PiTiVi

PiTiVi is an open source application that provides users with a sophisticated and high-performance digital video editor for the GNU/Linux platform. It is a very complex software that contains many attractive features.

The application uses the powerful GStreamer multimedia framework, providing cutting-edge transcoding and encoding functionality that works with several file formats. It is bundled with hundreds of animated effects, filters, and transitions, allowing users to add true dynamism to their home movies.

Features at a glance

It features beautiful audio waveforms, framerate-independent timeline, true precision, background processing, unlimited video/audio track layers, full undo/redo history, frame stepping, trimming, splitting, keyboard shortcuts and controls, cutting, and snapping.

In addition, the software includes ripple and roll edits, volume and opacity keyframe curves, keyframable audio and video effects, scrubbing, video thumbnails that feature two-stage caching, as well as sound mixing of several concurrent audio layers.

Among some other interesting features, we can mention the ability to specify custom framerates and aspect ratios, create presets for rendering and project settings, as well as to preview image files and audio/video streams before importing.

Includes Mousewheel integration and supports many languages

Mousewheel integration is also implemented in the application, allowing users to navigate the timeline. You can also group and ungroup video clips, use SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) video transitions, and create scripts using GES (GStreamer Editing Services).

The program is translated into many languages, it provides users with an uncluttered user interface that it is both easy to learn by novices and perfect for experienced users who want a professional video editor. It is efficient, flexible, and supports a wide range of audio and video formats.

Bottom line

Considering the fact that PiTiVi works with almost any Linux-based operating system, if all requirements are met, it provides for a professional-grade video editing application that allows anyone to create magical movies.

What is new in this release:

• Bug fix release to ensure compatibility with Gst 1.12

What is new in version 0.15.2 / 0.97.1 Beta:

• The rendering dialog has been reworked to clearly state what encoders and muxer are officially supported (and the GES integration tests have been added to check those)
• The build system has been ported to Meson and gst-transcoder is now a subproject
• Usual bug fixes

What is new in version 0.15.2 / 0.96 Beta:

• The timeline has been rewritten purely in GTK+
• The glimagesink video rendering widget was replaced by gtk(gl)sink
• The clip transformation box has been reimplemented
• Direct importing to the timeline
• Ability to copy and paste clips across the timeline
• Integration with GstValidate and the "scenarios" system
• Rewritten video mixing elements
• We finally killed GNonLin
• Now compatible again with smaller screen resolutions
• Massive bug fixing all over the place

What is new in version 0.15.2 / 0.95 Beta:

• The timeline has been rewritten purely in GTK+
• The glimagesink video rendering widget was replaced by gtk(gl)sink
• The clip transformation box has been reimplemented
• Direct importing to the timeline
• Ability to copy and paste clips across the timeline
• Integration with GstValidate and the "scenarios" system
• Rewritten video mixing elements
• We finally killed GNonLin
• Now compatible again with smaller screen resolutions
• Massive bug fixing all over the place

What is new in version 0.15.2 / 0.94 Beta:

• The first thing you will notice is that the main toolbar, menubar and titlebar have been replaced by a unified GTK HeaderBar, saving a ton of precious vertical space and making better use of the horizontal space. Once you try it, you can't go back. There is beauty in the equilibrium it has now, compared to the previously clunky and unbalanced layout.
• Various Linux distributions have started shipping a broken version of CoGL in recent months, which led to crashes. Technically this is a bug in the CoGL library/packaging, but we found out that the functions we were calling in that particular case were not needed for Pitivi, so we dropped our use of those broken CoGL APIs. Problem solved.
• People running Pitivi outside of GNOME Shell were seeing crashes due to Clutter GStreamer video output, so we ported the viewer widget to use GStreamer's new GL video output (glimagesink) instead of the ClutterSink. We had to fix various bugs in GStreamer's glimagesink to raise it to the quality we needed, and our fixes have been integrated in GStreamer 1.4 (this is why we depend on that version). The GL image sink is expected to be a more future-proof solution.
• We found issues related to gobject introspection or the overrides provided by gst-python. Again, make sure you have version 1.4 for things to work properly.
• On avant-garde Linux distributions, you would get a TypeError traceback ("unsupported operand type(s) for /: ‘int' and ‘NoneType") preventing startup, which we investigated as bug 735529. This is now fixed in Pitivi.
• The default positioning of UI components (when starting from a fresh install) has been improved to be balanced properly
• Undocked window components do not shift position on startup anymore
• Docked window components do not shift position on startup anymore, when the window is not maximized. When the window is maximized, the issue remains (your help to investigate this problem is very much welcome, see bug 723061)
• Undo/redo should be globally working again; please file specific bug reports for the parts that don't.
• Pitivi has been ported to Python 3
• The user manual is now up to date with the state of the new Pitivi series
• Educational infobars throughout the UI have been tweaked to make their colors less intrusive
• Various other fixes as usual. Testing and providing detailed reports for issues you encounter certainly helps!

What is new in version 0.93 Beta:

• Port the viewer and media file previewers to use a Clutter video output sink
• Visual refinements to the timeline (clip positioning, borders, selections)
• Improvements to the ruler and timecode display (cleaner representation, respects user theme colors and fonts, etc.)
• Allow importing MPEG-TS/AVCHD files. We are working towards improving the ts demuxer for nonlinear editing usecases.
• Fixes and improvements to the timeline's clip thumbnailers
• Clip thumbnailing in the media library, better import error handling (see also this blog post)
• Various fixes to the application version checking
• Rework the way dependencies are checked on startup
• Make some features contextual and cleanup menus
• Many content updates to the user manual, thanks to Tomas Karger
• Papercut fixes to keyframe curves
• Various fixes for rendering, including:
• Fix incorrectly setting project settings from clip properties
• Fix playback (and render) of DV files
• Fix rendering to MP4 container formats
• Fix rendering to MPEG-TS container formats (why in the world would you ever want to do that?)
• Fix a bug in GES where files would sometimes be rendered with no video stream
• Usability improvements and minor bug fixes
• Fix pylint errors
• Various fixes to the automated test suite
• Code refactoring and cleanup all over the place
• Fixes for AppData XML spec compliance
• Various build and packaging fixes
• Translations have been updated

What is new in version 0.91:

• Replacing the core of Pitivi by GES; 20 thousand lines of code removed
• Porting to GStreamer 1.x
• Porting to GTK+ 3.x
• Replacing GooCanvas by Clutter for the timeline
• An automated UI test suite, with many checks for mission-critical parts
• Fixing hundreds of bugs
• Implementing many new features
• UI polish all over the place
• Refactoring pretty much the entire codebase

What is new in version 0.13.5:

• periodic backup of the current project file
• easy crossfading transitions of overlapping clips
• better icons for link and group operations
• new add keyframe button
• fixed support for the missing plugins installer
• improved support for pictures
• various performance improvements (less conversions, faster linking)

What is new in version 0.11.2:

• An advanced timeline interface was added.
• A capture interface for Webcams and network sources was added.
• The simple timeline is gone and project saving and loading are now activated by default.
• The cutting, trimming, and removing features have been added to the advanced timeline, along with various fixes and improvements.

Requirements:

• GTK+