,
The first ever survey of OpenShot users has come to an end, and I have all sorts of fun data to share with everyone! If you want to skip the analysis and just download the results, here are the direct links:
Download PDF | Download ODP
We have collected a total of 1,241 completed surveys! That is a great sample size, and hopefully represents our user-base accurately.
This survey attempted to answer the following questions:
1) What existing features are most used?
2) What new features are most requested?
3) How is OpenShot installed?
This survey attempted to answer the following questions:
1) What existing features are most used?
2) What new features are most requested?
3) How is OpenShot installed?
I'll admit, a few of the answers surprised me, including the top 2 most requested features. So, lets break down the results, and see what we've learned.
1) What existing features are most used?
[Click image to enlarge]
As you might expect, the top most used features are "Fade In / Out", followed closely by "Slice / Cut" and "Transitions". This supports the idea of automatically cross-fading clips when they overlap, and generally making it easier to fade clips, right? Also, improving the snapping, anchoring, and moving of transitions would also seem like a good fit, based on the usage of those features.
Knowing which features are the most used should help us focus on which toolbars, buttons, menus, and features to keep close by, and which features to hide in menus / preferences, etc..., in order to keep OpenShot the easiest-to-use video editor on Linux. =)
2) What new features are most requested?
[Click image to enlarge]
As much as I hear people tell me that video effects are not important, and no "real" video needs them, our number 3 top requested feature is "Additional Video Effects". So... it seems clear to me that people really like video effects. =)
The 4th most requested feature is an interesting one, "Video Capture". As more and more video cameras store video files on memory cards, hard drives, and USB mass storage devices, how important is this feature? In 2 years will people still need this feature? Are there existing video capture applications that OpenShot could "better" integrate with? Or does it need to be a built-in feature for OpenShot.
Multiple selections, color correction, and multiple audio volume levels (i.e. audio key-frames) are all really good features, and are at the top of my "personal" list. In general, I would like to have more specialized dialogs for some of the filters, like color correction, with sliders, live previews, etc... Also, I am interested in alternate ways of showing audio wave forms, audio key-frames, etc... Rendering audio wave forms can be slow, and in most cases, not very useful. However, when trying to sync audio and video, seeing the waveforms can save you countless hours. So, I wonder how it would feel to selectively turn on / off waveforms on a clip (as needed). Just a thought.
Also, I really thought the "Photo Slide-show Wizard" feature would be higher on the list, as well as the ability to upload to video sharing sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo. Oh well... the people have spoken.
3) How is OpenShot installed?
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Thank you for helping us make this survey a success! I would like to continue this tradition between each release. As we plan for our next release, it's nice to know we are working on features that people actually want. =)
May 11, 2010 2:38 AM
"The 4th most requested feature is an interesting one, "Video Capture". As more and more video cameras store video files on memory cards, hard drives, and USB mass storage devices, how important is this feature? In 2 years will people still need this feature? Are there existing video capture applications that OpenShot could "better" integrate with? Or does it need to be a built-in feature for OpenShot."
I'm not sure if there might be a misunderstanding here or if it's just me. If I can remember correctly from answering this question "Video Capture" is recording directly to hard drive for me.
Instead of using your webcamera and recording to your harddrive I would like to record from a HD-camera while at home directly to my harddrive. Of course this must be supported by the camera you buy.
Usage: Recording green screen footage at home with a steady camera. Longer recordings might require bigger hard drive space than the camera has.
May 11, 2010 3:40 AM
Jonthan, great work on OS & great to see you taking a survey. I too would have thought that 'photo slide shows' would have been higher up the list - it should be something so useful, and yet existing tools (last time I looked) are really weak.
I wonder whether your survey is a little skewed by us being early adopters and therefore high up on the geek scale? perhaps explains why 'video conversion' rates so high. Most lay users would not ask for that.
Anyway, let's just hope you & others can deliver to all requests in time!
- David aka zedcar
May 11, 2010 5:27 AM
Thanks for posting the survey results! I voted for DVD creation and video capture; the first because I don't know of a good, easy-to-use dvd creation tool (i'm currently using dvd styler but am not a big fan.) having something like openshot to do this with inkscape titling would be great.
I use dvgrab to copy video from my HV20 camera and that works great, but it would be nice to have a gui tool.
May 11, 2010 9:53 AM
I think it could be great to have the chance of adding a live audio directly from a microphone.
I do need it, because I havo to add a translation to a video. But shurely there could be other good reasons for sommeone else...
Mau.
May 11, 2010 10:15 AM
Hi. Great job on Openshot! I'm one of those people who requested "Additional Video Effects" -- but I was thinking of something other than what you apparently had in mind. I was thinking of things like 'pulldown' and a video sharpening/enhancing process like Cinelerra rather than 'effects.' I am more interested in improving video quality from cheaper camcorders -- and that seemed to be the only option where to register that 'vote.'
Keep up the great work!
May 11, 2010 6:07 PM
Fortunately, your most requested features are easy. For DVD authoring, I suggest you just integrate with something that exists. For Kino, I worked with Q-dvdauthor (it added SMIL parsing), and I addedd launching an author app/script at the end of rendering. I recently read about a new GTK+ app that was written in C++, or maybe you can find something that was written in Python and more aggressively integrate and reuse.
I do not quite understand the video conversion feature. Is that to deal with incompatible files? Otherwise, it is already done, but perhaps could be improved upon.
Additional video effects are already available - you just need to expose them. In particular, those from frei0r.
As for capture, you do what Kdenlive does and run dvgrab, ffmpeg, and recordmydesktop as a child slave processes. You can consult with me for more information.
Multiple selections - I will leave that one for you.
Color correction - just see the new frei0r filters: tint0r, curves, three_point_balance in addition to my balanc0r and the typical hue, gamma, contrast, and brightness. (p.s. you are using R, G, and B frei0r filters incorrectly - you might consider dropping them).
Finally, keyframable audio levels is easy to do on the MLT side. Not yet if you need curves, but linear is a start and keeps your GUI simpler for now.
May 11, 2010 10:31 PM
First of all, nice survey, I took it as did my girlfriend. I've been using openshot to edit wedding videos for a while now in my spare time for friends.
In the spirit of all things not listed in a survey.....
I cannot directly recall the editor I used to use back in my windows days but it did have a couple slick things that happened. The first is that when you imported a video with audio it added it as two separate timelines that were linked and moved together when moved and both clipped when you cut a video or expanded or shrank it. It had an option of unlinking to move them independently as well via a simple padlock icon between them. The other thing that was nice about it was opacity/fading. The widgets height in the timeline space was representative of its opacity. If a clips widget was full height, it was full opacity. Half height - half opacity. One could change a clips opacity simply by grabbing the top edge and dragging it down or up. Fading was done by square handles on the top right and left of a clip. Dragging the handle towards the center of the clip set the point that the fade-out started or where the fade-in ended. A diagonal line went from this handle to the bottom left or right corner of the widget.
May 11, 2010 11:19 PM
@Induane,
Good suggestions. I would love to improve the fundamental features of OpenShot (such as fade handles, opacity level, etc...), with ridiculously simple user interface controls.
It's really tough to add new features, and not increase the complexity of the user-interface. That's why it's nice to have a good community building around us. More feedback should help keep things balanced and healthy. =)
May 12, 2010 2:44 PM
You're definitely right about the community. Everyone I have interacted with thus far has been great and what impresses me the most is the way development is genuinely geared towards the needs of the users in a way that makes them feel like an important part of the process even if they cannot directly contribute code, etc...
Some projects and their leaders have a mentality that this is their project and users should be thankful for the developers time. Thats not to say thats an unrealistic expectation, and we users genuinely do owe a deep debt of gratitude to those who spend their time working on projects like this (time is such an easy thing to give away and the one thing that can never be returned, so all gifts of time are precious). However many go with this to a degree of elitism that makes the user base feel alienated from the process and at the mercy of the developers who exist in an elevated status above them - untouchables.
OpenShot really transcends that boundary and your direct response to my comments is evident of that. I admit in a silly way when I logged on and saw that the lead developer of the project responded to me directly I got a certain thrill from it and sense of accomplishment.
Things like that might seem easy to dismiss or silly but they genuinely do make a difference in the way community members interact as a result, the general attitude toward a project, and the willingness of others to then devote their own time to helping.
Keep up the good work. Meanwhile I'll be over here using OpenShot.
Thanks a ton!
- Brant Watson
(Induane)
May 12, 2010 8:21 PM
+1 to Induane's comment. I also notice Dan Dennedy visits here and have to offer thanks for all his hard work too!
May 13, 2010 11:09 AM
O_O DVD Authoring? I'm sure that babies are being born now will not know what a DVD is. All devices sold nowadays have flash or traditional harddisk support. DVD will dead soon, please, don't waste time programming such thing.
Control audio levels in a clip, or like rainspirit said, saving directly audio from microphone for dubbing, are characteristics more interesting.
Video effects are cool, and 3D effects are a REALLY cool thing. This is one of the things people notice first and take them to wonder "What program was used to make this video!?"
May 13, 2010 5:35 PM
I too think a mic record feature would be great. In particular, one suited for voice-over work. It would start recording when you start playback and place it on the timeline at the location from which you started play back - great for all sorts of narration and annotation use cases.
May 14, 2010 3:00 AM
My favorite utility for DVD creation is "todisc". Maybe best would be to integrate with it and not duplicate functionality.
May 14, 2010 2:31 PM
Kind of disappointed with the top two features but I guess the community has spoken. Personally I was much more interested in multiple selection of clips. If I want to get really fancy with the video effects I use Blender 3D to render them out and then edit in OpenShot. The compositing editor in Blender is incredibly flexible, maybe integration of such a feature could be good for OpenShot but it would be in an "advanced features" tab because it scares people the first time they see it.
May 16, 2010 8:54 PM
+1 on the voice over. Me and my buddies do some tabletop gaming and we make video battle reports and at times we also will do videos of other matches such as ones of StarCraft or other games where that is the majority of the editing is just a voice over. Ya I know this makes me sound like a huge nerd but whatever.
I was hoping for JACK integration to be higher as well as additional keyframes and audio levels throughout a clip also. JACK Especially if the voice over is added because for recording I use an external audio interface that only can see the inputs through JACK.
Overall Great work! I do a lot of editing at school on Final Cut Pro and was dreading Graduation because it would mean I would lose my access to a good editing system until I found OpenShot. Now I don't worry because Openshot is really good and I can tell it will just keep getting better! And it saves me from having to fork out the cash for a Mac. :)
May 21, 2010 12:10 PM
Honestly, I think you don't should add DVD features to OpenShot. It's supposed to be a NLE, not a heavy multitasking suite.
What I think it should be implemented, is the ability to crop the display screen (make only one half of the video appear) and customize key-frames a bit more.
May 21, 2010 2:42 PM
I too am a bit surprised that the most requested features are DVD creation and video conversion.
Ther are tons of applications available for DVD creation under Linux and OpenShot can already convert a video to almost any format?
I thought OpenShot was created to have an easy to use, powerful and stable video-editor for Linux, so lets concentrate on doing just that: video-editing :)
Not that I don´t want new features, but maybe its an idea to use plug-ins or add-ons? Because otherwise it´s becoming bloated very fast.
May 22, 2010 3:39 AM
Yes, Please focus on OpenShot to become The *video_editing_software* for Linux (which it practically already is!)
Including all the possible fat, out of focus -features around the world is just wasting valuable resources of developers.
Thank you for your hard work and considering tight focusing.
May 22, 2010 5:58 AM
Well, I was one of those who voted for "DVD Creation" but maybe it was due to a misunderstanding on my part. The subtitle of that choice was "including menu, title screen and burning the DVD". Now I suppose there are a million other apps for burning but I really think there is a need for the ability to create chapters and menus and doesn't that have to be done within the editor? So if they really aren't the same thing maybe those choices should have been separated into separate options to vote on.
May 22, 2010 2:07 PM
Hi! I miss some things in OpenShot, for example, I can use 1/4 size for making comparatives, but it would be great center the videos like here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXimO2Xgo5Q
And if it had a chronometer it be terrific for benchmarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrM-45WrtKM
It would have a profesional touch if OpenShot had slideshow of videos for getting something like this:
http://imagination.sourceforge.net/
or
http://www.photofilmstrip.org/3-0-Media.html
but with clips of videos not only with photos. Check out here the effect, it is very impressive:
http://www.elivecd.org/
May 23, 2010 5:02 PM
One of the functions I want is the ability to manually change the aspect ratio of my movie when I export it to my computer.
May 25, 2010 4:23 PM
Yep dont include dvd creating stuff, look at whats out there of open source apps already that does this. Keep size down and focus on video editing. 1 feuture i miss is a shaky camera stabilizer!
May 31, 2010 2:18 PM
I had all but lost hope we would ever see an active video editing project in Linux. I'm very enthused to find this project! I missed the feature poll but wanted to lend my votes and affirm some of your assumptions.
Fading: yes, crossfading needs to be a lot easier and auto-crossfading when video tracks overlap would be ideal. I think Windows Movie Maker does a decent job of this and would be a good model to follow.
Titling: you have some really great features and templates here! Was really excited to see that and to find the integration with Inkscape! It could benefit from some basic labeling of fields (like the two colors, what do they apply to) and some contextual instructions.
Play/pause toggle. Right now you can use the space bar to play/pause but the icon in the preview is only ever play, never pause, which feels buggy. Just need to swap out the icon on playback to make it available as a pause button as well.
All in all, I'm very impressed and even at this early stage in the project, this is the video editor I find easiest to set up and most feature complete. I really hope you stick with the project and find other coders/designers to help you with the effort! All I can offer is testing and a little UI advice. I'm a web developer and haven't any experience with desktop clients yet. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help though. I'll also be donating money in a few months when I'm able to. Maybe we should attach bounties to specific features rather than just a donation bucket? That may be a nice tangible way for people to vote for a specific feature.
June 1, 2010 2:07 PM
...Maybe we should attach bounties to specific features rather than just a donation bucket? That may be a nice tangible way for people to vote for a specific feature.
I very much like this idea!
+1
July 9, 2010 11:26 AM
I think OpenShot is almost perfect as per your stated goals: a SIMPLE, easy to use NL video editor. It's awesome. I've tried Kdenlive but I got tired of its multiple crashes (and also because I ditched KDE); I tried Kino, but it's not intuitive and is kinda cumbersome. I wanted to check PiTiVi, but it crashed on me after OS upgrade. OpenShot is the best!
Only things I would love to see in OpenShot would be:
Credits creator/editor
photo slide show creator/editor
Congratulations Jonathan on an outstanding job!
October 15, 2010 9:43 PM
Well for me, I'd like to see video capture - I do have a DVC camera and where I use it, recording directly to DVD or HDD is not an option. Now recording to solid state media could be an option down the road, but not in the immediate future. Guess I'll just have to continue to use Kino to import the video for the time being.