OpenShot is a multi-timeline video editor that allows you to add music, effects, transitions, and multiple tracks all in a single, easy to use user interface. Even a novice can be editing videos within minutes of installation. Let’s take a look at the installation and basic use of OpenShot (NOTE: In later articles I will instruct how effects and transitions are done.)

Installation

OpenShot video editor can be found in all of the standard repositories, so installation is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility (such as Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center, PackageKit, etc).
2. Search for “openshot” (No quotes).
3. Select OpenShot for installation.
4. Click Apply to install (or click the Install button if you are using the Ubuntu Software Center.)
5. Allow any/all dependencies to be installed.

Once the installation is complete you can close out the Add/Remove Software utility. You will then find OpenShot in the Applications > Sound & Video menu.

Usage

Figure 1

When you first open up OpenShot you will be greeted by the main OpenShot window (see Figure 1).

The first step in creating your video is to import files and add them to tracks. You can add videos, music, and images. Adding images allow you to create very nice transitions, or you can just create a video scrapbook if you like.

Once you have added all of the files to your project, you then must add the files to tracks. This is very simple. In the the left pane all of your files will be listed. Select the first file you want to add to the track and then drag it down to the track you want it to belong on.

Figure 2

The reason you have multiple tracks is that it makes creating transitions much easier. Once you have added your tracks you can then easily do things like fade a clip in and fade it out. To achieve this all you do is right-click a clip and select from the options. Figure 2 shows the available sub-menus you can apply to clips.

One nice touch is the title feature. You can create a title for your video that can be either static or animated. I will give you warning…if you are installing in Ubuntu the animated titles will give you fits if you attempt to Center the text. OpenShot relies on Inkscape to render the titles and there is a bug between the latest releases on each. This should be resolved soon, so the title pages will work fine in a release or two.

Final thoughts

OpenShot is an incredibly powerful video editor. What you have seen here is nothing but a scratch of the surface. In later articles I will demonstrate effects, transitions, and more.

Because of the complication of Inkscape, I though it would make sense to illustrate some of the techniques with this tool in a series. In this first entry I will show you how to work with one of Inkscape’s most fundamental tools – bezier curves. It is with this tool that you create most of your work.

What is a bezier curve anyway?

Figure 1

A bezier curve is a smooth curve, made up of paths, with controllable nodes (or handles) that allow you to manipulate the curve in numerous ways. A curve can have any number of paths and the more paths the smoother the curve. A very simple way to think about this is examining two different geometric figures. Take a look at Figure 1. Here you see two different geometric shapes. On the left you have a hexagon (six sides) and on the right you have an icosagon (20 sides). Obviously the image on the right looks more like a circle. Why? More “paths”. That is what we are dealing with here.

If you can imagine the figures at the right starting as squares and then, using the right tool, adding new nodes into the path sections (a square would have four “paths” by default. The more nodes you place on a path, the more you can manipulate that path. Enough nodes and a square can be manipulated into a circle.

Now, let’s see how this is used in Inkscape.

Create a shape with the tool

Figure 2

Open up Inkscape and then select the Bezier Curve tool (on the left side). With that tool you are going to create a shape. You don’t just click the mouse and start drawing though. You create paths. If you want to create a square with this tool you must hold down the shift key, click a point on the blank canvas and then click the remaining points of the square. You must hold down the shift key the whole time you are creating and then make sure you close off the square by clicking on the original point with the final point (see Figure 2).

Figure 3

Now to add nodes to the paths (of which you have four). Click on the Edit Path by Nodes tool (second from the top on the left). Now click on the Insert New Nodes button (far left on the top row of icons). Double-click in the center of the top path. This will create a new node in the path. Do this for both the sides and the bottom paths. Once you have done that you will have a square with eight total nodes. If you click and drag each of the center nodes outward you will have an octagon (see figure 3). You can then add more nodes and continue smoothing out that shape until you eventually have a circle.

And that is one way to work with bezier curves and nodes.

This feature is Inkscape’s vectorization tool, made possible by the integration of potrace.

“Vecto-what? What for?” OK: first, a quick Computer Graphics 101, as part of our No Geek Left Behind program:

• Raster graphics are described by pixels and are nothing more than a big matrix filled with colors. As such, they look bad when zoomed at high levels.
  Example tools used to produce them: Paint, Photoshop, Paint.NET, GIMP
  Example extensions: .jpg, .png, .psd, .xcf
• Vector graphics are described by mathematical elements and other properties. As such, they look sharp regardless of the zoom level.
  Example tools used to produce them: Illustrator, Inkscape, Xara Xtreme
  Example extensions: .svg, .ai

Use cases where one would want to vectorize a raster file? Sure. What if you want a correct paper print of a drawing you found on the web? What if you need a crisp partner’s logo for a brochure and the best he provides you is a sloppy GIF? What if your company lost the source vector files for its logo? In such cases, this article will help.

Disclaimer: Ghacks does not encourage anybody to use these tools to murder your cat, refine plutonium, or rework copyrighted material to commercial ends. Use it when you cannot buy a print of the real thing, know your fair use limits, be a good citizen. OK? Let’s vectorize the Ghacks logo.

1. First, open the file you want to vectorize in Inkscape
   
2. Select the image by left-clicking it, and click Path > Trace Bitmap (or hit Shift+Alt+B)
   
3. Tune the settings with the preview. In this case, it is a good idea to increase the threshold (use the “Update” button to see the results of your changes). Then click ok to render the trace:
   
4. Finally, the hardest awaits you: declare layers, group stuff together, do/correct the coloring/gradients, manually refine the trace, add effects, etc.
   

Comments:

• potrace does not makes miracles. While it works wonders on simple compositions or logos, don’t expect it to vectorize a complicated photo
• Did I say it? potrace does not makes miracles. If the original raster quality is small and of poor quality, you’ll end up with speckles and artifacts here and there. Well, Inkscape selection tools and paths operators are here to help you manually improve the vector result
• The tracing window has lots of modes and options. Play with them. Learn how one will work great here, while the other will be preferable to extract the best from another image

Despite all this, with some imagination and experience through trial and error, you can quickly achieve surprisingly good results (I especially like to play with the colors). And though this is technically more remix than creation (but who said remix is a bad thing?), you’ll learn Inkscape tools in the process, bringing you one step closer from creating your very own vector masterpieces.

Inkscape is free software licensed under the GPLv2, available for all the major platforms.

Ronan is a geek and musician living in Montreal. He likes living in places full of weird home-made colorful posters and writes about software, music and life at flying molehill.

Expensive software like Illustrator appears to make editing vectors simply unaffordable. Fortunately, this is untrue! Inkscape is a free, open-source and cross-platform vector editor. Whilst it will no doubt lack behind Illustrator in certain aspects, in my opinion it suffices the requirements of any non-professional graphic designer. Inkscape, for example, cannot utilise gradient meshes or have multiple strokes, or fills, for one object. Yet, it has much better support for the SVG format (utilised by Wikipedia) and beats Illustrator on several minor usability issues (Inkscape, for example, allows anchor points to be edited with a keyboard). Key features, such as the ability to trace bitmaps, are also included.

Inkscape’s interface, like that of most graphics programs, is quite complex but I find myself being able to adopt to its much quicker than I adapted from PSP to Photoshop.

There are a few issues with Inkscape. The version for OS X requires X11 to be upgraded and several work-arounds to be implemented prior to it functioning and the upgrade to OS X 10.5.2 prevented Inkscape from working without further updates to X11. It appears to function much better under Linux and Windows.

Inkscape serves the needs of any home user and is such a substantial saving, of both disk space (being about 100MB big) and money, it can make Illustrator nearly useless for such customers. Its support for SVGs is also useful, as Firefox can open some SVGs meaning the recipient of a file Inkscape produces often does not need Inkscape to view the file as a vector.