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Cinelerra is no longer maintained for the debian repo, but it is available from the elive repo as a .deb archive.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
Image cataloguers/editors
XnView Multi Platform
A very cool image processing program available as a .deb at the forum,
http://newsgroup.xnview.com/...
See my
Xnview Tips page for help using XnView, setup and configuring appearance.
Darktable
offers many good tools for making your shots stand out.
And don't forget
gimp and
inkscape are useful graphics tools to have...
Libre Office
This is the office suite to have if you need document productivity - its by far the best developed in the Open Source world.
You need a Java Runtime Environment for running macros, such as openjdk:
apt install libreoffice from repository, or better, download LibreOffice from
libreoffice.org/download/
To remove an older version (because installing a newer version may leave the previous version in /opt - all 700mb of it)..
where X.X is the release no. of the last version you installed. e.g 6.2
extract from the downloaded tar file and cd to the dir and into the DEBS dir, and then:
If the install fails to make Menu entries you can get by that with a few links in your usr/share/apps dir...
just check the version number and, as root,
Tip: to change the toolbar icons to small, and tango for example, go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View
Next page:
Step3 - media players, media rippers, desktop apps, ClamTK, rootkit hunter