Linux Format

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Version: 1.12.2 Web: http://bit.ly/2rM2Ui3

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Alexander Tolstoy isn’t detaining any political activists, he’s far too busy detaining the best FLOSS he can round up off the internet: Flow blade, K mail, Screen cloud, ANGRY search, V itunes, Min, Curlew, Konv, Feed reader, Speed Laz er, ExtremeTux­Racer.

Even in the post-camcorder era, people still generate countless gigabytes of video content. Most of it comes from their smartphone­s and remains, for the most part, unedited and unloved. The Linux Format team believes that these files shouldn’t be forgotten or stored as a dead weight on a hard drive, so let’s make better use of them by producing some cool home videos. When placed alongside the most well-establishe­d non-linear video editors in Linux, such as Kdenlive and OpenShot, Flowblade is a lesser-known rival. Don’t let its obscurity put you off, though. The program is just the kind of video editor that you’ll want to get to know, and you were probably blissfully ignorant of its existence until you turned to this page (unless you’ve read up on it back in LXF175). Flowblade’s key benefits are a friendly and logical GUI layout, coupled with its smooth overall performanc­e. The timeline is in the lower part of the window, while the preview zone with playback controls

“It’s just the kind of video editor that you’ll want to get to know.”

are at the top-right corner. If you’ve ever mastered some footage in any other video editor, it won’t take long to become familiar with Flowblade thanks to its traditiona­l interface design.

You can start with importing source clips by pressing the Add button, or just dragging files over the top-left part of the window. Then you can drag clips to the timeline and spice them up with various effects and transition­s. The timeline has several tracks (by default, the active track is set to Track 1, the lowermost one) that enables you to stack several clips and play with superimpos­ing effects. The top-left area has tabs below it for switching to different views, exploring filters and compositor­s, managing projects and rendering your work to the target file.

Flowblade uses the same MLT/ FFmpeg engine as most other nonlinear editors. The applicatio­n requires a long list of Python modules to be installed beforehand, but doesn’t need any building from source. Once you satisfy all its requiremen­ts, simply run the ./flowblade script to get started. If you’re not missing anything in your system, Flowblade should prove itself to be stable and fully functional.

 ??  ?? Flowblade showcases a good balance between features and simplicity for editing your video clips.
Flowblade showcases a good balance between features and simplicity for editing your video clips.

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