[Discuss] Any decent video editors?

[jabr at blu.org (John Abreau)]

To get the performance of my backend server in a Mac or Windows machine,
I'd have to spend a boatload of money. I have a Supermicro server with 4
hexacore Xeon CPUs (24 cores), 64gb RM, and a pair of 8TB hard drives
configured for RAID-1. I purchased the server on ebay for $150 a few years
ago, and the pair of hard drives from Amazon. I don't recall offhand how
much I had for the drive pair.

I just priced out a Mac Pro on Apple's website, upgraded to those specs,
and the quoted cost is $15,399.00. That's with a single 8TB SSD drive; the
web page won't allow me to choose a second drive, or to choose spinning
rust instead of SSD. The video editing software is also an extra cost.


On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 4:31?AM Daniel C. <dcrookston at gmail.com> wrote:

> At some point wouldn't it be easier to just get a Mac or Windows machine
> and use an Adobe product?
>
> On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 4:03?PM John Abreau <jabr at blu.org> wrote:
>
>> When you have ffmpeg copy instead of transcode, while trying to cut out
>> segments, it has trouble keeping the results in sync.
>>
>> I like pitivi for graphical video editing, but when I edit a 2-hour 1080p
>> video from the raw youtube livestream of an online BLU meeting, it can
>> overload my desktop machine, it can overload the cpu and tie up the
>> machine
>> for hours when rendering the entire video.
>>
>> The workflow I finally settled on was to
>>
>> 1. use ffmpeg to split the video into 2-minute segments;
>> 2. use pitivo to edit just the segment where the first cutpoint is located
>> in and the segment that the second cutpoint is located in;
>> 3. discard all segments before the first edited segment and all segments
>> after the second edited segment;
>> 4. create a title card with Gimp and an audio clip of silence with
>> audacity;
>> 5. use ffmpeg to turn the image and silence into a 10-second video clip;
>> 6. use pitive to combine the title clip and the first edited segment with
>> a
>> 2-second transition in between;
>> 7. use mkvmerge to combine all segments between the two edited segments
>> into one long segment;
>> 8. use ffmpeg to transcode the three parts to the same settings;
>> 9. use mkvmerge to combine the results into the final video file.
>>
>> I run pitivi on my desktop machine, and both ffmpeg and mkvmerge on a
>> headless server with a better cpu than my desktop machine.
>>
>> More detail:
>>
>> 1. use ffmpeg to split the video into 2-minute segments;
>>
>> ffmpeg -i src.mkv -map 0 -c copy -f segment -segment_time 120 \
>>     -reset_timestamps 1 segment.%03d.mkv
>>
>> 2. use pitivo to edit just the segment where the first cutpoint is located
>> in and the segment that the second cutpoint is located in;
>>
>> render as begin.mkv and end.mkv
>>
>> e.g., segment-007.mkv and segment-058.mkv
>>
>> 3. discard all segments before the first edited segment and all segments
>> after the second edited segment;
>>
>> mkdir hold
>> mv segment-00[0-6].mkv hold/
>> mv segment-059.mkv segment-0[6-9][0-9].mkv hold/
>>
>> 4. create a title card with Gimp and an audio clip of silence with
>> audacity;
>>
>> 5. use ffmpeg to turn the image and silence into a 10-second video clip;
>>
>> ffmpeg -loop 1 -i src.png -i silence.wav -c:v libx264 -c:a aac \
>>     -strict experimental -b:a 192k -shortest -pix_fmt yuv420p
>> titlecard.mkv
>>
>> 6. use pitivi to combine the title clip and the first edited segment with
>> a
>> 2-second transition in between;
>>
>> render as begin-with-titlecard.mkv
>>
>> 7. use mkvmerge to combine all segments between the two edited segments
>> into one long segment;
>>
>> mkvmerge -o middle.mkv segment-008.mkv +segment-009.mkv \
>>     +segment-0[1-4][0-9].mkv +segment-05[0-7].mkv
>>
>> 8. use ffmpeg to transcode the three parts to the same settings;
>>
>> begin-with-titlecard.mkv => begin-with-titlecard-edited.mkv
>> middle.mkv => middle-edited.mkv
>> end.mkv => end-edited.mkv
>>
>> ffmpeg -i <part>.mkv  -acodec ac3 -vcodec libx264 -ab 256k
>> <part>-edited.mkv
>>
>> 9. use mkvmerge to combine the results into the final video file.
>>
>> mkvmerge -o final.mkv begin-with-titlecard-edited.mkv \
>>     +middle-edited.mkv +end-edited.mkv
>>
>> The original source has audio at 44100 Hz, and pitivi by default renders
>> audio at 48000 Hz. So I edit the project settings to have it do 44100 Hz.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 4:45?PM Daniel Barrett <dbarrett at blazemonger.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > I've just tried 3 different Linux video editors to accomplish a simple
>> > task, removing a few segments from an MP4 file. All three programs
>> > failed spectacularly. Any recommendations for a reliable program?
>> >
>> > First I tried losslesscut. The UI let me create clips, but when they
>> > were rendered, they were mispositioned by several seconds. Apparently
>> > the program cuts only at "keyframes" and not where you actually
>> > request the cut.
>> >
>> > So then I tried vidcutter. The UI let me specify exactly the cuts I
>> > wanted. But I could not export the results to a video file. The save
>> > operation simply didn't do anything. It claimed "FILE SAVED" but no
>> > output file was present anywhere on disk. I tried quitting &
>> > restarting vidcutter, and then it refused to read the project file it
>> > had written, claiming the file had a syntax error.
>> >
>> > So then I tried kdenlive. The UI again let me specify exactly the cuts
>> > I wanted. Then kdenlive crashed. I restarted, reloaded the video,
>> > tested it, and exported the clips to an MP4 file. After waiting 23
>> > minutes for the export to complete, the process halted with 15 seconds
>> > left to render. No error. The resulting video file contained 46
>> > minutes of random pixels.
>> >
>> > Finally, I tried just plain ffmpeg to extract the clips I wanted:
>> >
>> >   ffmpeg -i VIDEO.mp4 -ss $1 -to $2 -c:v copy -c:a copy clip.mp4
>> >
>> > Some of the resulting clips had the audio & video out of sync.
>> >
>> > Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you.
>> > Dan
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Discuss mailing list
>> > Discuss at lists.blu.org
>> > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
>> Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0x920063C6
>> PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Discuss at lists.blu.org
>> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>

-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0x920063C6
PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6