Summary:
Adobe's shift to subscription-based cloud distribution for its flagship
creative applications has left its customers with a dilemma: pay a
hefty monthly/yearly subscription; carry on as long as possible with the
last non-subscription version; switch to Premiere Elements; or abandon
Adobe altogether. We examine some of the open-source alternatives to
Premiere Pro CC.
By Terry Relph-Knight |
Video editing applications are relatively complex, high-performance
products that address a three-tier market: consumers making simple home
movies; more serious amateur film-makers; and professional editing for
TV and cinema. Historically (as is perhaps illustrated by Adobe's recent
repositioning of Premiere Pro CC towards the professional media
market), video NLE developers have often struggled to decide which of
those three market segments to address (and on which platforms). Many
users now expect a basic home movie application such as Windows Movie
Maker or Apple iMovie to be free — or at least very low cost. Commercial
developers must choose whether to aim at the mass-market general user
with a lower-cost product, or focus on the smaller professional market
where much higher prices can be charged, but expectations are very high.
For developers of FOSS
video NLE (Non Linear Editing) software, the choice is arguably
determined by available development resources. Projects tend to start
off with a basic function editor, with the aspiration of creating a more
capable product as the release cycle progresses.
The recent and rapid growth in the development of higher-quality,
higher-resolution digital imaging technologies — new camera file
formats, 2K, 4K and even 8K resolutions and stereoscopic 3D — adds
further complications to the development of video NLE software that's in
tune with current needs, particularly in the professional market.
Commercial developers, such as Adobe and Apple are (just about) able to
keep up with these developments, but charge a correspondingly high price
for their top-end products. The longest running FOSS projects that have
managed to attract a larger number of developers offer the most mature
and well-rounded applications, but generally are struggling to keep up
on features and often have unsophisticated, dated-looking user
interfaces.
Since 2001 there have been over 35 open-source video NLE projects,
either started or restarted. Building a full-featured video NLE is no
small thing, ideally requiring a large and well-organised development
team, and many of these projects have struggled, merged with other
projects or eventually fallen into limbo.
Something to be aware of when exploring FOSS video NLEs is that the
versions available from the repositories of many Linux distributions are
often early versions, or the latest stable version may lag way behind
the development alphas and betas. The Software Centre for Ubuntu 13.10, for example, still offers version 0.15.2 of Pitivi.
To see the latest UI and feature set it's necessary, where possible, to
install the latest version from a project's own website.
NLE user interface design
It is quite a challenge to design an attractive, efficient user
interface for a video NLE that also presents the user controls and menu
options so that they're unobtrusive and yet easily found when needed.
Because of the effect of simultaneous contrast, areas of saturated
colour in the user interface of any image manipulation application can
affect perception of colours within the image that's being manipulated.
The theoretical ideal for any imaging application is to use a muted
neutral colour palette for the elements of the user interface. In
practice, this limits the design of the ideal user interface for image
manipulation applications to different shades of dark grey, with small
areas of saturated spot colour used to highlight status and control
elements. Not long ago Adobe overhauled its flagship imaging products
along these lines, using a dark charcoal palette used for the bulk of
the interface. Even a white to pale-grey palette, as used by many of the
FOSS video NLEs, can skew contrast perception. A typical video NLE user interface layout. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Apart from the palette, the elements of a video NLE UI are largely
determined by the requirements of the editing task and therefore there
is further similarity between video NLEs. The common elements are: a
project area containing the clips to be used in an edit, perhaps
organised in storyboard order; clip and edit viewers; a timeline where
the edit is assembled; and control panels for edit tools and video and
audio effects. An elegant and usable UI, a wide range of input and
output formats/codecs, and smooth playback and editing — even at high
resolutions — are all qualities that make a video NLE stand out from the
crowd.
Kino
Kino is notable as one of the
best-known and earliest of open-source video NLEs. Begun in 2001 and not
actively maintained since 2009, the Kino project produced a quite
capable video editor. Kino (last version 1.3.4) can still be useful for
general editing and for testing and debugging FireWire capture.
Kino is storyboard-oriented with clips organised in storyboard order
in the panel on the left of the display. Clicking the timeline button on
the left does not display a conventional timeline, but rather
sequential frames from the selected clip. This is useful for seeking to a
particular frame by left-clicking on the chosen frame. Kino then
reverts to edit mode at the point of that frame in the clip. Kino in edit view. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Although frequently discussed on the user forum, Kino development
never reached the point of audio track or waveform display. Kino is
DV-based with support for AVI (type 1 & 2) or DV raw and runs only
on Linux. QuickTime support is an option.
Kdenlive
Begun shortly after Kino, in 2002, Kdenlive
is a mature and still-active video NLE project with a strong developer
community. However, like many FOSS projects with relatively complex user
interfaces, its UI presentation could be better. Although it's intended
for the K Desktop Environment (KDE), Kdenlive will run on other
desktops, including Ubuntu Unity. The current version is 0.96 with good
support on the project's website for getting that version installed.
Kdenlive runs on Linux distributions, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Mac OS X. By
default when running on the Ubuntu Unity desktop environment, Kdenlive
presents a pale UI palette biased towards white. Image: Terry
Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Kdenlive supports import of AVI DV, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVCHD, HDV,
XDCAM-HD streams, IMX (D10) streams, DVCAM (D10), DVCAM, DVCPRO,
DVCPRO50 streams and DnxHD. Exports can be to DV (PAL and NTSC), MPEG2
(PAL, NTSC and HDV) and AVCHD (HDV) and high-quality H264. The Kdenlive Render (export) control panel. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Kdenlive has a very large range of video and audio effects, including
reverb and delay. A more in-depth explanation of its features can be
found on the project's website.
Blender
Although it's not strictly speaking a video editor, Blender,
a 3D animation suite, is one of the rockstars of FOSS. After twenty
years of development and now at version 2.69, Blender is a
professional-level application that has been used to create many
animated movies, and also to add animated titles (the OpenShot video NLE
links to Blender for the creation of animated titles) and special
effects to live motion. It also happens to include a quite sophisticated
video NLE. The video editor is, of course, biased towards the needs of
animation and the integration of animation into live motion, so it does
not present an immediately familiar feel to those used to the more
mainstream applicactions. Blender supports the following movie formats:
AVI (Windows, JPEG and RAW), Frame Server, H.264, MPEG, Ogg Theora,
QuickTime and Xvid. In Blender the Video Editing mode is selected via the Mode menu. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNetBlender's video editor. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Blender uses a neutral dark-grey palette, with small colour
highlights to minimise colour and contrast bias, but there is a steep
learning curve in navigating its complex UI. Audio waveforms can be
displayed, but audio effects are limited to basic level controls.
Blender is fairly comprehensively cross platform and runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Cinelerra
Started in 2003, Cinelerra is somewhat schizophrenic as it's
developed both as the offical Cinelerra, a closed development sometimes
referred to as Cinelerra HV (now at version 4.5), and as the collaborative community version, Cinelerra CV (now at 2.2). In 2008 a rewrite of Cinelerra CV eventually forked into the Lumiera project, which appears to be still active. Cinelerra
CV 2.2 running on Ubuntu 12.10 LTS. The individual windows of Cinelerra
have been resized to fill most of the visual field, but the Ubuntu
desktop is still visible in the background. Image: Terry
Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Rather than the generally white default backgrounds adopted by both
Kdenlive and OpenShot, Cinelerra does at least adopt a less intrusive
charcoal palette for its UI. But there are still splashes of quite
eye-catching bright colour, and the overall appearance is a little
crude. Once launched, Cinelerra does not claim the entire desktop, but
presents in the foreground as a number of floating windows.
Cinelerra runs only on various Linux distributions and is resolution-
and frame-rate-independent, so theoretically it can support video of
any speed and size. Only a limited range of video file formats are
currently supported however, not including MTS.
Pitivi
The Pitivi project, begun in
2004 and originally known as PiTiVi, is teasing expectations with the
promise of the full release of version 1.0, although there's no sign of
an ETA. Pitivi is currently at 0.92, a alpha development version. A
screenshot of Pitivi 0.91 from the Pitivi website. Despite some effort,
we were unable to install anything other than Pitivi 0.15.2, which
looks very different.
The only stable release version of Pitivi available in the Ubuntu
Software Center is version 0.15.2 and this really does not give a good
idea of where the Pitivi project is going. Unfortunately installing the
alpha of Pitivi 0.92 on Ubuntu 13.10, for example, is a bit of a
performance. There are instructions on how to go about this on PauLoX.net.
Pitivi is developed in Python and in late 2013 the developers completed a major rewrite to shift the architecture onto the GES
(GStreamer Editing Services) cross-platform library, so it now has a
strong foundation. Unfortunately, judging by the current state of the
project, Pitivi is not suitable for general use just yet. The Pitivi
developers recently announced a fund raiser to help drive the project towards a 1.0 release, and it's certainly worth watching for future developments.
OpenShot
OpenShot is a relative
newcomer, the project starting in 2008. Following a Kickstarter campaign
in July 2013, Jonathan Thomas — the main and at the time practically
the sole developer — posted a blog entry
about adding distributed editing to OpenShot and talked about a new
look and new features for OpenShot 2.0, with a release date of January
2014. However, following a blog post in October 2013,
which mentioned problems with workload and difficulties in hiring
staff, the project seemed to falter. Then in January 2014 several new blog posts
revealed the recruitment of two new developers and indicated that an
alpha of OpenShot 2.0 might be available around the end of February
(this has not yet appeared). OpenShot 2.0 is being developed as a
cross-platform application to run on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The OpenShot desktop for the current stable version 1.4.3. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
As it stands, OpenShot has all the basic elements in place and is a
usable editor for straightforward video projects. It has a simple
built-in titler and also links to Blender, which can create extremely
complex animated titles (if you can handle its equally complex UI).
Audio waveforms are not displayed in the current version, and so
cannot be used as a visual cue for synchronising video clips. Also, only
a small number of rudimentary audio effects are supported.
EditShare Lightworks and Lightworks Pro
Lightworks started life in 1989 as a video NLE designed by a group of
film editors — Paul Bamborough, Nick Pollock and Neil Harris, the
founders of a company called OLE Limited. It subsequently changed hands
several times, and in 2009 was bought by EditShare,
the current owners, along with Gee Broadcast's GeeVS video server
system. Historically, Lightworks has built a strong reputation in the
film-editing community and has been used on turnkey systems, with its
associated Lightworks control console hardware, to edit a number of well
known, big-box-office movies.
EditShare's main business is in workflow software, media storage and
media management, but recently the company has been developing and
promoting Lightworks for general release. Lightworks and Lightworks Pro are currently available as a full release (11.5) for Windows and Linux. EditShare also demonstrated a pre-release alpha of 11.1 running on Mac OS X at the NAB in April 2013, and an OS X beta may appear sometime this year.
EditShare has committed to releasing the Lightworks code as open
source, but has been criticised for not doing so right away. The company
maintains that it needs to audit the code it inherited to identify and
remove any proprietary components before a full open-source release.
Many video codecs, for example, are proprietary. The Lightworks Pro 11.5 for Linux desktop. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
An unusual feature of Lightworks is that it has no Save command. Each
change is recorded as it's made and a closed edit will simply resume at
the point it was when closed. Undo and Redo allow moving back and forth
through the history record. Lightworks is resolution-independent and
supports up to 5K file formats for realtime editing and up to 2K in
realtime output monitoring without any additional hardware. The only
audio effects currently available are cross-fade and EQ.
A table detailing the differences between Lightworks and Lightworks Pro is available on the Lightworks website. Lightworks stereoscopic 3D settings in the Project settings menu. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNetLightworks export menu. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
Adobe Premiere Pro CC
In 2012 Adobe launched Creative Cloud,
a subscription-based software distribution service with products
available via direct download. In early 2013 Premiere users were
expecting the release of Premiere Pro CS7 when, at its MAX
conference in May, Adobe announced that future versions of the product,
to be known as Premiere Pro CC, would only be available via Creative
Cloud. Currently costing £17.58 per month, or £210.96 per year (inc.
VAT), Premiere Pro CC is aimed squarely at the professional media
market. Non-professional users were faced with either subscribing to
Premiere Pro CC, moving to Adobe Premiere Elements 12 (£78.15 inc. VAT)
or abandoning Adobe products altogether. For the more casual video
editing software user, this certainly made FOSS alternatives look more
attractive. The Adobe Premiere Pro CC workspace on Windows 7 64-bit. Image: Terry Relph-Knight/ZDNet
To say that Premiere Pro CC is feature rich
is an understatement, and it's only possible to mention a fraction of
its features in a comparative survey like this. From CS6 onwards, Adobe
has used an efficient UI that maximises the space dedicated to the
images being edited, along with a dark charcoal palette. Premiere Pro CC
includes a quite comprehensive titler and provides a wide choice of
video effects. There's also an extensive range of audio effects, and
it's particularly easy to edit and add effects, including reverb, to
audio tracks. Resolutions supported include 1K, 2K and 4K.
Premiere integrates linking to After Effects CC for more complex special effects, to Photoshop CC for editing single frames, stills and titles, while colour grading is easily achieved though SpeedGrade CC
(albeit at further cost for these additional applications). Adobe's
Mercury Playback Engine ensures smooth playback on a modern PC, even at
high resolution, without the need for preview file generation, and
completed edits can be exported to a wide range of formats.
Conclusion
Adobe Premiere Pro CC (Windows 7/8/8.1 64-bit or Mac OS X 10.7/8/9
64-bit) sets a high benchmark. In the proprietary Windows/Mac OS X
market, it competes with Apple's Final Cut Pro X (Mac OS X only, £199.99) , Sony Vegas (Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 64-bit £389.95) and possibly Avid Media Composer 7 (Windows 7/8, £862.80).
If you must run Windows or Mac OS X, then, providing you're happy
with Adobe's subscription model, Premiere Pro CC is a good choice of
video NLE. For Mac OS X only, Apple's Final Cut Pro X is an excellent
product.
For Linux users, Lightworks is now perhaps the best video NLE (based
on the latest 11.5 version) and it also runs on Windows, with a Mac OS X
version promised. However it's not yet FOSS, and to gain the use of the
widest range of codecs and the built-in titler, users must pay a yearly
subscription of £40 for Lightworks Pro (some of which covers the cost
of licensing proprietary codecs).
If you only need a usable, fairly basic Linux video NLE, then
OpenShot 1.4.3 is worth considering. OpenShot 2.0 may be released in the
first quarter of 2014 as a cross-platform application
(Linux/Windows/Mac OS X) and should be a significant advance on the
current (Linux-only) 1.4.3 version.
As for the rest of the 'Linux' NLEs, Kdenlive has a good feature set
and track record, with a healthy development community; Pitivi looks
promising; and Cinelerra is a capable editor, although its slightly
clunky graphics, floating windows and idiosyncratic operation count
against it. Finally, Blender is a fantastic application for 3D animation
and special effects, is cross platform and, once you learn how to use
it, includes a pretty good video NLE.
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