Pitivi – A Free and Open Source Video Editor for Linux

Pitivi is a beautiful, powerful and intuitive free and open-source non-linear video editor and it just received the biggest update since its first release. As time will have it, the latest version of Pitivi, 2020.09 is its first major release since 2018 which, as you must have noticed, features a year and month as the version number as opposed to the common “1.x” naming convention.

What’s New in Pitivi?

For starters, Pitivi features a new welcome screen/wizard with a more elaborate overview of existing projects. It also now uses scaled proxy clips to make optimized media easier for machines to handle and then restores their editing state when reopening the project.

There is a redesigned effects library that makes using video effects a lot cooler with the option to save favourites for quick access. The clip effects UI has also been revamped for batch-tweaking effects at once.

That’s not all. Pitivi features a new plugin system designed to extend its functionality in the medium term with its target on ‘teams of editors‘ instead of effect makers. This comes alongside a developer console plugin for using Python to interact with the app.

Other new features include an easy Ken-Burns effect, composition guidelines in the Viewer, a refactored media library, new keyboard shortcuts, a streamlined render dialogue UI, easy alignment for video clips, the ability to mute or hide entire layers, support for nested timelines, timeline markers, viewer size snapping at 50% when resized, and support for solid colour clips.

Install Pitivi on Linux

Pitivi 2020.09 is available as a Flatpak app and you can download it from Flathub by clicking on the download button below.

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Download Pitivi from Flathub” style=”squared” url=”https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.pitivi.Pitivi” target=”_blank” bg_color=”#529b30″ txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-download” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

Alternatively, you can run the following commands to install Pitvi on Debian, Ubuntu and Mint from the terminal.

$ sudo apt install flatpak
$ flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
$ flatpak install flathub org.pitivi.Pitivi
$ flatpak run org.pitivi.Pitivi//stable

Are you not a fan of Flatpak? You can check out your distro’s archives for an installable version but my recommendation is that you wait for a Snap, PPA, or AppImage to show up; it shouldn’t be long from now especially with all the developers it is attracting.

Are you learning about Pitivi for the first time? Which video editor software do you use and what can you tell us about your experience with any of the apps? You’re welcome to drop your comments in the section below.

Divine Okoi is a cybersecurity postgrad with a passion for the open-source community. With 700+ articles covering different topics in IT, you can always trust him to inform you about the coolest tech.

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