Looking for New Open Source Software for Video Editing

On the continuation of moving to FOSS for my tech life, one thing I do on occasion is video editing; whether it’s putting together a time-lapse video or the occasional YouTube video. I’ll be primarily using my Dell Precision M6800 for my editing using Linux Mint; laptop is rocking an Intel Core I7 4700MQ, 32GB of Ram and an nVidia Quadro K3100M at the moment.

I do currently use Vegas Movie Studio, but since I’m working on transitioning over to Linux entirely; I’ll be abandoning Vegas as part of that. So shoot me some suggestions on software that isn’t proprietary and obviously open source/free. Support for Cuda/QuickSync is optional; but would like to have it. I’m okay with the software not having Windows Support.

Hi, for mostly full open source I would suggest Kdenlive. It is not too bad of an editor, tons of great features, and loads of available plugins. I have used it for several video quick editing projects and I found myself fairly impressed. For something more professional I would suggest Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 18. The free version is capable, and is perfect for most users. The studio version ($295.00) has a ton of additional features like AI up-scaling and the like. The cool thing is that both Kdenlive and Resolve are available on Linux, Windows and even Mac OS (if you feel the need to lock yourself in Apple’s walled garden).

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I’ve been playing around with Kdenlive. It’s probably the closest to Vegas movie studio. If I remember, it does have support for cuda at least. I have dabbled with Divinci resolve, it was alright. I prefer the FOSS route.

Correct me if I am wrong, I am a creative, and have just recently made the switch to Linux as my daily driver (though I have been using Linux on a NUK for years for coding), but isn’t FOSS just a learning resource and software repository for applications?

I thought the beauty of Linux was the ability to customize the environment and use the software repositories and knowledge bases to allow you to do the work you need to do. If you want to pigeon hold yourself to one specific repository and knowledge base … then each to their own.

On that note, I searched the It’s FOSS website and there is an article about Olive. It coincidentally looks like Kdenlive. It might be based on the project, though according to Libre Arts there are some stability issues in it’s current beta build.

FOSS actually stands for “Free OpenSource Software”.

I can’t find a “FOSS” website. GNU yes. But not “FOSS”.

And then there’s FLOSS … Free/Libre OpenSource Software.

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Seconding DaVinci Resolve if you wanna give it a try. I use it for some of the garden vlogs I edit.

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Its an Indian Tech site. I like it:

Sorry, I did not understand what it meant. I came from the Mac platform, switched to Windows for Coding, art, and design and Linux strictly for coding. I am in the process of removing Windows from as much of my workflow as possible … any-who.

I thought most open source software was free, so thanks for the info. As per a free open source video editing application Kdenlive is free and open source. It was created by Kdenlive. It utilizes elements of the KDE UI / UX. It has been ported to other operating systems.

Open Source itself just says the source is open. Just because Microsoft gives you access to Windows source code ,because you’re a good customer, doesn’t make it free.

Many open source products charge license fees. In the early days of computing, this was very popular, less so today.

In the Linux/BSD context you still need to accept the license, but it’s free to use, modify and share. Most important one is probably the GPL. A Licenses that capitalize on collective solidarity and mutual benefits in distributing and improving a common code base. If you don’t like the code, change it and if you upload it to Github, someone else may fork it and improve and maintain your new code. Or keep it for yourself and deal with bugs and new features yourself. A win for everyone.

FOSS is more gift economy than market economy, but the Linux success story proves that it can be damn competitive on a global scale.

Although it’s mostly found in a Linux context, nothing prevents you from porting anything. Lots of stuff has Windows and Mac ports across several architectures. Blender is a great example for this.

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@Exard3k Cool, thanks for the information. I learned something new :grin:

Hey @Exard3k, you’ve provided some insightful info about open source software and licenses. It’s true that open source doesn’t always mean free in terms of cost, but it does promote collaborative development and sharing of code, which is a fantastic concept.