Video editors
____Basic____
Pitivi
available from repo or as a "flatpak" from
pitivi.org
if the install fails with "Error resolving 'sdk.gnome.org': Name or service not known", try to backup the file /etc/resolv.conf and then edit that file so that "nameserver" equals 8.8.8.8
to enable mp4 decoding/encoding, you need some gstreamer codecs that are not dependencies..
Flowblade
another non-linear video editor, and it looks good and works well
github.com/jliljebl/flowblade/
Download the binary archive (.deb) from "Releases" and install it with
(hit Tab to complete package name)
then sort out dependencies with:
Openshot
available as an AppImage from
openshot.org
Shotcut
(with its not so well inspired name).... available from
shotcut.org
there's also Kino - perhaps the most basic of all editors, and Lives with its disastrous UI, but they don't score very well with me.
____Intermediate____
Kdenlive
the non-linear video editor from KDE (hence its name.. KDE-n-li-v-e) that is both powerful and easy to use. It's also well supported online.
I give some tips on it on my page,
Kdenlive and HD video.
If you're not too concerned about getting the latest codecs, you can use this install line - and if you run Debian testing then kdenlive should be quite up to date.
Note: since Debian 8 (Jessie), kdenlive depends on libav-tools - no longer ffmpeg.
For the latest release, see my
kdenlive page for info on installing the Appimage or from source.
VLMC
from
videolan.org (but it looks way difficult to install as vlc is needed first from git source with masses of libs that don't want to install!!)
____Semi-Advanced____
Blender
a 3D animation tool that ships with a built-in video sequencer, and with professional looks and features...
available in the Debian repo or downloaded from
blender.org/..
one of its major flaws (presently) is it can't render utilising full CPU power, it renders single-thread, split between cpu cores.
See my
Blender page for my tips and links to tutorials
____Advanced____
Cinelerra GG
A video editor for Linux that is perhaps without rival. The maintained community version is GG.
See the Cinelerra-GG site here...
www.cinelerra-gg.org
Cinelerra is no longer maintained for the debian repo, but it is available from the elive repo as a .deb archive.
However, the recommended version to run is the AppImage. The deb version actually crashed with me during renders. (2022)
The AppImage is easy to run, especialy if you rename it to "Cinelerra.AppImage" and make an OB menu entry.
Make it executable first, then launch it with ./Cinelerra.AppImage
See my tips and links to some tutorials on my Cinelerra page...
And see how all these video editors scored with me after some vigorous testing I did in 2017 ......on my
video editor review/score sheet
Lumiera
http://lumiera.org/index.html
The future of Linux video editing? Born out of Cinelerra but only a demo (non-functioning) version has been released to date.
Latest ffmpeg
You can either
1. follow the
ffmpeg build guide (includes building libx264 libx265 libfdk-aac libmp3lame libopus libvpx)
or
2. build only ffmpeg and install others from repositories.
For no.2 option, download an ffmpeg stable release from
download.html#releases
next get the build dependencies:
Then open a terminal in the ffmpeg dir, and run ./configure with the compilation flags (taken from the ffmpeg guide) :
followed by
Video/audio encoders
Handbrake
get it from the repo's - the venerable, quality video encoder
Losslesscut
A really great video cutter tool. Since this came along I had no need of the old Avidemux. See my
Losslesscut page in tutorials.
Get it here
github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
and make sure you have libfuse2 installed.
Audio editors
that's a quality sound recorder and audio editor. To record with ardour you'll need to open a line with Jack
Media players
that's a great video player that can handle all you need, and a winamp-style music player.
Audacious Qt
download the latest stable from
http://audacious-media-player.org/download
get the dependencies
unpack the player, and run
or you can have both qt/gtk if you like
then,
with the plugins, just
./configure, make, sudo make install
Media rippers
for audio CD
The CLI way, using cdparanoia to rip the audio cd and lame or oggenc (vorbis-tools) to encode -see
linux-ripping-and-encoding-audio-files
Bashburn is straight forward, it uses cdparanoia to rip wav files, converts ogg or mp3 (although adding track info might be tedious).
Abcde is much simpler to use (just hit the command `abcde` after you've made a conf file for the type of rip you want to do - see
this guide).
GUI ripping: there's K3b, which is big and clumsy, sound juicer (need gvfs-backends) or asunder, which rip and convert on the fly, without first making error-reduced wav files.
Others: rubyripper, ripperx, and grip which you have to build from source (download
sourceforge.net)
lame is needed for mp3 encoding.
for movie DVD
with the deb-multimedia repo, you can..
otherwise you need to look for packages elsewhere.
get libdvdcss from
pkgs.org/download/libdvdcss2
k9copy and dvdrip are both graphical, and you can select which title to rip (but again, there's KDE libraries to install).
dvdbackup is command-line, and it rips the DVD to hdd in its entirety.
With
libdvdcss2 installed you can play and possibly rip a DVD encrypted with CSS (Content Scramble System), e.g. it enables Handbrake to rip encrypted dvd titles to mp4, but there is still other encrypion it can't deal with.
To rip with dvdbackup, cd to the dir to store the dvd and run
dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o movie
furiusisomount and acetoneiso are two other useful apps.
Next page:
Step3 - desktop apps