a smooth preview playback of 4K unless you have sunk thousands of dollars into your computer. I am guessing that they are always playing the compromise of you can't really get this but we will give you that all the time. The issue comes when they are playing around with how to control latency and i/o bottle necks.

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#125
post #22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Da Vinci just crashes for me, over and over. Its been one of the least stable apps I've ever encountered .. so, ymmv.

Most of the video editing programs I have used (Sony, Corel, Cyberlink, Panasonic) crash often. On this HN, it looks the same for FOSS also. Is there some specific reason behind this?

I think it's that, by their nature, video editing programs need to use lots of very fast low-level code (C and assembly), and it's really hard to write safe low-level code.

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#126
post #28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the video editing programs I have used (Sony, Corel, Cyberlink, Panasonic) crash often. On this HN, it looks the same for FOSS also. Is there some specific reason behind this?

I do some video editing contract work from time to time. I never know what I will have to use so I have pretty much used all of them. They are unstable because they require huge amount of resources, especially if your looking for 4k source material. You must have a very powerful machine. I don't have many crashes when working on high end custom built machines, but they do happen. From most stable to least stable for…

Video codec installation also contribute to the instability.

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#127
post #58

Shotcut (on Linux at least) just doesn't work. I've used pretty much all amateur video-making software for Windows and some for Mac, Screenflow, FinalCut Pro, etc. The best by far is FinalCut Pro (Mac-only), because it automatically creates proxy files and allows you to edit everything in real time with no lag, even when adding complicated effects. The situation on Linux is dismal. The only good one is https://kdenli…

I recently used Lightworks on Linux. It worked fine. Quite a bit more powerful and hence complicated than the tools I used before. It's proprietary and the free as in beer version is limited to 720p mp4 ("YouTube") export, which was sufficient for my use case.

Lightworks is a good editor but I found its performance on my desktop on 1080p footage could sometimes be worse than editing 4k footage with Final Cut Pro on my macbook (that could be because FCPX generates proxies but I'm not certain about that as it seems very fast scrubbing through footage even when its still on my SD card. FCPX is also amazing at accepting most video formats and dimensions. Good luck getting Lightworks to do something unusual like export at a 1:1 aspect ratio for instagram.

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#128

Shotcut (on Linux at least) just doesn't work. I've used pretty much all amateur video-making software for Windows and some for Mac, Screenflow, FinalCut Pro, etc. The best by far is FinalCut Pro (Mac-only), because it automatically creates proxy files and allows you to edit everything in real time with no lag, even when adding complicated effects. The situation on Linux is dismal. The only good one is https://kdenli…

I share the same frustrations but I think honestly at this point Davinci Resolve 14 is the best video editor for Linux - nothing really competes. It is a bit of resource hog, but they have added a ton of capability in the last few years in regard to non-linear editing and I think if you seriously need to edit video on Linux that is where you should be looking. Also it's free. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products…

I've used Resolve quite a bit and think outside of maybe blender it's the best free editor, plus it's not intimidating like blender can be.

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#129
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender is the best free software video editor across GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac. I've used it to edit a feature length movie. It's not perfect at all, but doesn't crash and doesn't crap out when you give it a slightly unusual formatted file.

Looking at the documentation, I was under the impression that all it could do was basic cutting and simple things like cropping. Can it do simple effects, like video overlays?

There is a nice tutorial video series (31 videos so far!) here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjyuVPBuorqIhlqZtoIvn...

Re: Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor

#130
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBS is pretty much best in class for live streaming, but it's not a video editor. Both are much different use cases.

You can use it to record your screen, not just to live stream.

Yes, but then you need another separate tool to do post-production editing. That's where it falls short for usage outside of live streaming.
Post reply on HN