(Hardware) Suggestions for video editing on a budget?

[vtpup]

Thanks Mike, I'll have to download it tomorrow after the ISP's scheduled technician gets here. We're having frequent Internet dropouts, so downloads get interrupted.

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

As far as the 2-series Openshots go, JT (Johnathon Thomas, the project founder) has been using the AppImage format ever since 1.4.3 became 2.01. And they never have worked in Puppy. Not surprising, if you strip one down & examine it; JT's stuck binaries, deps, Python, QT5, the works, all into /usr/bin. It looks an absolute mess, it really does; frankly, I'm amazed it works at all.

Rainer (taersh), during the brief spell when he was pretending to be O.F.I.N.S.I.S over on the old forum, put together an SFS that combined both the Openshot 2.4.1 AND KDEnlive 17.12.3 AppImages, stripped-down & re-built as an SFS instead. I don't know how he DID it, but both work fully under Bionicpup64. I used it as the basis of a second, dedicated Bionic save-folder.....and built myself "MediaPup", a specialised, multimedia Puppy, making use of many of the large number of AppImages/portables I've garnered over the years.

Perhaps drop taersh a PM, and see if he's still got it? Or, failing that, I can upload my own copy of it (if you want to give it a try).

I'd back-up Bionic first before trying it, just to be on the safe side. I know it loads & runs perfectly in a pristine, clean Bionic, but I never did try it in a loaded, fully setup & already working Bionic64.....


Mike.

[taersh]

Perhaps drop taersh a PM, and see if he's still got it? Or, failing that, I can upload my own copy of it (if you want to give it a try).

No, I don't got this combined .sfs anymore - at least I couldn't find it anymore on my drives.
Once I split them, so I have both existing each in its own .sfs.

However: I could upload both to my Google drive account, if wanted...

[vtpup]

@vtpup :-
I used it as the basis of a second, dedicated Bionic save-folder.....and built myself "MediaPup", a specialised, multimedia Puppy, making use of many of the large number of AppImages/portables I've garnered over the years.
Mike.

Hahaha! Great minds think alike. This was my contribution 11 years ago:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37602


One of the major focii there was in DVD authoring.

I was just thinking how long that was ago. But I guess MediaPup would still work well in an older system. Maybe it's still of use?

[vtpup]

taersh, uploading those would be much appreciated!

(mike, sounds unfortunate about openshot's own appimages.)

Internet downloading is still iffy for me today -- ISP service person coming tomorrow -- but if taersh you do upload today, I'll give it a try!

[taersh]

Uploaded 4 (5) video editing applications for BionicPup64 to my Google drive.

AviDemux
KdenLive 17.xx
KdenLive 18.xx
Kino
Openshot 2.41

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Edit:

Openshot on my Google drive now updated.

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

Just so's you know, if you do as I did and try Rainer's Openshot SFS package in a 'clean' Bionic64 to begin with, you'll find there's a few things missing; it won't start.

What I've done is to re-build the SFS, adding the missing bits from the combined Openshot/KDEnlive package Rainer says he can no longer find. I still have it, 'cos like I said it's the basis round which I built the 'MediaPup' Bionic save-folder.

If you want to try it, you can find it here:-

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pHxZ_s ... sp=sharing

Let me know if it works for you, please!


Mike.

[taersh]

it won't start

Hmm, probably must be some python stuff which I had included into my base .sfs.

I may download the working version and replacing the one on my Google drive by that working version.

[mikewalsh]

@ Rainer:-

Yep, it WAS Python 'stuff'.....specifically, a few missing items from the /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages directory. Didn't take much importing of items; only 4 or 5, I think, and she fired right up.

Thanks for that, anyway. Cheers.


Mike.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh

I downloaded and installed the openshot sfs and it started right away! Openshot is working smoothly and so far as I can tell until I really dig into some editing, has all the components working as expected. Good stuff Mike! Thanks!

Bionic64-CE (woof-CE built) and heavily modified.

[mikewalsh]

@mikewalsh

I downloaded and installed the openshot sfs and it started right away! Openshot is working smoothly and so far as I can tell until I really dig into some editing, has all the components working as expected. Good stuff Mike! Thanks!

Bionic64-CE (woof-CE built) and heavily modified.

Mike.

[taersh]

Openshot on my Google drive now updated.

[vtpup]

Thanks guys, I ran into the same problem last night with a clean Bionic64 pfix=ram and gave up on it, but reading this exchange today, will try again. Fingers crossed!

[rockedge]

now that OpenShot is running, I was wondering what happened to the zoom effect. It seems some of the video effect choices are missing compared to version 1.4.3. Is there way to add them? Or were they removed by the developers?

[vtpup]

Thanks taersh and mikewalsh again for getting Openshot to work. I had a little difficulty in my working BionicPup64 running it -- segmentation fault!!?? . Maybe it's because I have a later kernel compiled by ozsouth. No problem, I booted vanilla PionicPup64 from CD w/ pfix=ram and voila, it opened.

So I tried adding a 15 minute video piece I'd done before in Openshot 1.4.3 on Tahr32.

Unfortunately I saw a little jitter and jump in the monitor when simply playing back that video, even with a reduced size view window, which says to me that the program isn't very efficient, needs more powerful hardware than I have to run smoothly for even a basic operation. So it's unfortunately out of the running.

Just to check, by comparison, before leaving the clean BP64, I loaded Cinnelera, cin_5.1.ub18.04-20200831_amd64 and that ran the same video beautifully -- even expanded to fill nearly the full screen or zoomed, and with thumbnail icons in the timeline. It's a heck of a lot faster and more responsive than Openshot on this machine.

Kdenlive also had no problem with smooth playback on the same file. So I'm giving up on 2.+ Openshots considering the faulty appimage, segmentation fault on working install, and jittery video in clean puppy, at least on my computer. They don't like each other!

The other 64 bit editors work well, so far, so, those are the choices for me.

[taersh]

Maybe it's because I have a later kernel compiled by ozsouth.

I've also tried some later kernels compiled by different users.
Some of them had real time capacity, some doesn't. All of them gave some problems here and there.
The only exception is the real time kernels compiled by Iowt3ch.

So, I switched to use the 64bit real time kernels from, Iowt3ch's Puppy Studio 13.37 in all my Puppies.
Even in the 32bit versions. All working very well!

It's either the 4.19.15-rt2 or the 5.0.21-rt15 kernels. I could upload as well.

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

You might like to take a look at Shotcut and/or Flowblade. Flowblade is available via the PPM in Bionic; Shotcut is available from their official download page, here:-

https://www.shotcut.org/download/

...as either an AppImage - which works perfectly, BTW, although it seems to take forever to unpack into /tmp - or as a 'portable tar'.....which I haven't tried, so can't comment on that one, I'm afraid. (EDIT:-) Correction, I have. It's a .txz package; would probably install directly into any Slackware-based distro, given that it's their standard package format. If you extract it, you get a directory named "Shotcut". You can put this anywhere you like; when you click to open, there's two items. 'Shotcut.app' & 'shotcut.desktop'. No matter where you stick it, clicking on the .desktop file will fire it up. So you've got two choices there; AppImage or portable directory.

You've also got this same 'portable directory' option with the current release of Blender, too.....recently upgraded to 2.9.0. In fact, for the last several releases this appears to be the sole download option for Linux Blender fans, though it isn't an issue. Just click to enter the directory, and click on the 'blender' executable. Fires up straight away.

Blender isn't everyone's cup of tea; it's mainly about animation, though it's got a pretty decent video-editor built-in. Along with a rather steep 'learning curve'...

https://www.blender.org/download/

(Before I forget, if you want a decent video trimmer, take a look at LosslessCut. It's an Electron app, meaning it's built around a 'stripped-back', minimal Chromium browser.....but it's a fantastically easy-to-use GUI app that leverages the full power of ffmpeg, without needing to know how to correctly use the multitude of available command-line options & 'switches'. v3.28.3 can be found here, and again, this fires straight up in Bionicpup64. You will need to put together a wee start wrapper, since it needs the "--no-sandbox" switch to run for us here in Puppy.

https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases )

There's plenty of choice available, old son. Anyone who tells you Linux is lacking in applications is talking out of their a**e..!!

More for ya to play with.....


Mike.

[vtpup]

Thanks guys!

Taersh, I'll keep those alternate kernels in mind. I believe I loaded the alternate kernel I use for some specific usage but can't remember offhand. I'll have to check back in the old forum.

MikeWalsh, that's great. I'll try shotcut and flowblade in a day or two. I'm starting to work in earnest on a new video now.

Cinellerra has been dropped now during the new video project and test rendering. I had some playback problems and I also found the interface personally hard to work with quickly, probably because I was used to Openshot 1.4.3 in Tahrpup32. It's not as "clip oriented" -- more frame and timeline centric -- I don't know better how to explain that. I do think it's pretty to look at, but buttons sliders and actions are too stylized to be intuitive for me. Tons of menus and choices and icons. If you're familiar with it, I'm sure it's efficient to work with, but I find it requires a lot of re-learning with how things work, just as a GUI.

I then went to Kdenlive which is much more like Openshot in it's clip orientation. It seems to be working very well for me so far, with a minimum of re-learning. My first objection to it earlier was mainly due to maybe forty tiny unfamiliar icons scattered all over the interface.

But I found the setting where this icon set had specifically been enabled. Un-enabling it simplified the interface and put a few big familiar playback and transport icons in their place. MUCH easier for me to see and work with. I suppose if you have a giant LCD screen and a desktop, and the time to learn them, those mosquito scratch icons might be usable, but not on a 16-1/2" laptop screen.

I've progressed quickly on my new video in Kdenlive, with no hiccups so far, and actually, I like the graphic slider method of adding transitions and effects to clips better than Openshot 1.4.3's text entry method. In short, I'm liking Kdenlive!

[taersh]

In short, I'm liking Kdenlive!

Yes, it's the best video editor in the GNU/Linux world.
I'm using it from the first day I was able to get it running and working in Puppy.
That was around the time of the Lucid Puppies - when I made my first "LazY Puppy" in 2012.

[vtpup]

Yes and if you install Breeze from the BionicPup/Ubuntu repository, it can look "modern".

I did run into a problem -- there's a Kdenlive Style that blacks out the settings menu (called "bb10dark"), so then you're stabbing in the dark to try to get the former default theme back, I accidentally then hit something that removed the settings toolbar altogether. Completely dead in the water. What a mess!

Taking some online advice about someone else who experienced exactly the same problem, I deleted /root/.config/kdenlive.rc (I think that was the recommended file) to restore default settings. Unfortunately that seemed to cause every subsequent attempt to start Kdenlive to error out with a complaint that the MLT version available was 6.6 and it wanted 6.10.

So, then, I thought okay let's start from scratch and opened Puppy boot manager and removed the kdenlive/VLC sfs altogether. Re-booted. Added the sfs back again. Guess what? Same error message. What the....?

Finally gave up and just went with an earlier version I found in the Puppy Package manager. That worked, so I think I'm at 17.xxx instead of 18.

Anyway I was back in business and all my earlier settings were retained, oddly enough, except the weirdo "dark" theme, and the MLT version error messages. All my work was saved also, so it was just an unfortunate adventure.

WARNING: Don't ever choose the Kdenlive "bb10dark" style! it's a true rabbit hole.

I worked on a video project in Kdenlive today for ten hours, and my eyes are completely bugged out!

[taersh]

There's a lot of the Breeze stuff.
What exactly did you download?

[vtpup]

BionicPup64 Puppy Package Manager:
Breeze 5.12.8

btw. the "bb10dark" style "gotcha" exists whether you add Breeze or not. And not just for Puppy users. Ubuntu, too.

[bark-woof-fetch]

apologies if already mentioned but depending on source footage and desired final render quality you may find proxy editing useful. A lower rez and bitrate copy is encoded for editing purpose only, to relieve timeline previews.
At project end the low rez are files are then swapped out for the real thing and exported at the same quality (or lower if you like).

Kdenlive can do it automatically, others probably as well, you could also do a handheld ffmpeg run yourself I guess as long as fps are kept unchanged.

This has worked fine for me on a i5 2450M albeit with 12gb RAM.

Interesting with the CPU upgrade btw, never considered that nor checked prizes until now. May keep the old clunker running another decade

[vtpup]

Thanks BWF, that's very interesting and helpful -- especially getting started here like this! I'll try it

taersh and others:

re. the dark style problem. I've corrected earlier posts and just want to clarify here the problem is in a Kdenlive style , not a theme I tried all of the Breeze themes (including the dark theme) and the other styles and they all work fine. Breeze dark theme looks very nice.

The one problematic style is called bb10dark. Don't try that one. Unless you like all black menus, including the settings menu itself, with all black text. Caveat emptor.