PiTiVi On Course To Become A Default Application In Lucid

By , Published November 18, 2009

UDS Wednesday kicked off with a super interesting session; a meeting entitled “Application selection in the default install“. 

Over three posts I’ll present the main ideas and discussions from these meetings: Whittling the default game selection down, removing GIMP from default installs & what best to use for photo-editing and the decision to potentially include PiTiVi as a default application in Lucid Lynx…

Remember that nothing is final and decisions may change over the course of the development cycle.


Open-source video editor PiTiVi is on course to become a default application in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, as has been proposed at UDS09.


Ubuntu gaining a video editor is a wise decision. Windows has one, OS X has one and so should Linux. Not to follow their lead but to give users what they have come to expect from a modern desktop operating system.


Sadly the decision has been taken to ‘trial’ PiTiVi as the video editor in Lucid, and depending on its progress during the development cycle, decide on if it should stay.

PiTiVi = Wrong move.

PiTiVi is deemed “a good and usable choice” for two reasons: -

  • It has a simple interface
  • The company funding PiTiVi, Collabora, are “pushing for it to be included” in Ubuntu. (This quote has since reworded to ‘Supportive of it being included in Ubuntu’ in the blueprint spec.)

The first issue is a sound one. PiTiVi follows the same “UI” as Windows Movie Maker and closesly resembles other Non-Linear editors.


PiTiVi also uses the Gstreamer framework for its decoding and encoding and as such is the closest thing to a ‘native gnome’ video editor.


Why It Sucks
PiTiVi can’t currently handle a bunch of input formats,  including, for most people i know, a rather crucial one: DV. This was considered irrelevant at the meeting as most people, apparently, use videos from flip-cams. (Source, guys?) Most flip-cam’s i’ve used encode to MP4 which isn’t a format enabled by default in Ubuntu. PiTiVi has an issue with MP4, too…


If you use .ogg though you’re away!

Half-baked

I used to love PiTiVi but its development is slower than slow. For it to be included in Ubuntu by default, and for the GIMP to be removed, will send a wrong first impression to users; Presenting them with a half-baked video editor that, lets be honest, can’t do much aside from trimming and arranging. Is that a good initial impression? Do we really want to give users a video editor which doesn’t match even the basic-of-the-basic video editors available for Windows?

Give it a shot

Open-Shot is the daddy of video editors on Linux. It can handle green-screen, pretty much every format you chuck at it, you can apply effects and transitions to clips, easily output video into a number of formats using its simple preset menu, or get down and dirty with specifics using the advanced version.


It has good support and fast development.


The reasons why OpenShot isn’t a contender is because (quotes from the meeting): -

  • “It has serious UI problems”
  • “Its GNOME integration is awful”
  • “it has issues”

The UI has problems? Compare OpenShot & PiTiVi: -



They look the same!


Gnome Integration is awful? I can drag and drop to both… What more integration does one need in a video editor? 


As for the unspecified “issues” OpenShot has, i’d say PiTiVi has a greater share to worry about…


Regardless of what is included as default, both are useful applications. 


From what i gathered at the end of the meeting, PiTiVi is to be chosen and trialled. It will be reviewed around Alpha 2 and asked “is it worth it?”. 


I just fear Lucid is shaping up to be a watered down example of a Linux desktop.

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. PiTiVi 0.13.3 Released -
  2. PiTiVi 0.13.2 Released To The Wild
  3. PiTiVi 0.31.1 Released; Transitions, Effects Coming In July
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  • http://www.linuxmint.com/ Jimbo

    A few years back Apple completely redid the iMovie interface and removed a bunch of the features it had enjoyed for many years. Loads of guys were out raged, saying this was simply a tactic to force people to buy Final Cut Express, but I always got the impression Apple must have done some research and got the shocking realisation that most people weren’t using iMovie because it was too complicated for what they wanted, I.e. trim the start and end off a clip and upload it to youtube.

    My point being, your criticisms of this app are kinda misplaced. In the same way most people don’t need GIMP, most people don’t need greenscreen or anything more complicated than basic trimming. The days of people wanting to turn their holiday footage into a 30 minute epic documentary are long gone. People just wanna squirt 3 minute clips up to youtube, if this app does that simply and cleanly then it is a winner.

    The one thing that does worry me though is the part about not working with DV. The guys are very much mistaken if they believe this is an acceptable position for a video editor to be in.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I totally understand the correlation between “too complex” and what users actually use it for. I just used the yardstick of “what’s default elsewhere” and to include a video editor that is WORSE than Windows Movie Maker (including the even worse Windows Live Movie Maker) is a false step.

      If they’re really sold on PiTiVi then perhaps they should wait a release of two until it has feature parity with WMM or choose an alternative that is already there.

      I certainly feel as though Ubuntu needs to offer an “iLife” type suite by default and so a video editor is needed, but PiTiVi…

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    I fear this too. PiTiVi currently is absolutely awful. It has future, but now it’s unusable. And hey Jimbo, it’s ok if people simply want to trim videos down, but having no effects and transitions AT ALL is a bit… I don’t know, it gives a bad impression. Something ‘not good enough’.

    Also, Kdenlive is the best when it comes to “simple” editing (since we aren’t talking about Cinelerra) but.. KDE.. =/

  • zombiepig

    I might be wrong here, but from what I gather, openshot uses ffmpeg for encoding. And ffmpeg can’t be included in the default ubuntu installation because of patent issues. Using the gstreamer based pitivi might be the only way ubuntu can do this legally – because gstreamer has the codecs separated into safe and non-safe packages.
    That said, while pitivi has come a long way, it’s still got work to do. Hopefully being included by default might mean a bit of a development push that’ll bring it more up to speed!

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      That is also true, but the majority of Codecs people will want to edit with are in the “ugly” packages, which is, like ffmpeg, legally dubious so it’s a lose/lose.

      • daas88

        It’s a shame, because openshot is the best mix between easy and feature rich in gnome. At least they should include it by default in the repos…

  • http://twitter.com/SeifSallam Seif Sallam

    thats why i was thinking that there should be something similar to Ubuntu Brainstorm for people to give votes for ideas like this, should we use PiTiVi or OpenShot? giving the pros and cons of each, and let people decide too. this is called democracy.

  • Frustrated

    Openshot looks good but has many issues. It works fine for some but not for others. Most of the bugs are unassigned and they seem to focusing their effort to get it to work with Karmic and leaving the Jaunty users behind. I posted a bug and worked with them for a week with no success. Even their new ‘experimental ppa’ screws up other players still.
    I gave up… Looking for an alternate.

    • Anonymous

      I’ve been frustrated, as well. I really, really want it to work! I have to say, though, that when I had a major issue a couple of months ago, I received lots of attention from the two developers in a forum thread as they worked to get it running on my system. Though it didn’t get resolved, they score big points for caring so much!

      And I just tried using it again after a couple of months of no-go, and it seems to be working for me, at least for now. Not sure what changed, but if I could freeze everything as-is, I would! It’s the on-again, off-again that makes me nervous.

    • FabriceV

      Lets the jaunty bugs behind and unassigned… You post about Cannonical or about OpenShot???

  • .fosk.

    The correct name is Collabora, not Collabara

  • Anonymous

    Yeah I don’t know what to make of this. We do have the issue of FFMPEG (non-free) vs. GStreamer (free?), and I don’t know that it could easily be reconciled. Libraries like FFMPEG and LAME are basically essential for any power-user, so I really don’t know should be done with this. Ubuntu should stay as free as possible, but perhaps not at the expense of users… It’s a difficult balance for sure.

  • Peter

    LOL. piti-tv still looks like it did 2 years ago. That should be a default app? Hell freezes over.. OpenShot for president!
    Give that pitititv guy something else to work on. Dunno, something in /dev/null?

  • http://rgzblog.blogspot.com/ rgz

    100% agreed.

  • Mel

    I tried Pitivi and OpenShot. Both sucked, but it was an old OpenShot version and it crashed too much. Pitivi has nothing, it’s really crappy at this time, and come on, no effects? That’s really crappy. I’m gonna give OpenShot a try again.

    By the looks on the screenshot Pitivi is the one with a bad UI, OpenShot looks more modern and sleeker.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      This why i don’t entirely understand the “emphasis” they’re putting on PiTiVi, especially when deriding OpenShot at the same time. I’m sensing it has more to do with the company behind Collabora than the merits of PiTiVi.

      To think PiTiVi has two paid developers and OpenShot has none yet look at which is better…

      • Mel

        Just because a company is behind a project doesn’t mean it’s good. Sometimes companies make things even worse, because all they want is money after all.

        A passionate team of developers that put their hearts in their projects, sometimes or most of the times, make better projects. And they really listen to their communities, that counts!

      • Anonymous

        Sorry, but I have to agree with the UI comment– OpenShot looks like it’s made of blue balloon animals! It’s also not very stable for me, though currently, it seems to be working (keeping fingers crossed!). There are a lot of things already in place in OpenShot that need to be improved, whereas in PiTiVi, those things haven’t been added yet… maybe that’s part of the Ubuntu team’s thinking?

    • daas88

      just an advice: when you install openshot, don’t add the ppa, just download the .debs.
      I tried it days ago and i had to remove the repo and downgrade some packages that openshot had updated, because i couldn’t watch any video in any video player…

      But downloading the debs have worked fine for me!

  • http://danielsouzat.wordpress.com/ Daniel de Souza Telles

    Watta political decision! I agree with you swap GIMP with PiTiVi was a bad, very bad move.

    • http://www.linuxmint.com/ Jimbo

      TBF, if they stick PiTiVi in the alphas and everyone says they hate it and it crashes all the time they will take it out again. Its not all doom and gloom with Ubuntu destined to ship a terrible app and nothing we can do about it.

  • Ben

    :( First the GIMP is going and now PiTiVi is being chosen over Open Shot. I really hope that they change their minds on both matters and that they stop comparing to windows! Ubuntu shouldn’t be a distro designed specifically for new converts, it should be a distro designed to be unique! Maybe I’m going over the top but it seems to me like Ubuntu is heading towards becoming a distro for helping windows users recover from the trauma of their prior OS.

  • http://twitter.com/lwordish Alexandra Jau

    Checked out OpenShot and was just about to install when I read the following:

    “WARNING: Our PPA uses a special version of FFmpeg, which does not work with VLC & Totem, and a few other movie players. This is due to how we are packaging FFmpeg in our PPA. We are working to fix this, but if you install via the PPA, you will not be able to run VLC at this time”

    Thanks, but no thanks. I need VLC.

  • FabriceV

    If your presentation is true, then you inform us that a group of silly people make decision just based on their opinion at the time of one meeting. Effectively the GUI of OpenShot was ugly… But it WAS improved, and no one prevent to give advice to correct the smaller problems that are still present. Sure, PiTIVI will be stable… Useless and stable… This is the advantage of outdated software with slow development.

  • Anonymous

    Bad move.

    Latest pitivi is completely broken in git, and nobody has time to work on it.

  • http://www.pitivi.org/ Edward Hervey

    what a depressing post (in some aspects). I’ll answer the various questions/comments/rants all the same.

    * PiTiVi doesn’t support DV/mpeg4/whatever-format
    Where did you get that idea from ? PiTiVi doesn’t come shipped with codecs, it relies on GStreamer to provide the needed plugins/decoders/etc… If you load a DV file in pitivi and you don’t have the plugins, the application missing-plugin system should appear proposing you to download the needed plugin.

    * Collabora pushed PiTiVi aggresively into ubuntu
    That’s 100% totally wrong. I personally had chats with Jono and Rick Spencer about having PiTiVi shipped as a default application, and canonical were interested by the idea of having a video editor shipped by default. All of this was far from being enforced, or us (Collabora) going out of our way to have PiTiVi shipped by default. And nothing’s engraved in stone at this point. If we (pitivi development team) get feedback/help on improving what’s bothering people by the Lucid release date and people deem it good enough to be shipped by default, great ! If we get no help… well.. PiTiVi won’t die and people will still be able to use it via PPAs.

    * Why ship PiTiVi as default app and not another video editor
    I’d say the main reason is that all the dependencies (except for goocanvas, which is pretty slim) are already shipped by default : GStreamer, GTK, python. All the other editors would require bringing in more dependencies. I’ll let Canonical/Ubuntu confirm that or not.

    * lack of features …
    On this part we have always taken the stand of making sure features are as solid as possible before adding new features. In terms of video editing, that means you do need to have input/output format support rock solid, trimming/cutting rock solid. Check out how many clips/movies/documentaries/… out there and see how much of them make use of video effects, for how long, and how many don’t.
    The two features we find critically missing are : video transitions and overlaying. I just merged yesterday the videomixing branch yesterday to master which enables setting transparency on every video streams (like Sony Vegas does). It still has some issues, but having it in master will force/speedup the bugfixing process.
    Video effects are not a top-priority. Getting those… without being able to do the features above are pointless. We won’t diverge from that point of view. Helping us get the above rock solid as fast as possible … will mean you will see video effects faster.

    * To people throwing generic rants about sucking
    Write a video editor (or any non-trivial multimedia applicatoin), then come back and rant about other people’s application sucking. Then we might have a proper discussion. In the meantime… you’re not improving the situation.

    * PiTiVi is dead or no longer maintained
    The 3 main developers (who also happen to be hired by Collabora and that includes myself) have been working on some other company work in the meantime. Keeping Collabora hiring those 3 developers, means ensuring they have time to be paid to work on it also. (I’d personnaly love to have people working 100% of the time on PiTiVi … but you need to take into account the reality of running a business).
    We’re progressively getting more company time for PiTiVi (Brandon has been back on it full time for the past frew weeks for example). It’s far from being abandoned/dead, just that we do it at our own pace. It’s freely available (LGPL, no copryight attributions required) and will always stay that way. We always welcome contributions and are pretty fast to review/commit patches.

    Drop in on #pitivi on irc.freenode.net or send us a mail on pitivi-pitivi@lists.sourceforget.net and come and give your feedback, what can be improved, what’s good and should be kept and … who knows … be part of the pitivi team :)

    Edward Hervey: PiTiVi creator/maintainer, GStreamer hacker, Collabora Multimedia co-director

  • Andoni

    Why did you delete Edward’s comment?

    • Anonymous

      Indeed why?
      Subject: [omgubuntu] Re: PiTiVi On Course To Become A Default Applications…
      Date: 11/20/2009 04:25:28 AM (Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:25:28 -0000)

      Edward Hervey (unregistered) wrote:

      what a depressing post (in some aspects). I’ll answer the various questions/comments/rants all the same.

      * PiTiVi doesn’t support DV/mpeg4/whatever-format
      Where did you get that idea from ? PiTiVi doesn’t come shipped with codecs, it relies on GStreamer to provide the needed plugins/decoders/etc… If you load a DV file in pitivi and you don’t have the plugins, the application missing-plugin system should appear proposing you to download the needed plugin.

      * Collabora pushed PiTiVi aggresively into ubuntu
      That’s 100% totally wrong. I personally had chats with Jono and Rick Spencer about having PiTiVi shipped as a default application, and canonical were interested by the idea of having a video editor shipped by default. All of this was far from being enforced, or us (Collabora) going out of our way to have PiTiVi shipped by default. And nothing’s engraved in stone at this point. If we (pitivi development team) get feedback/help on improving what’s bothering people by the Lucid release date and people deem it good enough to be shipped by default, great ! If we get no help… well.. PiTiVi won’t die and people will still be able to use it via PPAs.

      * Why ship PiTiVi as default app and not another video editor
      I’d say the main reason is that all the dependencies (except for goocanvas, which is pretty slim) are already shipped by default : GStreamer, GTK, python. All the other editors would require bringing in more dependencies. I’ll let Canonical/Ubuntu confirm that or not.

      * lack of features …
      On this part we have always taken the stand of making sure features are as solid as possible before adding new features. In terms of video editing, that means you do need to have input/output format support rock solid, trimming/cutting rock solid. Check out how many clips/movies/documentaries/… out there and see how much of them make use of video effects, for how long, and how many don’t.
      The two features we find critically missing are : video transitions and overlaying. I just merged yesterday the videomixing branch yesterday to master which enables setting transparency on every video streams (like Sony Vegas does). It still has some issues, but having it in master will force/speedup the bugfixing process.
      Video effects are not a top-priority. Getting those… without being able to do the features above are pointless. We won’t diverge from that point of view. Helping us get the above rock solid as fast as possible … will mean you will see video effects faster.

      * To people throwing generic rants about sucking
      Write a video editor (or any non-trivial multimedia applicatoin), then come back and rant about other people’s application sucking. Then we might have a proper discussion. In the meantime… you’re not improving the situation.

      * PiTiVi is dead or no longer maintained
      The 3 main developers (who also happen to be hired by Collabora and that includes myself) have been working on some other company work in the meantime. Keeping Collabora hiring those 3 developers, means ensuring they have time to be paid to work on it also. (I’d personnaly love to have people working 100% of the time on PiTiVi … but you need to take into account the reality of running a business).
      We’re progressively getting more company time for PiTiVi (Brandon has been back on it full time for the past frew weeks for example). It’s far from being abandoned/dead, just that we do it at our own pace. It’s freely available (LGPL, no copryight attributions required) and will always stay that way. We always welcome contributions and are pretty fast to review/commit patches.

      Drop in on #pitivi on irc.freenode.net or send us a mail on pitivi-pitivi@lists.sourceforget.net and come and give your feedback, what can be improved, what’s good and should be kept and … who knows … be part of the pitivi team :)

      Edward Hervey: PiTiVi creator/maintainer, GStreamer hacker, Collabora Multimedia co-director

      Link to comment: http://disq.us/43ri7

  • Frank

    Come on guys… you can’t ship by default an FFMPEG based project in a distro for all the licenses issues. That’s why they have chosen pitivi