I’m a big fan of the Pitivi video editor. It might not (yet, at least) be the most whizz-bang or feature-filled non-linear editor available on Linux but it is one of the most reliable!

So, naturally, I was expecting to see a new beta release of the open-source editor go live at the weekend.

Pitivi 0.94 is the fourth release based on the new ‘GStreamer Editing Services’ library (GES).

Project member Jean-François Fortin Tam, also known by the handle ‘Nekohayo‘, describes the update on his blog as ”…mainly a maintenance release, but it does pack a few interesting improvements & features in addition to the bug fixes.”

What’s new?

Interesting improvements indeed! The most noticeable change in Pitivi 0.94 is the switch to GNOME’s client-side GTK HeaderBar decoration. HeaderBars unify the window bar, title bar and toolbar into one, saving a huge amount of wasted vertical and horizontal space in the process.

“Once you try it, you can’t go back,” says Fortin Tam. A quick glance at the screenshot below and you’ll be nodding in agreement.

What about the app menu? No fear; the consolidation sees the introduction of an app menu button, as per the GNOME human interface guidelines.

Fixes, Fixes, Fixes

There’s also a slew of important bug fixes and stability improvements bundled up, including fixes for those running the editor outside of GNOME Shell and/or a Linux distribution shipping with a broken version of COGL (yes, even Ubuntu).

Elsewhere:

Positioning of UI components on fresh install has been improved

Undocked window components do not shift position on startup

Effects can be reordered within a clip’s properties

Title editor UI has been simplified

Global undo/redo fix

Timeline UI animations have been tweaked

Editor ported to Python 3

Further details can be found in the official release notes.

Getting Better

All of the above reads great, right? Well, the next release should be even better. That’s not just usual developer hyperbole, as Jean-François explains:

“The next release (0.95) will run on top of a refined and incredibly more robust backend thanks to the work that Mathieu [Duponchelle] and Thibault [Saunier] have been doing to replace GNonLin by NLE (the new non-linear engine for GES) and fixing video mixing issues.”

Ubuntu 14.10 ships with an older (crash-prone) version in the Software Center. To try the latest release in all its glory you can grab an all-in-one bundle from the Pitivi website¹.

Almost €20,000 has been raised as part of the Pitivi fundraiser helping it creep over the halfway point to a promised 1.0 release. If you’d like to see that arrive faster, skip a grande skinny vanilla latte at Starbucks and donate instead!

¹At the time of writing the bundles for 0.94 are not linked but you can grab the nightly tars instead.