Cinelerra

Notable features

Cinelerra has a wide range of features including support for high-fidelity audio and video: it processes audio using 64 bits of precision, and can work in both RGBA and YUVA color spaces, using floating-point and 16-bit integer representations, respectively. It is resolution and frame rate-independent, meaning that it can support video of any speed and size.

Cinelerra interface

Cinelerra's interface is similar to that of other Non-linear editing systems, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Avid Media Composer. However, because it includes a compositing engine, it may also be likened to compositing software such as Adobe After Effects, Smoke on Linux or Shake. The user is presented with four screens:

1. The timeline, which gives the user a time-based view of all video and audio tracks in the project, as well as keyframe data for e.g. camera movement, effects, or opacity;
2. the viewer, which gives the user a method of "scrubbing" (manually moving the playhead forwards or backwards to locate a specific cue or word) through footage;
3. the resource window, which presents the user with a view of all audio and video resources in the project, as well as available audio and video effects and transitions; and
4. the compositor, which presents the user with a view of the final project as it would look when rendered. The compositor is interactive in that it allows the user to adjust the positions of video objects; it also updates in response to user input.

Cinelerra uses its own widget toolkit, not conforming to the human interface guidelines of major Linux desktops such as GNOME and KDE.

Cinelerra usage and awards

Cinelerra has gained ground among some Linux enthusiasts looking for a native video editing system. Professional use is mostly promoted by Linux Media Arts, which sells an integrated hardware and software package for video production that includes Cinelerra.

At the National Association of Broadcasters' 2004 Electronic Media Show, Cinelerra received Bob Turner's "Making the Cut" award, given to "the best and most exciting post-production products seen at the convention".

Cinelerra.Org

The project is following commercial interests, aiming at offering professional support to its users. It's organized to merge all existing Cinelerra projects while also providing additional fixes and enhancements. Since early 2015, Cinelerra has had an open Git repository on Google Code for analysis and for input. The goal of Cinelerra.Org remains to develop a more professional value to the product as of 2016.

One of the developers of Cinelerra 5.0 left Cinelerra.Org in 2016, continuing to work on the program with help from the Cinelerra-CV team.

Cinelerra-HV

With the appearance of Cinelerra.Org in February 2014 it was unclear if Adam Williams was continuing to work on Cinelerra through Heroine Virtual or if development would continue in Cinelerra.Org. Due to no communication by Williams, this was only resolved months later, when in December 2015, Cinelerra 4.6.1 was released.

To distinguish between all different variants of the software, the releases made by Heroine Virtual are also called Cinelerra-HV.

Community version

Heroine Virtual generates a new release of Cinelerra semi-annually, available as source code only. Any bugs and usability issues found and resolved by the community that are submitted to Heroine Virtual often result in no immediate response, and it is not until a new release that there is any indication that Heroine Virtual has incorporated these changes. Because of both the latency in development and the distribution-specific nature of the release, a group of free and open-source software developers created their own version of Cinelerra referred to as Cinelerra-CV (where CV stands for community version).

Cinelerra-CV allows the community to contribute to an open repository where changes to the code are accessible to everyone. Mailing lists and an IRC channel exist where more experienced users and developers can provide support to less experienced users, and developers can hold technical discussions. Cinelerra-CV is also packaged for a wider range of distributions. It also has a different compilation system: system libraries are used extensively, and the autoconf/automake tools are used to configure the compilation system.

Although Cinelerra-CV may technically be called a fork, the relationship between Heroine Virtual and Cinelerra-CV is rather friendly. Heroine Virtual at times contributes to discussions on the mailing lists, and incorporates many of the changes made in the repository. Heroine Virtual posted the following message on their website describing the relationship:

Up until Cinelerra 2.1 the versioning of Cinelerra-CV followed that of Heroine Virtual. After Heroine Virtual produced a release, Cinelerra-CV examined the changes introduced by the new version and merged them into their version. CV was appended to the end of the version number to indicate the community version. (For example, after the 2.1 merger the CV version was labeled 2.1CV.) Starting with release 2.2, Cinelerra-CV uses its own versioning scheme, but still merges code from Cinelerra-HV.

Lumiera rewrite

In the beginning of April 2008, the Cinelerra community announced a complete rewrite of the current community version, named as Lumiera. It was born as a rewrite of the Cinelerra codebase called Cinelerra3 but soon was separated into an independent project with its own name. Lumiera has been in the pre-alpha stage for over, but is under active development, although nothing significant has ever been released. There is a binary Debian build of the development preview available.

Lumiera does not use Guicast, the GUI widget library used by Cinelerra. Lumiera’s native interface will be written in GTK+, although other interfaces will be possible. Basically the GUI is a plug-in.