Cinelerra video editor [Linux]

[racer-x]

I downloaded and installed Cinelerra Video editor/compositor. It has some nice tools. It is quite foreign to me though, it's much like learning a new language. Among other things it has some decent camera controls. Here is a quick image pan/zoom test.

[redwudz]

Cinelerra didn't seem to automatically link to our Linux toolpage for me, so a link: https://www.videohelp.com/software/Cinelerra

[DeJay]

Hey racer-x, I remember you from another forum a long while ago, either Pana3ccduser or Camcorderuser. I had a different user name back then though.

Which Cinelerra did you download? I had problems getting it to work sensibly for a long time, particularly Cin-CV with a KDE desktop, but now Cinelerra-GG is available, I find it works very well. If there is a package for your distro, which you can find out by going to the Cinelerra-CV download page, I suggest downloading the single-user version rather than the installable one so that when there is an update, if something does not work properly for you, you can continue to use the version that does.

Now that ffmpeg no longer seems to support PCM audio, I find Cin-CV, which is Quicktime based, pretty much useless whereas Cin-GG 5.1 which is ffppeg based, handles almost everything.

It is quite foreign to me though, it's much like learning a new language.

I couldn't agree more, it took me ages to find a file format that it would accept (in the Cin-CV days), then trying to learn new commands wasn't easy, but I'm glad I persevered because I rather like it and now that Kdenlive has a glitch (I'm about to put that in another post), it's the only NLE that has what I want.

[racer-x]

The version I installed (via tarball) was the ffmpeg version. I've since deleted it, so don't know for sure, but I think it was the CG 5.1 or whatever. It worked well, but was a pain to edit key-frames among other things. Not sure I want to try installing it again. I also tried the AppImage version, but it wasn't as stable as the installed version.

[DeJay]

If it was the ffmpeg version it would have been Cin-GG 5.1.

I find the single user package to be very stable, I've simply extracted it to a folder and linked it to my application launcher for convenience. What I particularly like about it is its independence from updates, so I don't have to update if I don't want to, or if I do and the update does not work as I would like, I can revert to the working version. Too many times I have had an update happen it the middle of a project (Kdenlive) and had to start all over again, usually in Cinelerra! I find the (latest) 20170329 update to be very good, the Arch package since Manjaro is based on Arch Linux.

While I use keyframes in every edit, I haven't done any real editing of keyframes, just the occasional delete, but I did find a way to delete all keyframes for a particular effect without deleting any on the other effects. It's something I need to learn, which I shall do when there is a need for it.

If you do decide to give it another try, I may be able to help with some things, at least we could discuss it here.