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I hate open source.
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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</clickbait_title>

I just spent a full day, maybe longer, working on this video project using Kdenlive. It's like an open source Adobe Premiere for non-linear video editing. Tons of hard work into my project.

Then I go to render and find out that everywhere I used a speed-up/slow-down effect on clips... it basically destroys after you save. It took me at least an hour to realize it was only affecting those clips, and another hour or two of googling and trying fixes to workout the issue. The clips get moved to a random position on the source material and if you modify them the "effects" are all missing and the file will be corrupted.

I tried newer versions... and they also corrupt the project.

I made an account and posted my problem.

... no replies.

>:(

My current solution (which has sucked all the fun out of the project) that I'm left with, is convert each of my hour long clips MANUALLY into 2x, 1/2x, 1/4x, etc complete files, add them to my project, and find the EXACT spot where the boundaries should be (before I could just "clip"/"snip" an existing clip at the front and back, and then apply the motion filter for that section. No syncing needed.). And, there goes any interactivity and tweaking because I'll have to know the exact speeds in advance. So I can't tweak the speed 10% up or down and have it match the duration I'm looking for.

p.s. (Don't get me wrong, closed-source tools have incredible failures. Like Adobe After Effects? CANNOT LOAD MKV files. What's an MKV? Just a CONTAINER for an MP4. (Simplification.) It's !@$!@'ing pathetic that you can't, in 2018/2019/3048, load a well-known format or even support a public extension system like... WINAMP did... in the 90's.) But something as fundamental as a speed plugin would have not passed a QA stage and if it did, the customers would have raised a storm and it would have been resolved.

p.p.s Also, upping the project resolution from 1080p to 1440p because I forgot to at the start? BREAKS ALL CLIPS. They all end up zero length so I'd have to manually re-sync over a hundred clips.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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It's Friday, you're supposed to drink.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Imagine driving an open source car. Or sitting in an open source plane. The difference between you wanting to do that or not would not be if they are open source or not.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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You mean you hate open source because of all the bugs?

Actually, I've had plenty of bad bugs that aren't fixed because devs don't care about the particular platform or area. VLC doesn't give two !@#$!@'s about Windows bugs.

But like I said, I'm just frustrated at such a stupid, essential bug not being fixed.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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A video editor I heard some good things about is called OpenShot. I am not experienced in this, but I may give it a try. Blender can also do video editing, though I am not certain how well as I am fairly new to this. But those are what I am looking at.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Proprietary software regularly has bugs, and generally speaking the vendors do not care to fix them unless important clients or a very large number of people are affected.

For example, Microsoft Outlook often inserts extra lines between text, but only when viewing the message. While composing the message it looks normal. Then after you've sent it everybody using certain versions of Outlook gets extra lines (like say 3 lines for every line in the message). Needless to say, this looks very sloppy and unprofessional. And the interesting thing is that other mail clients display the message fine. It seems only Outlook (and the online version, Outlook 365) suffer from this. And if you search the Web for this you'll discover that it has plagued the desktop client for years, and I have personally experienced it in the Web client for about 2 or 3 years as well. You'd think it would be simple to fix, but apparently Microsoft doesn't care about users of its software being able to send professionally formatted correspondence for business purposes. ::) I think that if you carefully shift+enter the newlines in the message you can sort of control it, but needless to say it's tedious to fix them, and all it takes is adding one new line without realizing it and it all goes to shit.

So yeah, if you think only open source software has bugs, or that only open source bugs don't get fixed, you're dreaming. And of course you're overlooking something huge about open source that proprietary software cannot compete with: the source code for the open source tool is available. If you are motivated enough you could develop a fix yourself. Or, you could hire a developer with the needed skills to fix it. You could potentially use one of those community funded Web sites to accumulate the funds needed to hire a developer with the necessary skills too. There are plenty of options. Whereas the price to tell Microsoft or Apple or Adobe what to do with their products is probably far more than a developer's time.

(I tried to reply to this thread a few days ago when I was stoned, but I couldn't focus long enough and started going off on tangents that didn't make sense ;D)

Append:

And I second OpenShot. It's the best video editing software that I have used. And I even paid for a Sony product while I was experimenting with motovlogging a couple of years back. But OpenShot worked better than that proprietary for-profit software (I think I paid something like $120 for the license). Certainly there are probably much better tools with more advanced features if you have a professional budget, but if you're looking for something cheap or free (and legal) OpenShot is a good contender.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Proprietary projects also fail regularly. ::) You're not making a valid argument. You're effectively complaining that people aren't doing good enough work for for you for free.

relpatseht
Member #5,034
September 2004
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The problem isn't open source in this case. All artist tools are terrible and riddled with bugs. It's a cultural problem where artists blame themselves when a program crashes and/or find workaround and move on. That's been my general experience, anyway.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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The good thing about open source if when there is such a problem, someone can eventually fix it, even you can with the proper skills.

But there's plenty of open source out there to choose from. If you really need better quality editors, than it's time to fork over some cash for a paid one rather than open source. Up to you. You get what you pay for. Open source can be really good, but it takes time to get to all the problems because, well... the pay sucks! ;)

In my own free game, I get a LOT of feature requests, but the people never want to donate. And I have zero incentive to work on it (which is why I released the source code). They all want features, but nobody wants to donate. One guy did donate and made requests and I implemented every request he wanted, because I had incentive. But working on free software is a real task, and not one with many, if any rewards.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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BUG: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5901?cversion=0&cnum_hist=6

Seven. Years.

VLC from version 2 and 3 has had the same, terrible, annoying, application-breaking bug.

... for at least SEVEN YEARS.

Open any file, device, network IP. Anything. And it fails? If the loop button is on, it will continually load the same failed file/connection/etc over and over (forever) while the ERROR BOX is set to a MODAL BOX so it takes complete focus from the main window (meaning you can't actually click the main window to close it).

The only way to fix it is to keep clicking the X button until Windows (being written by people who aren't retards) detects VLC is no longer handling the message pump (something that should NEVER happen in a program written by humans--as opposed to moneys) and greys the window out, allowing you to intentionally crash the program.

I even told you the solution. All they'd have to do is spawn the error box WITHOUT a tick set "modal" which prevents you from touching the parent window while it's open.

video

I love open source. I love free software. But let's all stop kidding around here and pretend that just because it's open source it will be fixed--no matter HOW simple the solution.

Something that could take less than an hour (max) to fix on a developers machine verses me, installing the complete dev kit (git, Windows/Linux, all the required packages), finding the source code lines for software that's completely foreign to me, and fixing it, AND hoping the devs actually give enough crap to merge it. Oh wait, because my contributions ALSO have to match their coding style so it'll likely need at least one or two "fixes" on my end to be merged in and they'll also have to spend time reviewing my code.

That's a pretty high burden of entry for the simplest possible problem.

And don't be like "omg, just fork it." Yeah, I definitely should fix a bug and have literally no one else know about it so they'll never benefit from it.

So while I'm just kidding about hating open source, let's not pretend that being open source means it's going to be a good product or maintained by courteous people.

Related story: For example, Dolphin is a great project, but I was trying to improve it (and my results were great!) but the people who KNEW facts I needed to know? (even how an API worked) One guy. Who was never on. And required me to get on IRC (no e-mail or forums) and was in Germany so he required me to be on in Germany hours... and only available a couple times a week. It was like pulling my hair out.

And NO, as all my posts apparently have to be 90% disclaimers these days, I'm not saying professional software == well-maintained and open-source software == bad. I'm just b!tching about an open source software package that is wasting my time.

One thing I really hate is when people make really nice websites for products that aren't as polished (OSS or professional). VLC? Kdenlive? Professional looking websites. Websites that would make you THINK you're going to have "Everything inside working". And then you get Kdenlive breaking on something as simple as changing PLAYBACK SPEED of a clip.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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VLC is still improving, slowly but surely. Maybe the issue is that it's almost exclusively used for video, not audio? Even Windows Media Player is better for audio. I also use MediaMonkey for that.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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bambams - the point of making a tool is to do a job - if the tool doesn't do its job, it's not really a tool, is it?

The point of attempting to make a tool is attempting to make doing a job easier. Of course, we're not gods, we're humans. Just because we set out to do something doesn't mean that it comes to fruition. It takes a lot of determination/motivation to complete a non-trivial project, let alone do it well. And even if we have that in ample supply there's no guarantee something we do will be good. We might suck at that thing. A lot of "success stories" rely heavily on entropy/luck. Too many things in life lead to that moment, and it cannot easily be replicated. It pretty much "happens when it happens", and the lucky people that benefit had some say in it, but odds are they were also just lucky as hell.

I love open source. I love free software. But let's all stop kidding around here and pretend that just because it's open source it will be fixed--no matter HOW simple the solution.

If it was THAT simple you'd just fix it yourself. :) Often times things that seem like they should be simple are much more complicated. That goes for all areas of the universe really. In any public situation if something is wrong/broken/delayed/etc there will be somebody there saying these people are idiots and it's so simple, but in practice it's almost never that simple.

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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I encountered bugs with kdenlive piecing together some travel videos, but it did the job. I did waste a lot of time in one project. There were more than 50 clips, most only about 10 seconds long. Spent a few hours getting the order and all the transitions right. At some point I needed to move a large group of clips ahead to add a new clip up front. I used CTRL+Click to select them. I have a HiDPI 4k display and I think when I CTRL+Clicked one of the clips I dragged a pixel or two, so it copied all of the clips and transitions but the copies weren't being displayed in the timeline. I continued working and didn't realize the problem for some time, and when I rendered it everything was messed up and out of place. When I closed kdenlive and opened it back up again all of the copied clips appeared. It took a long time to fix it.... :-/

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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VLC from version 2 and 3 has had the same, terrible, annoying, application-breaking bug.

I tried VLC out, didn't like it at all. I have been spoiled with Media Player Classic. Works well, has some nice resizing features I have set up, alt+enter goes fullscreen etc... VLC may have similar keys, but I am used to MPC. Never had any issues with it in my memory.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
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I love open source, I can fix bugs and modify behavior on my own even if the dev doesn't do squat.

Get good. ;D

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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Media Player is not a video editor, which means it doesn't count for this.

Except he was talking about VLC which is a video PLAYER not an editor, so yeah, Media Player does count and I wasn't replying to YOUR message anyhow!

---
“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Sometimes I feel like we're not having a shared conversation, but a bunch of separate personal conversations with ourselves...

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Sigh... Oh look, yet another broken feature. So i'm stuck re-encoding my videos for speedups/slowdowns by using FFMPEG command line commands. Then I go to my project and it's not working with keyframes on certain clips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_24LebM0E

First clip follows like it should. Second clip DOES NOT.

p.s. I have the worst freakin' luck getting A.CC to actually PREVIEW damn youtube links.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
avatar

Sometimes I feel like we're not having a shared conversation, but a bunch of separate personal conversations with ourselves...

Nah, just Edgar being an asshat as usual.

---
“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

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