When comparing OpenShot Video Editor vs Olive Video Editor, the Slant community recommends Olive Video Editor for most people. In the question“What are the best video editors for Linux?” Olive Video Editor is ranked 5th while OpenShot Video Editor is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Olive Video Editor is:
This video editor has the ability to move things in the visual space straight in the viewer panel compared to the others where you need to change some value of x or y to scale or move things in your composition. This might not matter much in many cases but if you have a lot of elements moving or scaling throughout your scene, this is the fastest and a much more intuitive method than having to adjust the scale/position values of individual axes separately. This again is a big reason why I prefer an alpha (a damn good alpha) version of this software than a stable release of Kdenlive.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to learn interface
By using a clean interface that is uncluttered and simple to understand the program allows for intuitiveness that is not always seen in other video editors.
Pro Free and open source
Pro GPU rendering
The GPU rendering is said to still be in beta, but works smoothly, even on low end GPU.
Pro Scale / move elements directly on viewer
This video editor has the ability to move things in the visual space straight in the viewer panel compared to the others where you need to change some value of x or y to scale or move things in your composition. This might not matter much in many cases but if you have a lot of elements moving or scaling throughout your scene, this is the fastest and a much more intuitive method than having to adjust the scale/position values of individual axes separately. This again is a big reason why I prefer an alpha (a damn good alpha) version of this software than a stable release of Kdenlive.
Pro Blazing fast preview
GPU preview means a lot and I honestly cannot understand how other video editors do not have this as the default choice. Incredibly fast previews tested even on low end machines. This is the sole deal breaker for me when it comes to editing clips.
Cons
Con The GarageBand of video editing
Not a terrible downside, unless you are looking for the latest, fastest, cutting edge production software. It does small things extremely well, but has difficult workarounds for more extreme edits.
Con Timeline only zooms in to eight seconds
Although this is supposedly fixed in the daily builds, it is not out for the public yet, and it can be very frustrating to align and grab clips that are less than eight seconds long.
Con Editing effects is not intuitive at all
Applying effects is as easy as drag and drop. But if you want to edit them, you'd need to right click on each clip and select Properties. You'd need to experiment with not-so-well documented parameters which take forever to preview just to see if you are on the right track. It is sort of easy to learn unless you want more than drag and drop controls.
Con Only simple editing, no compositing such as rotoscoping
Con Still in alpha / No stable release yet
Not exactly going to be a long term con. The official website clearly states the same, which is why this piece of software should not be used for important projects. Then again it is so damn good that Olive editor is right now my primary editor for most projects. The fact that there is NO stable version of this software does bother a bit as it's ability to handle complex projects is almost unpredictable. But all said and done, it's still not crashed on me even once. Even though an alpha, the best damn alpha release ever.