Pitivi issue / general video editing question

[WaltH]

First, a little background. My wife and I write, record, and perform music in our spare time. One of things I'm trying to do is create lyric videos of some of our songs to post on our YouTube channel. I hit upon using Pitivi because it seems to allow me to superimpose lines of text over the top of images and/or video. (I looked briefly at Avidemux, Flowblade, LiVes, Openshot, and Shotcut, but none of them seemed able to do what I want. At least it was not intuitive to me.)

The problem I am running into - both with the version in the MX repos and the Flatpak - is that after a few edits and/or changes to the project, Pitivi locks up, and I can't do anything. I have to resort to xkill to close the application. I realize this isn't necessarily an MX problem, but I'm wondering if anyone else has either had the same problem or has had success doing something along the lines of what I am trying to achieve.

I'm also wondering whether I have enough computing power for what I want to do. I have an Acer Aspire TC-120 with 8gb RAM but integrated graphics. I generally close everything else except Libre Office (which contains the text I'm working from) when I'm editing, but Pitivi still locks up. I didn't find anything on the web that this was a known issue, so I'm wondering if my hardware is the problem. I'm also wondering whether MX is the right distro for what I want to do. I love it, and I don't want to go back to Windows, but I'm open to suggestions. Thanks to everyone in advance.

[towwire]

How about going the the menu and doing a 'Quick System Info'. It is formmated so all you need to do is pasted it here so we can see everything about your system.

[WaltH]

Hopefully, this will tell you everything.

Code: Select all

System:    Host: waltsacer Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: MX-18.3_x64 Continuum March 14  2018 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: Acer model: Aspire TC-120 serial: <filter> 
           BIOS: American Megatrends v: P11-A2 date: 06/24/2014 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: AMD A10-6700 APU with Radeon HD Graphics bits: 64 
           type: MCP arch: Piledriver rev: 1 L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
           flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 29542 
           Speed: 2000 MHz min/max: 1800/3700 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2000 2: 1812 3: 3693 
           4: 3692 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Richland [Radeon HD 8670D] vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: radeon 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:01.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 1600x900~60Hz, 1600x900~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD ARUBA (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.15.0-1-amd64 LLVM 7.0.0) 
           v: 4.3 Mesa 18.2.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD Trinity HDMI Audio vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:01.1 
           Device-2: AMD FCH Azalia vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:14.2 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-1-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: e000 bus ID: 01:00.0 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Lite-On 
           driver: ath9k v: kernel port: e000 bus ID: 03:00.0 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
           Device-3: Lite-On Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 8-2:4 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 2.73 TiB used: 1.55 TiB (56.9%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD10EZEX-21M2NA0 size: 931.51 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WD Elements 25A2 
           size: 1.82 TiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 28.48 GiB used: 11.57 GiB (40.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
           ID-2: /home size: 876.25 GiB used: 751.91 GiB (85.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 12.11 GiB used: 60.3 MiB (0.5%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda6 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 36.5 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 29 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list 
           1: deb http://la.mxrepo.com/antix/stretch/ stretch main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/megasync.list 
           1: deb https://mega.nz/linux/MEGAsync/Debian_9.0/ ./
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ stretch main non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list 
           1: deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list 
           1: deb http://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:      Processes: 227 Uptime: 21d 4h 22m Memory: 7.04 GiB used: 4.39 GiB (62.3%) 
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 6.3.0 Shell: bash v: 4.4.12 inxi: 3.0.36 

Thanks.

[towwire]

You computer should be OK to do what you are doing. My computer has AMD A10-7850K Radeon R7 and I do not have any trouble.

You might try starting the program using the terminal to see if any error codes show there. I never used or tried Pitivi.

I take it you are just using it to added subtitles?

Aother program you might try is Aegisub. I never used it to make them but have used it to edit. Most of my editing is using a plain text editor and LibOffice does not work well.

I understand that Aegisub can make ones that scroll which might good for songs. Don't know the learning curve but if you do a lot of them it maybe worth learning it.

You could make your own with just plain text editor and a video player that shows the timings needed to enter in the file. After it's all done it is easy to add to the video, work most likely take less than a minute.

[WaltH]

You computer should be OK to do what you are doing. My computer has AMD A10-7850K Radeon R7 and I do not have any trouble.

You might try starting the program using the terminal to see if any error codes show there. I never used or tried Pitivi.

I take it you are just using it to added subtitles?

Aother program you might try is Aegisub. I never used it to make them but have used it to edit. Most of my editing is using a plain text editor and LibOffice does not work well.

I understand that Aegisub can make ones that scroll which might good for songs. Don't know the learning curve but if you do a lot of them it maybe worth learning it.

You could make your own with just plain text editor and a video player that shows the timings needed to enter in the file. After it's all done it is easy to add to the video, work most likely take less than a minute.

I'm using still photos (and potentially video clips down the line) and putting text over the top of the images/clips. Pitivi does it easily until it freezes. None of the other video editing applications I looked at seemed to make this easy to do.

I took a look at Aegisub (and do have it installed)> I suspect it might work (I know Avidemux can use it), but it seems like it will add to the length of time required to produce a lyric video because I have to know how long each line of text is meant to be displayed. I'm also not sure if it will allow me to have multiple lines displayed together (e.g., a clip come up with one line of text and, while that line remains displayed, a second line appears). If I could overlap titles (as they're called in most of the video apps I looked at), that would be ideal.

It may be that I end up creating individual "title cards" in GIMP and creating my "video" that way. On the other hand, my wife is using this to justify me buying a new computer. So who knows?

[TTwrs]

If you're willing to give Shotcut another try, you might find this useful...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qilTeu77oQ

There is a lot of help available online for Shotcut. You can easily run the latest version by downloading the AppImage from the website.

Also, LibreOffice might be using a lot of your memory. Geany or a simple text editor might work better if your list is just plain text.

[WaltH]

If you're willing to give Shotcut another try, you might find this useful...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qilTeu77oQ

There is a lot of help available online for Shotcut. You can easily run the latest version by downloading the AppImage from the website.

Also, LibreOffice might be using a lot of your memory. Geany or a simple text editor might work better if your list is just plain text.

I thought about that, but Pitivi did still freeze even with everything else, including LibreOffice, closed. I'll take another look at Shotcut. I'd liked what I saw aside from not being able to do (or figure out how to do) what I want to do.

[marex]

I am doing some video editing. When was looking for appropriate software I went through 10 of them and finally stick to Olive for 2 main reasons:

1. Stability. Although developers call it to be in alpha stage, it is still more stable than Kdenlive which was my private number two.
2. Ease of use. I recommend to start with a couple of video tutorials on YouTube to learn its philosophy.

Ease of use also applies to the text editing which you are looking for.

[wdscharff]

Which version of Olive?
The 2020010-1-mx19+1 from the stable and test repo, the 0.1.2 flatpak from the MXPI or the current Appimage Olive-031c07f5-x86_64. from github? All of them had their annoying quirks, e.g. missing language support, the version that offered German often crashed while rendering, on one of them I could set the export settings as I wanted, the quality was poor.

Pitivi runs without problems here, as well as kdenlive, openshot and shotcut.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[marex]

I am working on version installed from test repo however I needed to tick the option to install all necessary files. Otherwise there was an issue with GUI of the program.

I will compare the quality of the output files and come back to confirm.