Looking for free NLE software projects

[SenorKaffee]

This is not exclusively HV20-related, but I´m looking for free NLE software projects. I´m writing a video tutorial for a very special use and I want to base the screenshots on something that does not cost hundreds of euros.

So far I stumled upon:

t@b ZS4 video editor
http://www.zs4.net/

Scilab Aurora
http://scilab-aurora.sourceforge.net/

The target group is video editing noobs that don´t need many features. A handful of tracks for video and audio, export to AVI and it has to be available on Windows.

Maybe you know more.

[Erik Bien]

I've never used it, but others here have recommended Womble, which has a 30-day trial version and costs $99 ...

[deanodirector]

I'm also havin a problem with finding free NLEs. Mpeg streamclip does a great job of trimming and exporting but that's only one clip at a time.

[Numbox]

http://www.jahshaka.org/

Never tried it though.

[um3k]

I haven't had much luck with Jahshaka. When I tried it, it was all GUI, no functionality. ZS4, at least, is a functional product, though not without some problems of its own. I've never seen Scilab Aurora before, though. I'll have to give it a try.

I've used Avisynth as a NLE before, but seeing as it doesn't have a GUI, you might not want to go that route.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

There is no free, or open source under Linux, NLE that will do even half as iMovie/MovieMaker do, or half as well as iMovie/MovieMaker do it. NLEs are very complex apps and they require lots of engineers working together, rather than from miles apart. More over, the free/OSS video editors are putting their faith on third party libraries like ffmpeg and mencoder, which are extremely buggy on their own -- let alone when your app is nothing but a front-end to them. More over, none of these apps can do HDV. I tried T@B earlier and it wouldn't even recognize .m2t as a valid format.

Basically, if you have no money and you need to edit some DV/HDV video, use iMovieHD or MovieMaker (on Vista for HD support).

If you have some money and you want ease of use, use Ulead 11 or Magix Movie Edit Pro 12.
If you have more money and you need industry support via filters, get Adobe Premiere LE.
And if you have a bit more money and you need the best value for the features offered (although with a bit less usability), get Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8 (the only consumer NLE that doesn't barf with 24p timelines and with very good color correcting abilities).

The only consumer NLE that I would not recommend is Pinnacle's, because it's too buggy.

>The target group is video editing noobs that don´t need many features.

This is not correct. There is no chance you could sit down "Joe User with a DV camcorder" to work with either Jashaka or T@B. These are NOT applications that "target noobs because they have few features". These are apps that target whoever bites exactly because they have few features -- and they also come with terrible usability.

iMovie HD is the benchmark on consumer NLE usability. It's just intuitive and miles ahead T@B or Skilab.

[astrogreek]

This is not exclusively HV20-related, but I´m looking for free NLE software projects. I´m writing a video tutorial for a very special use and I want to base the screenshots on something that does not cost hundreds of euros.

So far I stumled upon:

t@b ZS4 video editor
http://www.zs4.net/

Scilab Aurora
http://scilab-aurora.sourceforge.net/

The target group is video editing noobs that don´t need many features. A handful of tracks for video and audio, export to AVI and it has to be available on Windows.

Maybe you know more.

I found a couple of free programs to edit HDV with, but at the moment the workflow is a bit cumbersome. It works for my PAL 25P clips. I don't add any special effects or music, I just cut the parts I don't want, and do basic things like adjusting the colours, saturation, contrast, and if necessary noise reduction and sharpening. There are tons of possibilities with Virtualdub (and possibly Avidemux; I have not used it much).

Alternative a:
1. Capture with HDVSplit
2. Convert losslessly to Mpeg2 with HDTV2Mpeg2
3. Open in Virtualdubmpeg2
4. Edit, apply filters as you like, encode with the codec of your choice. Unfortunately audio also needs to be re-encoded. Finished.

Alternative b:
1. Capture with HDVSPlit
2. Open in Avidemux
3a. Edit, apply filters, encode. Finished.
- OR -
3b. Edit, save as avi without re-encoding (very fast, lossless, except at the points were cuts have been made).
4. In my case the index of the file is broken after saving (bug in Avidemux?), which is solved by re-opening the file in Avidemux, rebuild the index, and re-save (a lot of work, but much faster than re-encoding, and there is no loss of quality).
5. (Optional). Install ffdshow and configure it to process mpeg2-video. It will do on-the-fly post-processing on the saved clips from Avidemux as they play.

I hope some of this can be useful.
AG

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

astrogreek, mpeg2 is not lossless. Secondly, Avidemux2 is not a real NLE either, but rather a mix of filter/frame-based operation app. I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you want to put many clips together, add transitions, etc and make it look professional, there is no free NLE that will help you do it other than MovieMaker or iMovie.

[SenorKaffee]

What I think about is not HDV-related. I didn´t have a try at the suggested solutions, yet. This particular project is postponed.

[astrogreek]

astrogreek, mpeg2 is not lossless. Secondly, Avidemux2 is not a real NLE either, but rather a mix of filter/frame-based operation app. I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you want to put many clips together, add transitions, etc and make it look professional, there is no free NLE that will help you do it other than MovieMaker or iMovie.

Eugenia, you mean the conversion done by HDTV2Mpeg2 is not lossless? I did not know that. It was my understanding it does not re-encode anything, just some sort of modifying the file header or something (I am on thin ice here). When I convert a file with the software it seems the speed is only limited by the writing speed of my hard-disk.
I agree with the rest.

[uFx]

astrogreek, mpeg2 is not lossless. Secondly, Avidemux2 is not a real NLE either, but rather a mix of filter/frame-based operation app. I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you want to put many clips together, add transitions, etc and make it look professional, there is no free NLE that will help you do it other than MovieMaker or iMovie.

Well, there is: Cinelerra. Free, open source, and quite good:

http://cvs.cinelerra.org/

I use it for all my editing.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

uFX: Cinelerra only works on Unix, and most people are not interested in the niche OS although it can be a solution if someone has a separate video editing station. Unfortunately, I can crash Cinelerra with closed eyes. I have done so in the past, shouldn't be too hard to do it again. I am a Linux user for years now (it was part of my "job" as a tech/review editor for a popular tech site) so I have tried a number of Cinelerra versions...

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

It seems that Cinelerra can't handle HDV well: http://cvs.cinelerra.org/docs/wiki/d...ng_proxy_files

Update: A guy on #cinelerra on Freenode IRC tried my Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8-captured .m2t HDV file on his latest version of Cinelerra and the app won't read it at all. Not very good if you are an HV20 user.

UFx: there is a possibility that you are capturing using a different mpeg2 codec (are you using dvgrab from CVS?), or that you are converting to something either lossy or lossless in order cinelerra to support your files.

[uFx]

It seems that Cinelerra can't handle HDV well: http://cvs.cinelerra.org/docs/wiki/d...ng_proxy_files

Update: A guy on #cinelerra on Freenode IRC tried my Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8-captured .m2t HDV file on his latest version of Cinelerra and the app won't read it at all. Not very good if you are an HV20 user.

UFx: there is a possibility that you are capturing using a different mpeg2 codec (are you using dvgrab from CVS?), or that you are converting to something either lossy or lossless in order cinelerra to support your files.

I'm also using the proxy files when editing my videos. Not because Cinelerra does not support the mpeg2 files but more for the speed of editing and realtime preview of the effects.

I capture my video using test-mpeg2 which is part of libiec61883. Then I generate the TOC files for these mpeg files. The TOC files can be load into cinelerra so you can edit HDV directly (although it's not that fast).

An alternative on the linux platform is kdenlive. It can edit HDV using a patch but I haven't tried it yet

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

I just tried the latest cinelerra on my CoreDuo PC on Ubuntu Gutsy and it has a shameful speed regarding HDV files. It crashes when trying to load h264 files too. I use Vegas on a much less powerful PC and it can handle HDV fine... Using proxy files is time consuming, so I very rarely use them.

[uFx]

I just tried the latest cinelerra on my CoreDuo PC on Ubuntu Gutsy and it has a shameful speed regarding HDV files. It crashes when trying to load h264 files too. I use Vegas on a much less powerful PC and it can handle HDV fine... Using proxy files is time consuming, so I very rarely use them.

First, Ubuntu is a slow linux distribution And second, I don't have Windows so I cannot use Vegas And Vegas isn't free.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

uFX: please don't give me the well known excuse when someone says that something doesn't work right on Linux: "use another distribution". Ubuntu is just fine. The slowness is on Cinelerra, not on Ubuntu. It is even documented as such. Cinelerra is simply not optimize or architected to work with big files. It was a common problem on consumer NLEs too when HD first came out. The OS had nothing to do with the problem, but it was all an architecture issue.

As for Vegas not being free, no, it's not. But iMovieHD and MovieMaker work admirebly well for the price (free). Cinelerra might be both free and Free, but it just doesn't do the job as well as it should IMHO. It's nothing personal btw, it's just that when I look at software, I look at them with the an eye of how they can serve me best, passed beyond politicalities.

[Mal]

AVID's FreeDV:
http://www.avid.com/products/freedv/index.asp

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Avid's FreeDV looks promising, but does it do HDV?

Edit: After a bit of searching I see that the app was not updated for a long while and it has some pretty big compatibility problems on both platforms.

[Mal]

Yeah, that sounds about right; it is DV only also.

[Arctures]

Have anybody tried Blender's Video Sequence Editor? As for me I was successful to edit/produce some short test sequences (non-HD) with it. Blender does support high definition formats as well as many interesting features. As far as I am going to order my brand new HV30e this looks the most promising app for me as for a Linux user. So is there any success with Blender and HDV from HV20/30? Any info is really appreciated.

[racer-x]

I don't know about Blender, but Wax2 (free) can work with any HD source via Avisynth scripts. Because Wax2 can open Avisynth scripts natively, it can edit any HD source including, but not limited to AVCHD. You can edit freely with transitions, special effects, 3D tiitles, any 3rd party Virtualdub filters and much more. The only issue that I've found was the audio. It has problems with audio and seams to only work with 44,100 mhz audio for some reason. You can of course do the audio track separately.

Well it's free anyway.....................

[Arctures]

Thanks for reply, racer. As far as my both working and home OS is Linux I'll give it a try under Wine.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

>Have anybody tried Blender's Video Sequence Editor?

Yes, I have. I even wrote a tutorial a few weeks ago that was Slashdotted:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/0...-with-blender/
Thing is, Blender is only if you have enough patience with it and eventually learn its 3D part too. And it's buggy, while usability is below-par.

[Arctures]

Yes, I have. I even wrote a tutorial a few weeks ago that was Slashdotted:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/0...-with-blender/
Thing is, Blender is only if you have enough patience with it and eventually learn its 3D part too. And it's buggy, while usability is below-par.

Thanks a lot, Eugenia. Nice article. I have tried to Blend some uploadted m2t footage from hv20.com ftp-server and it was pretty nice with 2.46 version. I found some things to work at and some stuff to learn but it looks really promising. Blender interface transorms to a nice NLE in a few clicks All the cutting operations and other things was pretty fast for me (CoreQuad@3,2GHz 4Gb RAM). Now I should play with output formats to find out my favorites and get my HV30 at least.