New NLE in development: Saya Video Editor

[Zarxrax]

I don't normally pimp stuff like this, but I wanted to point out this new open source NLE in development. It's called Saya Video Editor, and the webpage is located here: http://sayavideoeditor.sourceforge.net/

For the past 8 years or so, I have sat around hoping for someone to make a halfway decent, free NLE. And I've seen many many projects get started up, and then inevitably fail. I see a ton of potential with saya though.
For one, its actually got people working on it! And at a pretty respectable pace too. It's also going to be cross platform, so windows users wont be left out in the cold, either. It's being written in c++, and right now, they could use more devs.

[tin3tin]

Just a bit more on FLOSS NLE's here (http://forum.videohelp.com/topic352155.html).

So far Blender is the only crossplatform FOSS NLE solution(and it can import avisynth scripts with a special build).

[CruNcher]

Pitivi looked to me at it has the most potential of becoming something average joe consumer friendly, and blender definitely more professional (alone with the Node editing capabilities) :)
Saya has a strange concept though it's definitely also average joe consumer focused like Pitivi so comparing Blender with those is a little out of the way, it will be interesting to see how the Devs try to go arround the ffmpeg decoder problems especialy frame exact seeking :)

[Zarxrax]

Yea, Pitivi definitely looks nice as well, but too bad that it's not available for windows as well. Blender is interesting, though it's interface is quite unwieldy for editing. The avisynth support in it is definitely neat though, so it might be one to watch in the future.

[tin3tin]

@ Zarxrax take a look on these video tutorials:
http://www.totallyblended.com/tut19page.html (http://www.totallyblended.com/tut19page.html)
http://www.totallyblended.com/tut20page.html (http://www.totallyblended.com/tut20page.html)
http://www.totallyblended.com/tut21page.html (http://www.totallyblended.com/tut21page.html)

and this:

http://www.openfilmmaking.com/blenderavc/ (http://www.openfilmmaking.com/blenderavc/)

[Zarxrax]

Yea, I've seen all those already :)

[tin3tin]

Wow take a look at these Kdenlive tutorials: http://kdenlive.org/tutorial
It looks like they succeded in making an useable clean NLE for Linux. It's coded in KDE4 which apparently can be compiled for Windows. At least that's stated on the KDE homepage. But there's no info on windows builds or that the Kdenlive 0.7 is included on any Linux Live CD's yet for us windooozer people.

[CruNcher]

Jep also seeing VDPAU already being taken into consideration for Editing is great :) so rather fast we gonna have Hardware Decoding (Preview) and Effects like with Cyberlink PowerProducer or TmpegEnc Xpress under Windows currently :) (though Decoding side is still limited in those applications for example Cyberlink only uses Mpeg-2 Decoding in PowerProducer not like VDPAU all are supported but that is only a ISV status thing as Donald Graft for example has already 2 complete Standards Hardware Decoding Supported (AVC,VC-1 therefore no Mpeg-2 like Cyberlink yet) going directly via NVCUVID API (VDPAU under Windows)

[rick_777]

Zarxrax: Thanks a lot for telling the world about Saya! (I'm the project leader). If anyone wants to help, I'd really appreciate it, many things have happened since I started the project and most of the developers have left (one got married, another one disappeared, one got too busy with school, one turned out to be a spammer...)

So all that's left is two developers, one of them being me, and we have a very tight schedule :(

That said, I'm all open to suggestions. The only Video Editor I've used is Adobe Premiere, so if you people want to make suggestions regarding the UI, you're all welcome.

- Rick.

[Dark Shikari]

That said, I'm all open to suggestions. The only Video Editor I've used is Adobe Premiere, so if you people want to make suggestions regarding the UI, you're all welcome.Make it just like Premiere, except have it not crash every 30 minutes, and it'll be great! :p

[rick_777]

Make it just like Premiere, except have it not crash every 30 minutes, and it'll be great! :p

Dark Shikari: Thanks for the suggestion. We're taking that into account, I absolutely hated premiere crashing everytime on me. I'm making all my code exception-friendly and all the memory management is being done as robust as possible (so no dangling pointers appear). Unfortunately I can't compare that to Premiere because we can't find out why or when Premiere crashes.

I really don't want to believe it's a codec issue, but it's very probable. A badly programmed codec will inevitably make your code crash. And everytime you move a clip around, the codecs are accessed for the thumb previews in the timeline. BTW, what version of Premiere are you using?

I don't know how to solve the codec crash issue (if it ever arises, depending on which codec library I decide to use) - one solution is to make the codecs run in a separate process, but that'll be terribly inefficient and complicated.

A second option is to have a "no-preview" mode where the codecs are not involved at all during editing (only playback). What do you think about that?

Saya has a strange concept though it's definitely also average joe consumer focused like Pitivi

CruNcher: Please explain that "strange concept" further, I'm all ears :)
If it's the resources / window layout, that was done in a hurry, it's not definitive and is very probable to change as we get feedback from our usability experts (read as: you :p )

Merry Christmas / Hapy Holidays, everyone!

[Zarxrax]

Having used every version of Premiere since 6.0 back in 2000, I can safely say that every single release of Premiere has always been highly prone to crashing at random. And given that I have experienced crashing even when working with uncompressed video, I'd wager a bet that codecs don't crash premiere, premiere just crashes itself.

[smok3]

i could claim that premiere crashes more with say a plugin editing (like cineform) as opposed to editing dv (when it rarely crashes), the cs4 has a cool separated exporter, so make it like cs4, but with:
- abnormally lower cpu/resource consumption

[um3k]

Usually the only time Premiere Pro CS4 crashes on my computer is when After Effects crashes and brings PPro down with it (via dynamic link). That's not to say it hasn't crashed on other occasions, but it's relatively uncommon, especially considering the sad state of my computer.

[rick_777]

Regarding crashing, I'm taking every precaution - and that doesn't mean "use tweezers to put carefully the memory (de)allocation calls", but rather "write robust code (i.e. using RAII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAII) and other useful programming patterns) so I don't have to use tweezers in the first place".

So nope, you won't have to worry about Saya crashing on you. But in the very, very very remote case that it does, I'll be always available to fix the bugs ;-)

Also, I'm allowing the users to set a memory limit for the undo/redo stack.

Regarding cpu/resource consumption, I haven't got to the point of needing huge amounts of memory - but I haven't got to the rendering part yet - that's what would use most memory.

About CPU usage, I guess that depends on the codecs module.

See ya.
P.S. If you find a C++ programmer eager to help, send him to me ;-)

[CruNcher]

Make it like Vegas but free :) usability wise i think Vegas is really carefully Designed also the Consumer friendly node editing and Plugin system is great and all the Special Movie friendly Editing like the TAKE system is just cool :). Really Vegas surprised me like no other (the new Generation) especially as it's Gui is build on .NET and is super fast compared for example vs Megui which "GUI" is crazy SLOW in comparison doing much less complex tasks. Currently KDenlive looks really damn promising they even already take VDPAU into consideration :)

[Kurtnoise]

Really Vegas surprised me like no other (the new Generation) especially as it's Gui is build on .NET and is super fast compared for example vs Megui which "GUI" is crazy SLOW in comparison doing much less complex tasks.
wtf ? in which way it's slow as hell ? :rolleyes: you compare peaches and apples here...

[Zarxrax]

Make it like Vegas but free :) usability wise i think Vegas is really carefully Designed also the Consumer friendly node editing and Plugin system is great and all the Special Movie friendly Editing like the TAKE system is just cool :).
I dunno, I'd have to disagree on that. I wont deny, Vegas does a LOT of things right, but I think it also misses the mark completely on a lot of areas. For instance, you have to hold down the ctrl key to scrub with audio. Audio editing in vegas is also severely lacking... I have to actually render out a new copy of my wav just to apply an audio effect? Are we still living in the 90s? Lol.

[smok3]

the biggest problem with vegas is imho the gui itself really.

[Dark Shikari]

Dark Shikari: Thanks for the suggestion. We're taking that into account, I absolutely hated premiere crashing everytime on me. I'm making all my code exception-friendly and all the memory management is being done as robust as possible (so no dangling pointers appear). Unfortunately I can't compare that to Premiere because we can't find out why or when Premiere crashes.

I really don't want to believe it's a codec issue, but it's very probable. A badly programmed codec will inevitably make your code crash. And everytime you move a clip around, the codecs are accessed for the thumb previews in the timeline. BTW, what version of Premiere are you using?Premiere has always crashed for me--and it almost never crashes when moving things around; it crashes when doing things that don't require re-accessing the codecs, so that isn't the issue either. And they happen even if I just use raw video input--they're simply totally random when using the interface, or even doing nothing.

Version? I've used 1.5 and 2.0. Haven't used it since 3.0 came out.

[vlada]

Regarding the GUI I would suggest to make it as customizable as possible. The best UI customization I've seen so far is in foobar2000. You have components which contain individual parts of UI (Album Art Viewer, Lyrics Viewer, Database Filters, Playlist Viewer). You start with splitting the screen horizontally or vertically and then you can place the components at certain place. You can also use tabs to place more components in one place. If you could duplicate this, that would be amazing. Everyone could create the UI up to his liking. The program should come with some predefined layouts. It should be quite easy to store them as XML files.

Do you think this would be possible?

[Zarxrax]

I've not tried foobar, but I think premiere pro has an interface like you are describing. You can drag windows around wherever you want and set up multiple tabs in each window.
I would second this idea.

[tin3tin]

@ rick_777

I've noticed that you want to stop using wxWidgets and start using Qt4. Are you aware that the abandoned Vivia NLE project is coded in Qt4 and the source is avalible?

http://vivia-video.org/ (http://vivia-video.org/)

You should check the licence first, but it might give you a head start with Qt4. :)

[juGGaKNot]

Make it just like Premiere, except have it not crash every 30 minutes, and it'll be great! :p

And easy to use like vegas.

[AnnaFan777]

the donwload page is a 404