So first of all I have plans for videos about the following topics regarding to Zacharian Computer Detective episodes:
- Apple Macintosh video (in post-production: editing, most of the episode raw video exists)
- ICL MikroMikko Pentium video (in production: part of the episode on raw video)
- Nintendo 64 video (in (pre) production: parts on video, much undone, however)
- Atari 8-bit video (in pre-production: still planning what exactly to include)
- Brother digital typewriter video (in pre-production: still planning)
- NEC PC-88/98 video (in pre-production: I'll need quite a few things to get either of these properly running, but on the other hand might start them as a series starting with ordering them etc., as it was not so simple to even get them in the first place)
- Amiga content exploration from old disks (in pre-production: needs to get a session arranged when has time).
There are also some other topics that I have postponed at least for now, even while there might be some related work done already:
- Nokia Data MikroMikko 386 computer (got some video, not sure how to fix it yet)
- Schneider portable 386 computer (might go to pre-production at some point)
- Windows 98 computer circa 2000 type (could start working with easily, but pending)
- IBM AT motherboard to a working computer (missing casing and time)
- Locked Thinkpad motherboard (lacking time for the operation, also might lack some parts)
- Various A/V mixer devices (a bit off topic, but maybe later)
- Several Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads
- Unpacking of everything (might get these to some point, got lots of video material existing but there is already too much unpacking videos out there)
- Actually quite a bit smaller and bigger other things that might connect to some other stuff as well.
Whoah, that already made quite a list without even really trying. It'd take not so much effort to think of more stuff I'd have more or less pending for working, yet it starts to seem obvious that unless if I'll get some extra hand available or something else happens (such as needing less time with my work), I'll have a long time to work with even these things. I've stopped obtaining new computer equipment that doesn't have quite direct need in some context - both because started to run low on space to keep stuff and because will have hard time finding time to deal with already existing stuff.
Obviously also if I'll keep making stuff on videos, it will take me a lot longer to deal with the equipment than if I'll simply do the fix on the computer itself. That is why I'm not documenting every computer operation on video I do at home, such as pimping up some old laptops (from 2007-2009) to be cabable for some modern use with other people who are living with me.
When turning into tactical side, I have some potentially very good news after some bad news. They are related. Bad news is that I more or less got enough of Kdenlive. New version of Kdenlive (19.04.0) was released like couple weeks ago. My previous version was 18.12.1b from like couple months earlier, which is now labelled as unsupported legacy version, and with Ubuntu there are only Appimages available for use. Shouldn't this be a good news then though, as there seems to be lots of good new features and fixes in it and more are to come?
Well for start the new version refused to run practically any of my old projects refused to start up with the new version. This is not essentially critical, mainly because I've started such workflow with Kdenlive that I'll do one episode only and with one version, then I don't need to return to the old project since I'm doing a series. Kdenlive had been doing this on many earlier versions already, so I was sort of prepared with a workaround. I'm suspecting that the main reason is that Speed effect has been completely reworked, so the old version Speed effect (which I've used a lot, as there are some excessively long videos of disassemblies etc.) probably simply causes crash as it's no longer in the new version at all. Annoyance of course, since I can't keep long-term things or pre-prepared intro/outro sections anymore, but I can live with this.
However, when I then started a completely new project clean off, the application soon crashed. When I'll just hit Create Folder (for new clips), the new version of Kdenlive crashes abruptly. No questions asked, there is nothing to see, go home people. Well right... I could still live without making any folders, and it might work for instance by having folders done separately without doing ANYTHING else with the project...but no. I've had enough of this crap.
For around two years I've tried to live with Kdenlive, and I've managed somehow. All the time the application crashes here and there, certain features will break irrepairably the whole project and various features in the application slow down my workflow considerably and/or are just inconvenient in my opinion. Yet I have eventually managed to find workarounds, to know which places I should not to touch and to make backups frequently in such fashion that I won't overwrite the old one. Kdenlive has a lot of potential and several nice features. However, it is just terrible to work with in a long run. Many features simply won't work - not merely not working in fashion desired, but some things just are flat out non-functional or cause sudden crashes. Then when a new version appears, something might get fixed and something new usable might get added, but usually something else gets broken in trade. They've been reporting they've been doing quite a while of project refactoring, and supposedly it is now pretty much done with the version 19.04...and it still doesn't work.
Frankly, I have lost faith with the project progress with Kdenlive. It will keep developing, but I don't see any reason why it would not keep developing in rather jagged and irregular fashion. Updates will surely keep popping every now and then, and supposedly it keeps getting better and so on step by step (even with the steps back in between). However, probably also as an open source project there will keep being several temporary people assigned to the project, who will do some parts that some other people will not know about. These random branches in the project might get hanging until they are broken by some other parts later on. I don't really know if it goes exactly like that, since I've not participated, but I'm expecting the situation to be something like that.
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| Making a proper dual screen setup on Kdenlive was pain in the donkey. With DaVinci Resolve it's no problem, and the layout won't get badly messed up by every startup. |
So in the other words, I just don't believe Kdenlive will become sufficiently "done" for my taste in a long time if ever. I'm also weary on the fact that large sections won't work, the application is bloated and unstable and that I'll constantly need to give up with project files if I wish to update my crippled editor. I have even a feature film unedited, and I simply dared not to even try starting it with Kdenlive.
On the bright side, however, I noticed that DaVinci Resolve (DR for now on) had just gotten a new version 16 Beta almost the same time. I've ranted about this before in Facebook, and when I first tried DR in version 14, it was not possible to have audio out at all with my hardware under Linux. Version 15 last year provided the long waited audio support, but since DR would have very limited support to video and audio codecs (especially on Linux free version), I felt it's better to simply stick with Kdenlive for now. Especially as I was unable to get DR properly running out of the box.
I'm not sure if there are much real difference between versions 15 and 16, especially related to runnability on Linux, but I figured to give it a try again. After getting CUDA installed and confirmed that my NVIDIA drivers are as new as I can find (version 418.39), I was able to run DR without it getting stuck early on. I also figured that converting my videos to DR supported DNxHR codec with FFMPEG batch commands wouldn't be too bad, as I can just hit them running on background while doing something else. Obviously this converting also brings some advantage in editing, since DNxHR codec is more pleasant to process with than say H.264 (a codec which my main camera outputs), although in some cases for instance clips taken as desktop screen capture the video size might get 100 times larger (from 200MB to 20 GB in one case) if I desire to keep with the image quality.
Therefore, I got DR running without problems. And gosh, actually it felt like having a decent video editing software running on my computers for the first time for almost 10 years. I used to work with old Adobe Premiere Pro versions, but I had to move on because I'm no longer using Windows as my main computer and as my old version would not have proper support for FullHD videos (and tbh the CS2 from 2005 started to feel like lackluster in its features and usability already, that would have not bothered much before 2010). Unfortunately, then I found out that it's not a trivial task to find a proper Linux based video editor - I mean even if planning to buy something.
I haven't yet used DR for much, but the first impression after nightmares in Kdenlive felt almost like paradise. The interface seemed clear and easy to use (a video editing beginner might disagree though; there are lots of features around) and I could add, place, preview and adjust the videos just as I wanted without much effort. In addition, everything felt really smooth - stacking few videos or adding some random effects seemed no problems, while Kdenlive started to stagger if any single effect was in effect or any more than one track would be on adjacent tracks. I have noticed a bit weird fashion of acting while unconnecting audio tracks from videos (tracks jumping to the beginning and crushing old clips beneath), which seems like a bug, but I can live with that plus UNDO feature actually works no problem (unlike in Kdenlive quite often). Unlike Kdenlive, DR seems very stable too - although I needed quite a bit of tinkering to get the system into that state really.
This saying, I see huge potential with DR on my work, and it feels like DR might prove out becoming the same for video editing as Unity 3D was for game development when it become free to use. If no major unpleasant surprises will appear soon, I think I shall have a lot more pleasant video editing moments to come. Maybe simple videos will require a bit less effort to finish after all, and maybe I even will dare to finally start that old feature film editing as well yet with DR... Stay tuna heads, I mean tuned!
