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I am new to the world of open source software. I'm a video enthusiast. I am used to using Sony Vegas - a professional editor so I want an open source editor with professional capabilities for Vimeo, YouTube and personal use. I use Ubuntu 14.04. I searched Google and I have tried Openshot and Pitivi but they don't have the facilities offered by Sony Vegas. Can anyone recommend a video editor that might suit me?

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There is no really really awesome video editor for Linux. There are some good ones, but most of them are either a pain to use or don't offer a whole lot of functionality. If you don't want to re-learn everything, you can also run Sony Vegas in Wine.

In my opinion, KDEnlive offers the best balance between UX and functionality, so it can be used as a drop-in replacement for Vegas. You may want to watch some YouTube tutorials on how to get started, once you get the hang of it, it's self-explanatory.

You already mentioned Openshot and Pitivi. Those are sleek, but not powerful enough for professional use.

Then, there Cinelerra and Blender VSE, both very powerful but in no way intuitive in some ways just weird.

So i recommend you use KDEnlive, it works on the Unity Desktop and offers all the functionality of Vegas (i think). But a video editor as powerful and sleek as Final Cut or Premiere is yet to be created for Linux.

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  • Thank you for your suggestion. I will try and I will watch for developments.
    – Bea
    Dec 4, 2016 at 10:31
  • The UX is not very good, it is complicated and not user-friendly. Sep 7, 2019 at 15:40
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I cannot think of any reason why Sony Vegas should not run in Wine. I am also using 14.x LTS, and until Microsoft decided to force feed Windoze-10 "upgrades," I happily ran my Sony editor under Windows 7, which is the OS that particular software was designed for.

A different approach to your problem is to simply follow Microsoft's instructions, and create yourself an "image" (.iso) file of a working Windows 7 hard drive that has the sony software installed --> and nothing else. Save all your work product on removable or external media, and then, using a pair or SSDs, you simply "flash" the stored image file every time you use the video editor. This will boot your Windows box up to essentially an "OOBE" condition. In Windows-Speak, that's "Out Of the Box Experience." I have heard it said that it really means "Out Of Body Experience," which is what some of those software designers must be doing all day long. I use a nifty little USB-3 external hot-swappable SATA drive bay that is capable of copying drive 0 to drive 1, making, effectively, a RAID Mirrored Pair. I simply reload the image file fresh to my Windows SSD every time I need to launch the editor, and save my work product on a 3 TB NAS (Western Digital MyCloud.) If Windows Update dumps a load of garbage in my yard while I'm in the midst of an editing session, I will not allow the machine to restart, and before I boot it again, I will reload the "out of the box image" so that Windows begins fresh and new and unburdened by Redmond stupidity. Thank God for USB-3 and SSDs and external hot-swap drive bays that can copy a drive without having a computer connected! Guarantees you get an exact sector by sector and bit by bit copy every single time.

The greatest failure of Microsoft has been their inability to grasp the necessity for an operating system that runs the software I need today in order to get my work done. If the software is designed for Windows 7, it goes without saying that I would prefer to leave my hardware alone and let it continue to function as my dedicated video editor. Someone at Microsoft has a vision of everyone marching in lock step like lemmings about to plunge over a precipice, following after the latest trending item. Even though it may not look very much like it, the Internet is not my primary reason for operating a digital computer. I probably would not connect a Windows machine to the Internet at all, were it not for the fact that it will shut down if I keep it isolated too long. We absolutely must have those "Recommended" updates! How else will we continually have a fresh selection of non-functional items that worked perfectly well prior to the latest "urgent," "emergency," "security" bovine-excrement those pesky Redmondites required us to accept even though we don't need any "updates" because, you see, the software I need to earn my living worked perfectly on Windows 7 without any updates. The only "update" problem I have is the problem that Windows Updates invariably make it impossible to use the software I most need to have operational.

And who wants to buy a newer version of Sony Vegas when the old version works perfectly well provided that the idiots in Redmond ever grow a brain cell or two and realize it may be time to drop the "upgrade" paradigm and instead simply launch new platform ideas when people purchase a new platform?

Unfortunately, most Linux and Unix distros are as guilty as Microsoft when it comes to force feeding so-called "updates" that serve no purpose as far as getting my work done in a timely manner is concerned. Most so-called "updates" simply create broken software issues that give me (guaranteed) enough non-functional software to trouble-shoot that I may not get a day off before my 95th birthday. I've been doing this since 15 years before Microsoft Corporation was incorporated, so who better than me to critique their business model? It's great for share-holder value, but piss-poor for working people who need a stable platform so they can get a little work done! My question is this: Whom do they believe has time to spend the next 25 ~ 30 years trouble-shooting software that worked perfectly well BEFORE the so-called "urgently necessary" "security-issue" baloney was force fed (dumped) on their income-generating platform. New ideas are wonderful things, and some times they even offer the hope of something useful for me rather than simply being useful for someone like Google which, in the final analysis, is only interested in how many times they can count me as a "click" on some advertiser's link.

Good Luck. Remember, "illegitimi non carborundum." (Roughly, "Don't let the bastards grind you down!")

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