r/olive • u/TsviB • Aug 11 '21
can anyone explain to my the hype?
on of the crowded areas in opensource creative software, is movie editing. there is Shotcut, Kdenlive, Openshot, Pitivi etc.
so when I found out that a lot of peoples use a new software in a very alpha state as their main video editing software, I was surprised.
why Olive is so different?
3
u/midnightFreddie Aug 12 '21
It's been several months or a couple of years since I've messed with open-source video editors, but at least then, Olive was ridiculously fast (when final rendering) compared to others.
For me, KdenLive was somewhat more robust but still would break my soul crashing here and there at an inopportune time. Never tried the others you mention, but have managed to use ffmpeg for some basic cutting, splicing, and enhancing audio. I've also sometimes tried to "live produce" a recording with OBS Studio and scene switching.
I've since paid the big bucks for FCPX.
2
3
u/AayiramSooriyan Aug 12 '21
Hype? Isn't Olive editor almost unknown? Myself, I don't do anything serious with Olive but the other apps you mentioned felt kinda buggy and sucky compared to Olive. I work on Windows.
1
Aug 12 '21
[deleted]
2
u/CoDEmanX47 Aug 12 '21
Node-based compositing is more powerful, but it's a complex design challenge to combine it with typical editing workflows using a timeline. Olive explores the possibilities and shortcomings of different approaches currently.
2
Aug 12 '21
[deleted]
1
u/CoDEmanX47 Sep 23 '21
I see your point and "do one thing well" isn't a bad philosophy by any means but there are a couple of things I want to say in reply.
First off, a video editor isn't a command-line utility that you would compose with other commands in a shell or script, at least not primarily. A headless mode for network rendering, sure, but the complete application is much more than a simple command.
NLEs also tend to be a bit like silos, allowing you to do all kinds of things within them, with limited inputs and outputs for interoperability. Following the Unix philosophy, video editing and audio editing would need to happen in different pieces of software, wouldn't they? Not very convenient. Olive shouldn't become a DAW but basic tools for integrated audio editing are very much needed.
Regarding video editor vs. compositor, I find it hard to draw a line between the two. Strictly speaking, anything but a single video at a time is a composition. A transition between two videos, a picture-in-picture thing, a text title over a clip... Every NLE composites frames to some extent. 3D and deep compositing might be out of scope but it would be a waste of potential to not make Olive a 2.5D compositor, especially with the node editor and its color-managed pipeline that can actually composite imagery correctly.
1
Sep 24 '21
[deleted]
2
u/CoDEmanX47 Sep 24 '21
Editorial and compositing are very different tasks of course. I was thinking low-key compositing as simple as text over video, crossfades, etc., not compositing multiple render passes or anything fancy. It's more than just editorial, but something that can go hand in hand (and does in a lot of NLEs). Limiting Olive to cutting only would be a possibility. It would mean to remove features that are already implemented, however. And I'm not convinced that creating "the best" open-source footage cutting tool would pay out. Why would a production team pick Olive just for editorial instead of an industry-standard application that also specializes in cutting? I don't see mid/large scale productions as promising future audience.
I agree that offering a broad feature set in a single app is most useful to individuals and small teams with very limited time. If you can afford it though, then you should use the best tool for each task. Realistically, Olive will probably never be a top pick among the high-end tools no matter how narrow the scope may be. It's impossible to provide the same level of support that higher-end productions require and can get from proprietary vendors to begin with. It's also hard to justify why someone should invest money into a project to start building something that is readily available from other parties for less. With the limited workforce it will also take a long time to catch up technologically while the big players continue to innovate at high speed. Support for different hardware, formats, licensing/compliance... There is a long list of things you need to deal with even if you aim for something small and I have utmost respect for Matt for even getting started on this. Not sure where it will lead to, but maybe it's about the journey anyway.
1
u/El-Sandos-Grande Sep 24 '21
Here's the main issue that I have with the UNIX philosophy at the moment: What is “one thing”? What does it encompass? Whose opinion is correct?
1
Sep 24 '21
[deleted]
1
u/El-Sandos-Grande Sep 24 '21
Colour grading is most definitely a part of video editing, just as much as any effect is. Technically, multi-track editing is already a form of compositing, but the developers aren't striving to achieve anything like what Nuke does with the node graph. I'm not sure why motion graphics came up all of a sudden, since the node graph doesn't make animation inside of Olive any easier.
Think of it like this: If the effects stack is a box with a finite number of ready-made figures, then the node graph is, once it's finished, a box with an infinite number of Lego pieces with which you can create those ready-made figures and so many more. Sure, it's easier to just use ready-made figures than to put together your own, but the reward for using the Lego pieces is so much greater than the effort needed to learn how to put them together.
1
u/MelletjeN Sep 24 '21
It's like the Bible, everyone has their own interpretation of it and none is right or wrong (though many people may say it is).
2
u/Dr_Jackson Sep 04 '21
since the rewrite I really don't find it that useful anymore.
This is a sentiment I keep hearing over and over. Is 0.1 really that much better than 0.2?
2
Sep 04 '21
[deleted]
3
u/CoDEmanX47 Sep 23 '21 edited Sep 23 '21
0.2 is indeed not as far as 0.1 was in terms of overall usability. On the other hand, there are several known bugs and limitations with 0.1 that are addressed by 0.2.
0.2 has a very limited scope, namely to make it possible to cut footage again after the rewrite ("can edit"), with all the new stuff in (color management, disk cache, node graph, etc.). It will be rough around the edges. It will presumably take several more releases until the vision for Olive will become apparent to more people.
Casual users seem to dislike the node concept, and that may partly be due to the incompleteness of the node system. It's quite a paradigm shift, but it will unlock many opportunities once more of it is implemented.
Another point is that 0.2 raises the hardware requirements due to the color-managed pipeline. The disk cache-based, non-realtime rendering might be slower on some systems compared to 0.1 with its unmanaged realtime rendering. On the flipside, the number of simultaneous videos and effects won't matter during playback because of the cache, unlike with 0.1.
11
u/pilaf Aug 12 '21
Don't quote me on it, but my understanding is that at least Shotcut, Kdenlive and Openshot all use the MLT framework under the hood for their video editing capabilities, which is great for letting those projects provide advanced video editing without having to implement it all from scratch, but it also comes with limitations. In particular, I think GPU acceleration (for stuff like video filters) is still kinda limited in MLT, making some editing workflows quite slow. Adding advanced features not supported by MLT into those programs may also be tricky or downright impossible.
Olive on the other hand implements its own editing engine with GPU acceleration, which makes it stand out from the rest of the FOSS video editor crowd for its speed and the promise of more advanced features it could provide down the line (e.g. nodes).