Video editing on Linux has long gotten a bad rap. A few years ago, the only real options for video editing were either deeply limited in features and polish, or incredibly complex to set up and use.

While Linux still lacks a direct competitor to tools like Apple's iMovie or Final Cut Pro, the current crop of video editing tools are much more capable and easy to use. Two tools in particular stand out: PiTiVi and Kdenlive. Both suites are under active development and look promising. In this article, we'll take a look at what both of these tools can and can't do.

What a video editor needs

You should be able to count on a base set of features from any video editor that's worth its salt. At a bare minimum, any video editor should be able to import a wide range of formats, edit video and audio in a non-linear fashion, provide transitions and titling, allow multiple sources for video and audio, and be intuitive enough that it doesn't require a week's worth of training to become productive.

Ideally, an application would go a bit farther than that and also provide effects to adjust color balance, enhance the image, or just improve the raw video.

PiTiVi

PiTiVi is Gtk-based and uses the Gstreamer Multimedia Framework. The goal for PiTiVi is to be intuitive for newcomers and suitable for professionals. Intuitive it is, but suitable for professionals? Not just yet.

The latest version of PiTiVi is 0.13.3. As the version number suggests, it's early on in development and not quite fully baked. The version number reflects features implemented, however, and not stability. In my time working with PiTiVi, it was stable and I did not encounter any serious bugs.



PiTiVi Interface. Click for full size

Import works fairly well with PiTiVi, though some formats may be problematic depending on which Gstreamer plugins you're using. For instance, I grabbed RiP: A Remix Manifesto in Ogg Theora and in Apple Quicktime format (H.264). PiTiVi happily imported both formats, but only recognized the video channel when importing from Quicktime. This also was the case when importing movies from an iPhone. Importing some of my Ogg tracks from Magnatune for audio worked just fine.

After doing a bit of detective work (which is to say actually reading through the manual) I found this was due to its use of the Fluendo Gstreamer codecs. Apparently, the Fluendo Gstreamer plugins work well for playback, but not editing. If you're using the "ugly" Gstreamer plugins instead, MP3 import seems to work just fine, but still no luck with Quicktime.

PiTiVi Project Settings

The actual act of importing materials is dead easy. Just drag a file into the PiTiVi Clip Library or use the dialog to snag them from your file system. That is, if you have them on your system.

Right now, PiTiVi only supports importing from files—it doesn't support importing video from a camcorder over Firewire (IEEE 1394) connection. This is rather unfortunate, as many users are going to expect and want to work with a comprehensive application to import and edit video. If you're using a flip cam that generates a usable file format, it's not a problem, but if you have a camcorder, it's a bit of a headache. Support for this is planned for future releases, but isn't yet in stable versions of PiViTi.

One small thing PiTiVi does that is particularly useful when adding clips to a project—it shows the video and audio channels separately by default, and allows you to edit them separately.

Listing image by Flickr: breath.sound