Video Editor

[freedomrobert]

Hello. I am new to Linux coming primarily from Windows. I was wondering if there were any good alternatives for video editors on Linux. I was using Wondershare on my windows desktop. I liked it because whenever I would record my screen, I could have my mouse seen whenever it clicked. Is there a good video editor that will allow for screen recordings for Linux?

 

[JasKinasis]

OBS Studio is great for desktop recordings.
It’s also used by live-streamers.
The best thing about OBS is you can set up scenes which use different video inputs and different audio inputs.

So for screen recording, you’d set up a scene with your desktop as the primary video source and set it full screen. And use your desktop audio and your microphone for capturing desktop audio and your voice/narration.

If you wanted, you could set up multiple scenes.
I typically have three scenes set up for making desktop recordings in OBS:
Scene 1 has my desktop full screen.
Scene 2 has my desktop full-screen with a box overlay in the corner, with video from my webcam.
Scene 3 is my webcam full-screen.


That way, whilst recording, I can switch between the three scenes as I’m presenting.

I normally use multiple monitors when using OBS. So I use one monitor for running whatever programs I’m presenting/demoing in the video and my second monitor has OBS running in it.

I have set up some keyboard combos in OBS to allow me to switch scenes whilst recording, but having OBS running in a second monitor means I can always point and click things in OBS to control the recording if I need to.

OBS might be a little over the top, but it gives you a lot of flexibility. You can be quite creative with your videos. OBS gives you the option of recording direct to disk, or to live-stream video to streaming services like Facebook live, YouTube, Twitch etc.

Failing that there are a number of simple screen recording applications available:
Kazam, Gnome screen recorder, kooha, simple screen recorder, recordmydesktop, vokoscreen NG, blue recorder.

And then there are things like gifene and peek that can record your desktop as animated gifs.

But it should be noted that most of the simple screen recorders don’t work with Wayland. Wayland support is experimental in some. But is completely unsupported in others. So if you’re running something that uses a Wayland session by default, you may want to consider logging into a desktop that uses X11 as a backend in order to record your videos.

Personally, OBS would be my first choice. The current version of OBS fully supports Wayland. So it should work on X11 or Wayland.

 

[JasKinasis]

And for editing videos, there are things like kdenlive, openshot, shotcut, vidcutter, flowblade.

Blender also has an extremely capable non-linear video editor built into it.

There are a couple of paid proprietary video editors too, like davinci resolve (there are others, but I can’t remember them offhand)

 

[Trenix25]

ffmpeg can record screen video too. Recording to a .vob file will use less video compression in real time which will free up CPU resources to do other things. The .vob file can be converted to a .mp4 file afterwards when the system isn't busy with anything else. Remember to use an acceptable qscale value when writing to your .mp4 file. Use -crf 18 to get a qscale value of 24. Using a lower frame rate for the recording itself can also reduce the burden on the CPU and the hard drive along with creating a smaller video file.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[bob466]

I'm not in to screen recording myself but you could try these...
https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-screen-recorders/
https://screenrec.com/screen-recorder/linux-screen-recorders/

For the little video editing I do...I would suggest...Handbrake and Avidemux...they give good results.

 

[JasKinasis]

ffmpeg can record screen video too. Recording to a .vob file will use less video compression in real time which will free up CPU resources to do other things. The .vob file can be converted to a .mp4 file afterwards when the system isn't busy with anything else. Remember to use an acceptable qscale value when writing to your .mp4 file. Use -crf 18 to get a qscale value of 24. Using a lower frame rate for the recording itself can also reduce the burden on the CPU and the hard drive along with creating a smaller video file.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

That’s a good shout. I completely forgot to mention ffmpeg. I seem to recall helping somebody here recently with a question they had about using ffmpeg to record their screen. And there was another question about ripping sections of audio from videos using ffmpeg and transcoding them to iphone ringtones.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Not sure if you mean screen-recorder or application for editing videos, but here are too good video editors that work on Linux.

DaVinci Resolve 19 | Blackmagic Design

Professional video editing, color correction, visual effects and audio post production all in a single application. Free and paid versions for Mac, Windows and Linux.

www.blackmagicdesign.com

Kdenlive - Video Editing Freedom

Kdenlive is a powerful free and open source cross-platform video editing program made by the KDE community. Feature rich and production ready.

kdenlive.org

 

[Tolkem]

I do some video editing, have tried kdenlive, davinci resolve, openshot and shotcut. I currently use Kdenlive. All of them excel at sth and failed at sth. Here's what I've found:

Kdenlive (Free): relatively easy to learn and UI is clean and intuitive. Have audio graphics in the timeline. Slow rendering.
Davinci Resolve (Free): A bit of a learning curve, but not too steep. Fast rendering. Have audio graphics in the timeline. Does not support .mp4 (on Linux), you'll have to convert to .mov and then from .mov to .mp4 (if your target file is .mp4).
Openshot (Free): Very easy to learn. "Decent" rendering. Doesn't have audio graphics in the timeline.
Shotcut(Free): Not too difficult to learn, but it does require some time to get use to, mostly because of the UI being a bit "unusual". Have audio graphics in the timeline, quite small, tho. Rendering is "Ok".

Depending on the kind of project you do and your workflow, some of the editors I just mentioned might or might not have something you want/need, you'll have to try one at a time and chose the one that best meet your needs. Kdenlive doesn't have the ability to record the screen, nor does OpenShot, not sure about the other 2. There's also flawblade and olive, haven't tried those two.

Note: Davinci Resolve is the free version, and Davinci Resolve Studio the paid one, which I believe does support .mp4 files in Linux.

 

[Trenix25]

I do some video editing, have tried kdenlive, davinci resolve, openshot and shotcut. I currently use Kdenlive. All of them excel at sth and failed at sth. Here's what I've found:

Kdenlive (Free): relatively easy to learn and UI is clean and intuitive. Have audio graphics in the timeline. Slow rendering.
Davinci Resolve (Free): A bit of a learning curve, but not too steep. Fast rendering. Have audio graphics in the timeline. Does not support .mp4 (on Linux), you'll have to convert to .mov and then from .mov to .mp4 (if your target file is .mp4).
Openshot (Free): Very easy to learn. "Decent" rendering. Doesn't have audio graphics in the timeline.
Shotcut(Free): Not too difficult to learn, but it does require some time to get use to, mostly because of the UI being a bit "unusual". Have audio graphics in the timeline, quite small, tho. Rendering is "Ok".

Depending on the kind of project you do and your workflow, some of the editors I just mentioned might or might not have something you want/need, you'll have to try one at a time and chose the one that best meet your needs. Kdenlive doesn't have the ability to record the screen, nor does OpenShot, not sure about the other 2. There's also flawblade and olive, haven't tried those two.

Note: Davinci Resolve is the free version, and Davinci Resolve Studio the paid one, which I believe does support .mp4 files in Linux.

You can change the rendering speed in kdenlive. The slower the better. Using a faster speed lowers the quality of the resulting video.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Tolkem]

You can change the rendering speed in kdenlive. The slower the better. Using a faster speed lowers the quality of the resulting video.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

The slower the better? How is that true? I use this "f=mp4 vcodec=libx264 crf=%quality g=15 bf=0 acodec=aac ab=%audiobitrate+'k' movflags=+faststart preset=ultrafast" with no problems, it doesn't "lowers the quality of the resulting video", but it's still slow. Davinci renders in less than half the time, if only it supported .mp4. Openshot is a bit faster too. Problem is, Kdenlive doesn't seem to take advantage of the hardware like Davinci, and even OpenShot do. This pc has a 6 core/12 threads CPU (Ryzen 5 1600) and 16 GB of RAM which is enough for what I do, 1080p. Like I said "they all excel at sth and failed at sth", none is perfect.

 

[MikeWalsh]

For me, as stated elsewhere here, it's Openshot for day-to-day stuff. When I want to put more effort into something a bit more "special".....I turn to Lightworks (which I've long since re-packaged into 'portable' format for the Puppy community).

Mostly because that format just works really well with our Pup's quirky mode of operation..!


Mike.

 

[Trenix25]

The slower the better? How is that true? I use this "f=mp4 vcodec=libx264 crf=%quality g=15 bf=0 acodec=aac ab=%audiobitrate+'k' movflags=+faststart preset=ultrafast" with no problems, it doesn't "lowers the quality of the resulting video", but it's still slow. Davinci renders in less than half the time, if only it supported .mp4. Openshot is a bit faster too. Problem is, Kdenlive doesn't seem to take advantage of the hardware like Davinci, and even OpenShot do. This pc has a 6 core/12 threads CPU (Ryzen 5 1600) and 16 GB of RAM which is enough for what I do, 1080p. Like I said "they all excel at sth and failed at sth", none is perfect.

I cranked up the speed in kdenlive and the sound in the video was a mess.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Tolkem]

For me, as stated elsewhere here, it's Openshot for day-to-day stuff. When I want to put more effort into something a bit more "special".....I turn to Lightworks (which I've long since re-packaged into 'portable' format for the Puppy community).

Mostly because that format just works really well with our Pup's quirky mode of operation..!


Mike.

Ah, yeah, I forgot to mention lightworks, it's nice, but the free version only supports exporting up to 720p, and most stuff I do is 1080p. I gave another try at shotcut and gotta say I kinda like it now. It does have its quirks but rendering is 3x faster than in kdenlive.

 

[Tolkem]

I cranked up the speed in kdenlive and the sound in the video was a mess.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

Never have had that problem with those settings, not even when running a 2nd gen intel i7-2600 and 16 gb of ddr3. It's just slow, but the rendered file turns out ok.