OpenShot Video Editor 1.3.0 Released With New Default Theme, Upload To YouTube Or Vimeo, New 3D Animations

OpenShot, the application that you've voted as the best Linux video editor a while back reached version 1.3.0 today.

OpenShot 1.3.0 comes with a new user interface called "Fresh" and finally adds something many of you have requested: stock icons support. The new version also lets you easily upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo:

OpenShot 1.3.0 also comes with many new 3D animations (thanks to Blender) - here is an example with a new "animated world maps" effect (check out this how-to on using it):

Complete OpenShot 1.3.0 release changelog:

• Improved stability, performance, and usability
• New user interface theme (titled 'Fresh')
• Stock icons support
• Add multiple clips to the timeline in one step (including transitions or fades)
• More timeline animations & smoother play-head motion
• Many new exciting 3D animations (including Snow, Lens Flare, Particle Effects, Animated World Maps)
• Files, transitions, and effects filtering (toggle buttons and search bar)
• Improved video rotation (including 1 click rotation)
• Automatic detection of image sequences
• Smoother scaling (panning, zooming, and rotation)
• Transition snapping and improved direction detection
• Video upload to YouTube and Vimeo

Fresh is the default theme for those that are installing OpenShot for the first time, however if you are upgrading you need to set it from the preferences (Edit > Preferences > General > Default Theme).

Check out the following OpenShot 1.3.0 presentation video:

Install OpenShot 1.3.0

To add the OpenShot PPA and install the latest OpenShot in Ubuntu, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonoomph/openshot-edge
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openshot openshot-doc

If you want lots of additional effects, also install the following package:

sudo apt-get install frei0r-plugins

Please note that for 3D animations you need Blender 2.56 or newer. Install Blender in Ubuntu using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cheleb/blender-svn
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install blender

Then, in the OpenShot options go to Edit > Preferences and on the "General" tab, enter "/usr/bin/blender" under the "Blender executable" field.

For me, using Blender from the above PPA worked with OpenShot without further tweaking. However, if it's not working for you, see THESE instructions.

[via OpenShot blog]

Auteur Is A New Non-Linear Video Editor For Linux

Auteur is a new non-linear video editor for Linux. The application is currently in alpha but seems to advance pretty fast, with 6 releases in just one week (the first alpha preview release was published on 31 January 2011).

The application "focuses on what's important to an editor: cutting footage, reliably, rather than attempting fancy effects you won't use anyway" says the Auteur developer.

Auteur uses Mplayer and Mencoder so it should support most video formats out of the box and there's no need to convert the videos so you can start editing right away. Further more, the latest version 0.1a6 adds still image support so you can add images to the timeline.

The interface is what I like the most about Auteur: it looks a lot like PuddleTag and you can move various widgets anywhere you want in the main UI. Also, the application looks great in both Gnome and KDE. There's also an option to display multiple top level windows (like in GIMP) which - believe it or not -, can be great for productivity in some cases.

But like I said, Auteur is still in alpha so there is still a lot of work to be done. For instance, you cannot change the render options (the advanced options have not been implemented yet), however you can change the mencoder command line parameters. This is just an example, there are other stuff that require further work, but Auteur is pretty stable already and can easily be installed in Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora 14 and Arch Linux.

Install Auteur

To add the Ubuntu PPA and and install Auteur using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rowinggolfer/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install auteur

For Debian, Fedora 14 and Arch Linux packages (as well as source files), see the Auteur download page.

If you're a developer and want to help check out the Auteur JOIN page. You can also help by submitting bugs - this can be done on Launchpad.

VideoLan Movie Creator (VLMC) Gets Video Effects [PPA]

VLMC (VideoLan Movie Creator) is a new video editor, currently in alpha, built by the VLC developers.

Did you know we maintain a daily builds VLMC PPA? I bet most of you forgot because we haven't published anything about it in a while. The development is quite slow, but something very exiting landed in VLMC recently: video effects.

Update: The latest VLMC makes use of frei0r-plugins, a simple cross-platform framework for video effects that provides filters, mixers and generators by means of minimalistic plugin API. That means that the effects might have been available in VLMC for a while but I didn't notice this until now. The effects include 3dflippo, baltan, color distance, edgeglow, luminance, transparency, vertigo, water and lots more.

Install VLMC in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Unfortunately the Lucid builds are not working as I need a stable VLC 1.1.x PPA for Lucid to use for building VLMC, but to install it in Maverick you can use our daily builds PPA - don't worry, it won't break anything as the PPA only has VLMC.

To add the VLMC daily builds PPA and install VLMC in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/vlmc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlmc frei0r-plugins

Please note that VLMC is still in alpha, so expect to find a lot of bugs!