Video editor questions

[advice1010]

MX 23.5 XFCE

For a while now I have read/heard many people mentioning how video editing is not that good in Linux.
I would imagine most applications can do basic editing, so it probably more just depends on what these users are looking to achieve and if they are trying to use for more professional purposes.

-For now lets exclude Divinci Resolve from the conversation.
-Also I guess for now excluding Olive from the conversation as well because website says will return but project seems to have been inactive for a while now.

That being said, apparently most of the more well known video editors in Linux are built on an application/framework called "MLT".
Only one I am not sure of is Blender which is said to have video editing, but not sure what it uses for video?
Will also mention "ffmpeg" in question below.

So because most video editors are based on MLT, that means that any limitations that it has, will then be a limitation in the applications that uses it. Which leads me to the following question.

QUESTIONS
1.) The only limitation that I have ever read/heard people mentioning about MLT, is something like that it does not support GPU Acceleration.
I was wondering other then this limitiation, does anyone know of any other "major" limitations that MLT currently has, that would cause people to not be as happy with it, or is GPU Acceleration the main reason?
(Have seen mentioned that Olive supports this because it is not based on MLT)

2.) Not important but, before looking into this a while back I assumed more applications would be based off of "ffmpeg" but non of the more well known video editors are.
I do not know a lot about ffmpeg or MLT, but was just surprised.
Is there any reason for this or is it just the MLT was more equipped for video editing applications then ffmpeg is/was?

Thank you to anyone who reads this.

[AVLinux]

Hi,

Actually ffmpeg is used in a lot of commercial Video editors and programs too, as an example I use Topaz Labs Video VEAI (on my Windows partition) and it uses ffmpeg as well. Ffmpeg is like a commandline swiss army knife but in order for average folks to use all of it's capabilities it needs some kind of GUI although if you know it's commands it can be very powerful just from a terminal. I think MLT comes somewhere in-between the actual Video Editor GUI and ffmpeg to extend ffmpeg to behave in enhanced ways that better suit the things a Video Editor must do. In my experience the best Linux Video Editors are Cinelerra-GG and Kdenlive, Kdenlive uses both ffmpeg and MLT and Cinelerra uses ffmpeg. Some weak areas for ffmpeg are that for Pro Video results it doesn't handle deinterlacing, sharpening and denoising very well because the filters it employs for these things aren't very specialized. Another weak point of ffmpeg is that it only cuts on keyframes so it can't cut frame-accurately which isn't as big a deal as it sounds like. The truth is if you're working with high definition clean footage from modern cameras and smartphones then something like Kdenlive is more than up to the task, I use it for footage that doesn't need fixing or restoration. If you are converting old SD footage like home movies or your DVD collection then you likely will want better restoration tools like temporal and spatial denoising, precision framerate conversion (ie 60 or 30 fps to 24 fps) and better quality deinterlacing and this is where tools like ffmpeg and MLT come up a bit short, otherwise for normal editing with good sources Linux is now as good as any other platform.

[CharlesV]

+1 on Kdenlive !

[dolphin_oracle]

my wife even uses kdenlive on windows! I love it.

[AVLinux]

my wife even uses kdenlive on windows! I love it.

Agreed! I have it installed on both my Linux and Windows partitions and I see no difference in performance or capabilities. Kdenlive is often now mentioned in the top lists of free Video Editors for Windows!

[m_pav]

I too give a +1 for kdenlive, though I have ventured onto OpenShot which has come a long way since my first try in 2017-2018.

I work with an ex-broadcast professional from time to time and he has pointed out the faults he finds with Open Source Video Editors. He liked the way KdenLive was presented, but the means to achieve things he could do with a few mouse clicks on his commercial software took a heap of hunting down to find. That included the help file which was of limited assistance, but having to go to youtube videos while presenters waffled on about rubbish was painful, but then again, the version was different and so were the controls. He did find them and produced a video, then came back to me with the following.

The workflow was usable, but a bit of a mission to wade through and some things could be done better, partially some missing elements he enjoys on his Windows based app, but predominantly the need to re-encode everything in the final production step when a mp4 source was simply cut up and reassembled. This is a thing he is not used to with his commercial broadcast SW, the render process for an 30 minute 4k production can be done in less than a few minutes becasue it's only reassembling the mp4 cuts, not re-encoding them. He said adding credits was simply not going to happen as the tools were beyond inadequate.

He could see its usefulness for plebs producing home videos, but there's no place for it in broadcast production. He said paying $4-5K every other year was worth it for the ease of doing things like decent effects, textual overlays and the likes than have to wait for every video to render and producing ever-diminishing quality if something needed to be re-edited after the fact when the source files were no longer available.

[oops]

... I actually use Openshot occasionally, and the Mystic as tool ... but i think I have to switch for Shotcut or Cinelerra-GG or Kdenlive too .

Mystic supports:
- VDPAU (Hardware acceleration for decoding/encoding)
- Vulkan (GPU acceleration for effects and compositing)
It does not natively support VA-API.

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╭─ Bot
Certainly! Here's the comparison of video editors supporting VA-API, VDPAU, and Vulkan in English:

### Kdenlive
Kdenlive supports:
- VDPAU (Hardware acceleration for decoding/encoding)
- Vulkan (GPU acceleration for effects and compositing)
It does not natively support VA-API.

### OpenShot
OpenShot supports:
- VDPAU (for certain codecs)
- No native support for Vulkan
It does not directly support VA-API.

### DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve supports:
- VDPAU
- Vulkan (for effects and compositing)
- VA-API (for decoding and encoding)

### VSDC Free Video Editor
VSDC supports:
- VDPAU (for certain codecs)
- No native support for Vulkan or VA-API

### Shotcut
Shotcut supports:
- VDPAU
- Vulkan (for effects and compositing)
- VA-API (for decoding and encoding)

### Cinelerra-GG
Cinelerra-GG supports:
- VDPAU (Hardware acceleration for decoding/encoding)
- Vulkan (GPU acceleration for effects and compositing)
- VA-API (for decoding and encoding)


### Conclusion
Among these options, **DaVinci Resolve**, **Shotcut**, and **Kdenlive** offer the best support for VA-API, VDPAU, and Vulkan. They allow for better
 utilization of hardware acceleration, which can significantly improve performance, especially for intensive video projects.
 
 Cinelerra-GG stands out as one of the most comprehensive open-source video editors in terms of hardware acceleration support. Its inclusion of VDPAU,
 Vulkan, and native VA-API support makes it highly competitive with commercial offerings like DaVinci Resolve.

- **DaVinci Resolve** offers the best overall support with VA-API, VDPAU, and Vulkan.
- **Shotcut** is an excellent open-source option with good support for all these protocols.
- **Kdenlive** is also a good open-source choice, but with less support for VA-API.

If you prefer an open-source editor, **Shotcut** would likely be your best option as it offers a good balance between advanced features and hardware
 support.

If you're open to proprietary solutions, **DaVinci Resolve** could be an excellent choice, particularly for professional or semi-professional projects.

Remember that hardware support may vary depending on your specific hardware configuration. It's always useful to test these editors with your equipment to
 see which ones work best in your environment.

[AVLinux]

Indeed,

At a casual glance even Davinci Resolve just seems marginally better than Kdenlive but when you need the types of things that your broadcast pro is talking about + the infinitely better color grading, effects and restoration tools it is not a fully Pro option. As far as smart-rendering Avidemux can 'append' several clips together and ffmpeg can also concatenate clips without re-rendering. One thing that annoys me about Kdenlive is they just throw every open source filter and LADSPA plugin in there without any regard for how good they are and there are several duplicates. They should weed out the chaff and put like 20-25 of the best open source filters in there clearly named for what they do and also forget about ancient deprecated LADSPA support and implement an actual modern and useful Audio Plugin standard like LV2 or even better VST3 for Audio.. Even Cinelerra-GG adopted LV2 but sadly it's main developer was killed in a bicycle accident and it was never fully completed to support very many LV2's

[oops]

.. Even Cinelerra-GG adopted LV2 but sadly it's main developer was killed in a bicycle accident and it was never fully completed to support very many LV2's

... sad kind of news.
I forgotten to say, I also have Videomass among tools like Mystic.
API Differences:
- Videomass uses CUDA, which is NVIDIA-specific (but in Windows only). While FFmpeg doesn't have native CUDA support, it can still benefit from GPU acceleration through plugins like NVDEC.

- Mystic uses VDPAU and Vulkan, which are more general-purpose APIs.

Code: Select all

Best Practice:
Consider using a combination of these technologies based on your specific needs. For example, you could use CUDA for video processing on NVIDIA GPUs while
 leveraging Vulkan for more general-purpose GPU computing tasks across different hardware platforms.

Remember to always test performance with your specific workload and hardware configuration, as the best choice can vary depending on these factors.Based on
 the search results and my knowledge, here's a comparison of CUDA, VDPAU, VA-API, and Vulkan GPU acceleration technologies:

### CUDA

Pros:
- Optimized for NVIDIA GPUs
- Excellent performance for video processing and deep learning tasks
- Widely used in professional video editing software

Cons:
- Limited to NVIDIA GPUs only
- Can be resource-intensive for certain tasks

### VDPAU

Pros:
- Good for video decoding and playback
- Hardware-accelerated video processing
- Supports a wide range of codecs

Cons:
- Primarily focused on video decoding
- Less flexible than other options for general-purpose computing

### VA-API

Pros:
- Open-source and royalty-free
- Good performance for video decoding
- Supports a variety of codecs

Cons:
- Less widespread adoption than CUDA or Vulkan
- May have limited support on some platforms

### Vulkan

Pros:
- Low overhead, high performance
- Cross-platform support
- Flexible for various graphics and compute tasks

Cons:
- Steeper learning curve for developers
- May require more manual optimization

### Recommendation

The best choice depends on your specific use case, hardware, and requirements.