What would happen if we evaluate platforms based on their video editors? Would you rather use KDE and Kdenlive or Gnome and Pitivi?

  • hitagi (ani.social)
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    310 months ago

    This sums up the NLE situation on Linux pretty well. I personally use Resolve and I wouldn’t have touched Linux if it wasn’t available on this OS. As you mentioned, an NVIDIA card and the Studio license are pretty much mandatory for a good experience.

    I’ve tried LW before but I never really liked the workflow. I don’t know if they’re still 720p locked on the free version.

    • I don’t know if they’re still 720p locked on the free version.

      Yes, it’s still locked to 720p on the free version, but the Create plan is very competitive at $9.99 a month. It has all of the features of Pro except encoding is limited to H.264/AAC and AV1 on Vimeo/YouTube, and you have no control over the encode aside from resolution. That was enough for me, though. I’m not doing anything super professional but I’m doing more than you can do easily with most of the NLEs on the list above.

      I’ve tried LW before but I never really liked the workflow.

      The workflow kind of broke my brain when I first looked at it a few years back but after acclimating to it I quite like it. The cutting is keyboard-based in a way most other NLEs aren’t, but yeah, it can definitely be annoying without some tweaks. Were you using Lightworks when they didn’t have a Fixed Layout option? The Flexible Layout pretty much leaves you to it, but the Fixed Layout is very reminiscent of Resolve. What I love most about Lightworks is definitely the speed. It’s the fastest and most responsive NLE I’ve ever used (Cinelerra probably comes a close second). And it gives you good Color tools and many other powerful features! Not a common combination. The community is also full of knowledgeable people, but that’s true of Resolve too.

      Anyway, if you’re happy with Resolve, there’s no reason to consider switching. Pricing wise Resolve beats out Lightworks after two years of Pro license ownership and the licenses are less annoying. Main reason I went for Lightworks is I didn’t want to be forced to keep a NVIDIA GPU forever. It seems less disruptive to my workflow in the long run. How is Resolve stability-wise for you? I’m still trialing Lightworks but the ownership cost is leading me to re-consider Resolve…

      Having a look at the Resolve 18 Codec manual, I see they’ve moved from CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 8.6. I’m glad they didn’t kill the GNU/Linux version or something along with CentOS, lol…