Digital video editing on a computer is often difficult. Programs crash, which corrupts the project file so you lose all your work, and things get ugly. I’ve previously done some editing on Microsoft Windows, using cheap software that rarely worked well. That made me think I needed to buy Final Cut Studio and a PowerMac G5 to get any decency out of digital video editing programs. After I decided video editing on the computer wasn’t ready for consumers yet, I started getting into linux and only running linux on my computers. I didn’t really think you could do much with video on linux. I tried using Kino a little but Kino isn’t built for any really serious editing. Then I found Cinelerra. Cinelerra is the 50,000 watt flame thrower of linux video, and it really is 50,000 watts.

Cinelerra has two branches, one developed solely by Heroine Virtual Ltd. (the original creator of Cinelerra) and a community version. I’m going to focus on the community version, because that’s the one that usually has packages compiled for distributions, and the one that you’ll probably end up using.

Cinelerra can seem a bit daunting at first, but it’s really not. The program opens up with 4 windows. On the bottom left, is the main window which contains the timeline and main program menus. If you’ve done any editing before, you’ll know that the timeline is where all the clips are arranged to produce the final product. To the right is the Resources window, which holds all the effects and transitions as well as the media files being used in the project. Above that is the Compositor, which basically shows the output of the timeline, but will also allow you to manipulate video in a graphical way. Finally to the left is the Viewer, which lets you play back your raw files and choose segments to include in your project.

To get started, you’ll need some video files, which you can import from a dv camera with the dvgrab utility. Once you have your raw footage, you’ll need to import it into Cinelerra which can be accomplished via the load files option in the file menu. Now that your footage is imported, it will appear in the Media folder in the Resources window, where you can double click it and it will appear in the Viewer window. To get the footage onto your timeline, enclose the section you want in brackets [ ] by clicking on the appropriate button in the viewer window, and then clicking copy in the viewer window and paste in the Program window. This will copy and paste the section enclosed in the brackets onto the timeline. This is just the basics of importing video to get you started. For more indepth instructions, the Cinelerra wiki has all the information you’ll ever need.

Cinelerra is open source and does have some problems. Sometimes it won’t copy when you click the button, and will paste the previously copied piece of footage. Restarting the program will usually fix most problems. I’ve almost never had cinelerra crash “out of the blue” but if it does, you can click load backup in the file menu when you restart the program and it will load a backup that it saved in case you’re not as diligent a saver as you would like. Cinelerra has some other quirks in the movement of clips around in the timeline, and is also a bit processor intensive as all video editing programs are. Overall though Cinelerra runs very well on my 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 being very stable and usable.

All in all, Cinelerra is excellent and since I’ve never used the big programs like Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier, it is most definitely the best editing program I have ever used. Although linux is mainly a server operating system, it has come a really long way on the desktop and workstation front, and video support is no exception. Cinelerra is a major piece of this video support and is maybe one of the better made software packages.

As seen on Linux Teens

1. Looks really neat. I don’t use Linux, though ^^;

   
   — Daniel Gray    921 days ago    #