On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey@boosthardware.com> wrote:
There are several options for professional AV editing on Linux. Lightworks
has some industry clout because it has been used on several award winning
and many successful box office hits.  However they have been sitting on a
beta release for over 2 years now so that's a bit lame.


There really aren't several options for professional AV editing, if by professional you mean AV editing in need of more advanced workflows.  I spent some time a year or two ago looking through every available option I could find, and even for my, pretty dang basic(*), workflows I need at my work they were all exceedingly limited and didn't hold a candle to commercial proprietary options out there.  Remember professional can mean more than just you get paid in terms of both audio and video editing, it can also mean something that allows you to work FAST and work through particular workflows.

* In this case I was just looking for something with a usable titling solution, I would have used Openshot with Blender integration myself, that could easily and effectively do a basic chroma key and mask to allow me to overlay the video on top of other video or generated backgrounds.  This is really what I would consider 'entry' level for most professional video applications, and everything out there, if it could even do it, took a multiple of the amount of time I could do it in FCPX (Or FCP7) in, time which frankly I just don't have, and again my workflow isn't nearly as demanding as other studio workflows.  This doesn't even touch on grading requirements, etc. I should note that I tested the NLE in Blender before Tears of Steel was released and that work pushed into main or released, so it may have improved there some at least.
 
With a combo of Blender, Cinelerra, <FLOSS DAW>, kdenlive, Openshot,
FFMPEG you can achieve almost everything that Lightworks is offering
without spending any money on software. Cinelerra and Blender are capable
of pulling off the vast majority of what Lightworks is offering. IMO the
Lightworks interface is not more intuitive than Blender or Cinelerra. They
all have a steep learning curve and require extensive background knowledge
to generate professional quality output.

Blender is decidedly focused on integrating 3D into the workflow, which is a good thing.  It does mean that using it for straight video work is much more time consuming as well though.  Cinelerra was just a hassle in many ways when I tested it, it was actually one of the least succesful for the time and workflow aspect I mentioned above, in no small part due to the instability, but also from an aspect of workflow as well.


For proprietary Linux NLE software you can use Smoke and Maya from
Autodesk or Fabric Engine ( basically a proprietary clone of Blender
funded by AMD ) and for proprietary 3d generators you can use Massive from
the people behind Peter Jacksons animation technology or a selection of 3d
game engines like Unigine, Unity, etc... For a proprietary version of
FFMPEG you can purchase a license from multicorewareinc if you are a large
studio, scientific organisation or government agency and you meet their
strict guidleines on gaining access to their proprietary codebase. Hint.
First you need lots of money and second you have to be on the official
technology sharing whitelist.


I wouldn't call either smoke or maya a professional NLE for a video editor.  They are tools to use in the pipeline primarily, for VFX or 3D generation much moreso than an NLE. 
 
There are also several open source 3d game engines like cube2 that have
advanced features and potential if you don't want to spend money on
software as well as the one built directly into Blender.


Not sure what this has to do with an NLE at all.
 

All the big names in the movie industry have embraced Linux (except AVID).
It's taking a while longer for the music software industry to get it.


We have been through this before, you are severely overstating things.
 
The truth is if they don't catch up soon they will miss their chance. I
give it 6 months before the companies stubbornly clinging on to the
windows/mac platforms get slammed now that Steam for Linux has been
released and all those people who were only keeping a Windows box to play
games on are released from that burden.


I would say you are VERY overly optomistic.  This is coming from a gamer that uses Linux for his professional audio work, and coordinates video work with three other people, and none of them would he consider Linux an option for right now.
 
      Seablade