[?] Subscribe To This Site

Cinelerra - Another Linux editor?

Cinelerra is one of the original tools developed several years ago for this expanding market.

Confusion:
To make things slightly confusing, there are actually 2 version of this tool. One is known as the community version (CV) and the other has been taken by Heroine Virtual and developed into a specific tool for them to do their film making.

The CV version is actually a close relation to the basic version but one which has had a couple of bug fixes etc. added to it. As the CV home page says

Basically we maintain a copy that is fairly similar to the official release, (i.e. we don't do code-tidying patches). But apply our bug fixes, compiler compliance fixes, and enhancements to the svn. We do try to send the patches upstream, (but it sucks having to apply a patch to two systems, but that's life!) Thus the CV has a number of features that the official version does not have.

So what does it do?
For years, some people have wanted a way to edit their audio and video in one place as fluidly as writing text. Cinelerra tries to be a single location for all your audio and video editing needs. All the recording, editing, and playback are handled here. It can be used as an audio player. It can be used to record audio or video. It can even be used as a photo retoucher.

There are two types of moviegoers: producers who create new content and revisit it for further refinement, and consumers who want to acquire the content and watch it. It is not intended for consumers. CV has many features for uncompressed content, high resolution processing, and compositing. Producers need these features in order to retouch many generations of footage, which makes Cinelerra very complex.

Complex?
Well, in common with many Linux tools it relies on the user having a good knowledge of the operating system and being able to run Linux commands. For example:

If your distribution has only UTF-8 support (like Ubuntu), first you must create the language charset with this command:

localedef -c -i (language_prefix) -f (your ISO-8859 variant) (language_prefix).(your ISO-8859 variant)

If this frightens you then stay away from Cinelerra!

Features
It's not actually easy to get a features list for this tool. I do know it deals in HD footage (usually in native mode). I do know it has compositing tools on board as well as items such as full audio editing, and vectorscopes.

There are several video tutorials available for this tool. Follow the link to the home page below to get these.

Summary
This is very much a full featured toolset along the lines of some of the major packages such as Adobe Premier. The issue, as stated above, is complexity. If you feel comfortable working at the inner level of Linux (through whatever distribution you have), then this tool is probably one to look at. Otherwise, stay well clear.

Click here for the official Cinelerra CV home page
Click here to download the CV version
Click here for the Heroine Virtual version

Click here to return from Cinelerra to Free video editing tools

ADD TO YOUR SOCIAL BOOKMARKS: