Since other "silent" users are busting out of the woodwork to voice their opinions, I'm compelled to spit my two cents on all of the recent discussion. ;)
Mark Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Bradley A. Hare <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >Working minimal functionality that can be maintained. I might be > > wrong, others > > seem to have been more successful at this than I have, > > I just want to use Cinelerra for more casual amateur use, rather than > professional. I've found Cinelerra rather unintuitive, I've done > things like resort to Kino to make clips, and then paste them in > Cinelerra. I had a play with OME, and I found that you can slide the > clips along the timeline. Cinelerra seems much more finicky. I can't be the only one who's done successful complex editing in Cinelerra. I do fair amount of of work, professionally and independently, and while I'll admit Cinelerra isn't perfect, it certainly does the job for me on the projects I choose to use it on. Admittedly I don't do a lot of long-format work, but it's not uncommon for me to have up to (and occasionally over) a dozen tracks on my timeline with clips in various formats and an assortment of effects. > I've taken to hacking away a bit at the code - and alas I broke my > version. One thing that leaps out is all those case statements, esp. > wrt colour models. I may be being too niaive, but I'd really like to > see some kind of method of getting a grip on that. I looked at the > flip plugin, and again, we see loads of switching based on the colour > model. I wondered if there was a way of unifying the models. And I > know we've been down this road before, and my views have been > dismissed, but things like OpenGL don't help. They just pile > complexity on top of complexity. The plugins even get in on the act. > It's just too complicated. I really do wonder if the code base is 4 > times larger than it really needs to be. > > > Minimal functionality means three point editing, with basic > > transitions, of the most > > popular formats raw, DV and HDV (each of these has a specification > > although HDV > > I think this would go a long long way to reducing programming > complexity. And what people really want is a predictable and robust > workflow, even if it is (a little) round the houses: use ffmpeg to > convert to DV, work your magic with Cinelerra, and then convert back > to another format ready to upload to YouTube or whatever. Can we say generation loss? Not a particularly appealing prospect for professional video editors. I could be wrong, but Cinelerra's target audience is similar to Blender's: intended more for professional use than for the casual hobbiest. Granted, they may not get much use from professionals (especially Cinelerra. Blender is actually making more headway in this arena), but that doesn't change the fact that they are and have been the target audience for these programs. > I suspect that, long term, Cinelerra is dead. Kino, Open Movie > Editor, and the others ones, will no doubt steal its crown, and in > fairly short order. It's the slow dinosaurs versus the agile mammals. I must strongly disagree here. It seems to me like you and a few others are not looking to improve or even fix Cinelerra, but rather start a new project using the Cinelerra name. The fact is that the closest contender to Cinelerra in open source video editing is Blender's video sequencer... and that's only going to get as much development attention as Blender users need to create their animations. Any other editing package is 1-2 *years* behind Cinelerra, despite its imperfections. Neither Kino nor OME (as far as I can tell) have any desire to match Cinelerra's level of functionality, let alone exceed it. Kdenlive and Pitivi may have aspirations, but again... still behind. It may be held together with bubblegum and binder's twine, but even in that state, no other OSS video editor that I know of comes close in terms of functionality or supported formats (codecs and color spaces). Stability is another question altogether, but to be honest, Cinelerra doesn't blow up on me all that often. Now... that said, I'll freely admit that Cinelerra could probably use some more love under the hood. The best solution, however, is not likely to be a rewrite. A refactoring of subsystems is a better option. Granted, it's a non-trivial task, but in the long run it's likely to be more manageable and development doesn't stagnate in the meantime. Otherwise, while whatever new incarnation of Cinelerra (PseudoCin?) spends years trying to get back to Cinelerra's current level of functionality, open source video editing will have virtually nothing (outside of what we have today). Granted, I don't do nearly as much software development as many other people on this list, so I suppose my two cents should be taken with a grain of salt (forgive the mixed metaphor), but I'm hoping that the experiences that I've had and observed (which inform this post) can hopefully lend some weight to my words. Cinelerra is a good tool. It could be better, but I wouldn't recommend throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. -Fweeb _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list Cinelerra@skolelinux.no https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
