Playing With PiTiVi
I recently tested the open-source video editor OpenShot, so I thought it would only be fair for me also to play around with PiTiVi, the editor that at this point is set to come installed by default with Ubuntu 10.04 when it debuts in April 2010. I found some time to do so today. Read on for the details.
Ubuntu developers’ decision to ship a video editor by default is meant to make Ubuntu more complete out-of-the-box, and to help it compete with proprietary operating systems that come with video editing capabilities built-in. PiTiVi’s inclusion in the software stacks comes at the expense of the GIMP image editor, which will be absent from the software stack in Lucid.
There are a surprising number of video-editing applications available for Linux, given its relatively small user base. They range from very basic programs offering specific and limited functionality, like Kino and Avidemux, to complex, professional-grade applications, such as Cinelerra.
PiTiVi, the editor that made the cut for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.04, is a newcomer to the Linux video world, having issued its first stable release only a few months ago. Written in Python, it’s a non-linear editor designed “to suit both the newcomer and the professional, to be efficient and intuitive,” according to its website.
PiTiVi testdrive
So just how efficient and intuitive is PiTiVi? To test it, I installed the build from Ubuntu 9.10’s repositories and fired it up.
My first impression was that PiTiVi is indeed pretty intuitive. Clips can be added and moved around with simple drag-and-dropping. Here’s a look at its clean, organized interface:
The application also offers an undo function, which is nice, and something that was missing when I reviewed OpenShot.
Despite its well designed interface, PiTiVi currently suffers from a major weakness in that it lacks support for video transitions and effects. OpenShot comes with a variety of different effects that can be applied to a project to spice up the video. With PiTiVi, however, users have to add effects via some other application before importing their clips.
Adding support for effects is on the roadmap, according to PiTiVi’s wiki, but so far no one has started work on that effort. Until someone implements this feature, the lack of effects will be a major downside for PiTiVi, I suspect.
Serious video professionals may not care much whether or not their editor has support for effects built-in, since they know how to get that functionality from other applications (serious video professionals are probably also going to use something more heavy-duty than PiTiVi).
But the majority of Ubuntu users who will start to rely on PiTiVi when they find it installed on their Lucid systems will likely be majorly disappointed when they discover they can’t add swirls or light effects to their home movies.
Of course, PiTiVi is still a very new application and remains in heavy development, so the features it lacks today may well be implemented before April. If they’re not, however, I’ll be left wondering why the Ubuntu developers chose to go with PiTiVi instead of a more feature-rich and equally intuitive editor like OpenShot.
During UDS i brought up OpenShot as an alternative, but at the time some [bizarre] reasons were given as to why it wasn’t as good as PiTiVi.
I do find it astonishing that PiTiVi has a team of paid developers and has been worked on for several years now – seemingly remaining in the same state feature-wise. OpenShot was originally developed by one man in his spare time in less than a year!
I hope PiTiVi really pulls through by launch because, as i said in a blog post at the time, it sends out a very odd message to newcomers when applications that bear feature parity (or better!) to those included in Windows are looked over.
Is shipping a half-baked video editor a better first impression than shipping with one more on par with iMovie than Movie Maker?
gt; I do find it astonishing that PiTiVi has a team of paid developers and has been worked on for several years now – seemingly remaining in the same state feature-wise. OpenShot was originally developed by one man in his spare time in less than a year!
Not exactly. Various GStreamer developers have been paid to work on various gstreamer parts. It has only been since 2009 that developers have actually been assigned to PiTiVi, and since then it has progressed exponentially in stability, usefulness and ease of use compared to the previous 0.11.x series.
As for openshot being developed in a year, see this comment in particular: http://www.osnews.com/permalink?403708
Dead link.
Sorry, specifically this link from the top of the article: http://www.workswithu.com/2010/01/12/testing-openshot-video-editor
Even if it wasn’t written in a year and is using the engine from another piece of software, does it matter? Doing a straight-up comparison of the two packages as they are now will probably show that Openshot is ahead.
OpenShot is not ready for full distribution in Ubuntu. It has yet to be packaged and sent through the REVU process to be accepted into the Ubuntu repositories, and at the time of the UDS decision to include PiTiVi in 10.04 OpenShot was still calling for a development version of ffmpeg as a build requirement.
The download page of OpenShot sill includes a ‘build wizard’ script that deletes any version of ffmpeg, x264, frei0r, or mlt that you have on your system, and uses git to pull the latest development snapshot of those libraries onto the user’s sytem. Talk about hackery and instability.
Possibly, when someone steps forward to create amp; maintain a package of OpenShot in the Ubuntu repositories, the developers of Ubuntu may consider including it rather than PiTiVi. Until then, I wish OpenShot-loving bloggers would stop complaining about the UDS decision.
How many of the videos on youtube use stupid swirly video transition effects? Not many. People just want really basic video editing 99% of the time. They want to take the funny 10 seconds out of a 30 second clip and string a few of them together.
Would effects be a good thing to include eventually? Yeah. But should they come at the expense of stability and other core features? No.
Pitivi are doing the right thing by putting effects way down the agenda. People might perceive the editor to be basic, but frankly its better in the long run to take this approach. The fact Openshot had effects before it had an Undo button shows they are going about it wrong.
I’m not going to get into the PiTiVi vs. OpenShot debate because I honestly don’t know anything about it. Quite frankly I’m just shocked at the decision to substitute PiTiVi fror the GIMP. I’m not a graphic designer or a video editor, but I would hazard a guess that for the average user image manipulation is more important than video editing. Without the GIMP there’s nothing installed in Ubuntu to do something as simple as crop images (if I’m not mistaken). Taking the GIMP out of the default stack I think is a mistake.
@Jay the removal of GIMP has nothing to do with pitivi. Two coincidental, separate decisions. The rationale for ubuntu devs is that you can do basic image editing with f-spot.