Evaluating+Open+Source+Video+Editing+Programs

 For EDLD 5363, I am blogging about Open Source Video Editing on Mac and PCs and drafting a podcast plan.

Podcast Plan: Looking at Open-Source Video editing software that runs on Macs and Windows

Two Programs:

__Avidemux [] [] __

__Kdenlive [] __

__ [] __

Outline:

1.Welcome/Thanks/Describe Purpose

2.Why not use iMovie?

3.Avidemux

4.Kdenlive

5.Conclusions/Implications for Future Learning

1. Welcome/Thanks/Describe Purpose:

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Hello everyone! Thank you for tuning into the “Editing Video on the Cheap” podcast. The podcast dedicated to educators on a shoe-string budget. I am Mike Alves, middle school teacher and Mac enthusiast. Today we will be looking at two Open-Source Video editing programs that run on Macs and Windows. Just like always, we’ll post all the links at the end.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">2. Why not use iMovie?

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">But Mike, you say you are a Mac Enthusiast? Why not use iMovie? Well, you might want to use something at school that kids could also have on their home computers for free. Even though older versions of iMovie are free to download, they still require Macs. Using iMovie means the kid has to have a mac at home. Parents don’t like having to buy a new computer just to run video software, so examining open source provides a free option.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">3. Avidemux

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Our first program is called Avidemux.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.It supports many file types, including Quicktime (.mov), AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, and MP4, using a variety of codecs.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">(Show graphic from Wikipedia that shows file formats)

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license, so students should be able to run it at home no matter what kind of computer they have.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Use:

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Avidemux is very to install with a simple dowload from its website making it easy for students too. It is simple to use with clear tools that mark the editing functions.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">(Show Screen Shots)

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">While it doesn’t have the nice transitions and themes of iMovie, students can shoot video on their own--clean it up and make basic edits in Avidemux at home, then polish it in a more robust program at school. This will save them time by getting the basic editing out of the way. The only downside to Avidemux is that I had a hard time with audio when I tried to import various video clips in different file formats. So students need to be sure that they use file formats that work. Quicktime and MP4 were the best supported.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">4. Kdenlive

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;"><span class="style_3" style="font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; line-height: 19px;">Our next program is called Kdenlive. <span class="style_4" style="font-family: Helvetica-Bold,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; line-height: 19px;">Kdenlive <span class="style_5" style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; line-height: 19px;"> is a video editor that focuses ease of use. Kdenlive supports QuickTime, AVI, WMV, MPEG, and Flash Video), and also supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for both PAL, NTSC and various HD standards, including HDV. Video can also be exported to DV devices, or written to a DVD with chapters and a simple menu.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Use: Kdenlive does all that it promises; however, it does have one major flaw. Installing the software is very complicated. On the Mac, one must already have the X11 tools installed from the original Mac OS disks and go through a complicated compiling step. This makes it very complicated to install in a computer lab situation, and almost impossible for the novice to install at home. For these reasons I never installed it on my Mac. Windows installation was slightly less complicated.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">5. Conclusions/Implications for Future Learning

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Both programs reinforce the skills a student might learn at school. Since they are Open-Source, they are free and can be used under the Creative Commons License. While neither program offers the slick interfaces of their commercial counterparts, they are easy to use for basic editing. As a teacher, I would use Open-Source software along with commercial products so that my students and their parents know that there are free options. Students will be able to transfer basic editing and concepts to any program they use.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Of the two programs reviewed, Avidemux is the clear winner because of its easy setup. Though, Kdenlive has a few more features that may be worth navigating its complicated set up.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: ArialMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">Two Programs:

<span style="color: #0433ff; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">__<span class="style_2" style="line-height: 14px; text-decoration: none;">Avidemux [] [] __

<span style="color: #0433ff; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">__<span class="style_2" style="line-height: 14px; text-decoration: none;">Kdenlive [] __

<span style="color: #0433ff; font-family: Arial-BoldMT,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 36px; margin-top: 0px; opacity: 1; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;">__ [] __

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