Comment by nickjj

Comment by nickjj 3 days ago

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I still want to switch, have been trying for like 8 years. Not yet unfortunately.

Video editing is still pretty sub-par on Linux compared to Windows.

DaVinci Resolve technically works on Linux and it's an amazing piece of software that I'd love to use but on Linux there's no h264 support unless you pay $300. Ok no problem, I'd do that except the studio version doesn't support AAC for audio on Linux.

If you want to record from OBS, you have to re-encode the video for Resolve and then after rendering your video with Resolve you have to re-encode it again with another tool for h264 / AAC. That means you have to record + render + edit + render + render instead of just record + edit + render. A huge time sink and waste of drive space.

Kdenlive is there but its text editing capabilities are really lack luster. If you want to do things like create a text call out with a rectangle behind it and have your text styled up where different words are colored up differently or you want to underline a word or 2 you have to spend 10 minutes fighting its text UI, duplicating layers, fiddling with z-indexes and if you decide to change your text later, you have to re-do everything. That or you have to use an external tool like GIMP but that breaks you out of the flow and takes a lot more time.

On Windows, there's Camtasia. It "just works" and you can make text call outs described above in seconds.

Until I can easily create text call outs in videos on Linux (something I do a few times a week) I will use Windows 10 + WSL 2.

Katharsas 3 days ago

I highly recommend you give Shotcut a chance. I am a total beginner with video editing but unlike kdenlive (sorry, still a cool project) it gave me much bigger "professional product" vibes.

IMO it is more polished, built-in effects are better, runs stable on Windows for me (so you can try it anytime before switching to Linux) and it looks nice.

I was editing video gameplay footage with kdenlive some time ago (on Windows) and it was indeed very hard (and also crashed a bunch). In fact i think i switched when i also wanted to overlay text in a certain way (a timer in my case) which seemed to be impossible to make look halfway decent.

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  • nickjj 2 days ago

    Thanks for the suggestion and reminder! I remember trying Shotcut many years ago and it was worse (IMO) than Kdenline at the time.

    The good news is I gave it a quick spin just now and it has come a -really- long ways since then. Within 10 minutes I had an ok workflow for doing cuts / ripple deletes. You can add text with individually colored words and styles, add a background shape behind the text and also add effects like drop shadows, glows and other things. All done graphically in the video preview.

    It's no where near as intuitive as Camtasia but I think it's very usable and over time I'm sure I'll get used to its features.

    I just hope it's stable, I'll edit a couple of videos and see how it goes.

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combatentropy 3 days ago

Have you tried Lightworks? https://lwks.com/

It dates back to the 1990s and has used in Hollywood movies, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightworks

There is a free version to try out with limited features, then subscriptions and also options to pay just once ($200 or $420).

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  • nickjj 2 days ago

    Not in a long time but their pricing page says a bunch of paid features don't work on Linux such as advanced titles and other enhanced effects.

    I don't know if that will apply to me since their site doesn't explain what they are in detail but it already rubs me the wrong way that they classify themselves as cross OS compatible, but a bunch of stuff doesn't work on Linux.

    I would essentially be paying $200 just to export to 1080p since the free version is limited to 720p. Except I'd likely need the $420 version since the pricing page says you can't adjust the h264 bit-rate option without the pro version. I could maybe justify the cost if the paid features worked on Linux but the ones that sound interesting and related to me (title editing, effects, etc.) do not.

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no-stegosaur 2 days ago

Have you looked at the video editor in Blender? I'm not much into video editing, but Blender as a whole is very solid, supports H.264 and AAC as far as I can see.

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  • nickjj 2 days ago

    Yep, it's not really aimed at this style of video editing.

    Blender is amazingly designed and robust but it's really optimized for 3D design, not editing screencasts.

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    • cweagans 2 days ago

      Have you looked at the new stuff in Blender 5? I've never used it for video editing, but the release notes claim that they did a bunch of stuff with the sequencer in 5.0. https://www.blender.org/download/releases/5-0/#vse

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      • nickjj 2 days ago

        I have quite some time ago.

        I tried 5 just now and while it looks familiar to a standard video editor it's missing a lot of features Camtasia and other video editors mentioned here have.

        It also feels like using a spaceship when all I want to do is walk around the block. I like learning new things but to me, efficiency for the things I do a lot wins in the end. I'm sure I can design anything I could ever imagine in Blender but if I need to do a lot of complicated workflows for really basic things every time, all of that gets thrown out the window.

        My goto things in a video editor is cutting, ripple delete, adding text callouts with minor effects, highlighting certain areas, zooming into certain areas and wanting to quickly take my original OBS source and render an mp4. Ideally it would run well on lower end hardware and also support 2x playback while editing (saves a lot of time).

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prmoustache 2 days ago

What about blender?

Many DAWs are also video editing systems nowadays, I believe Reaper has a decent one.

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