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After I captured a few clips it was easy to grab them and put them in the media player where I could pre-edit and then drop them on the timeline. I noticed that I had a little difficulty moving things around on the timeline by grabbing and dragging them with the mouse. Clips wanted to stick together after I made a cut on them. I learned that you had to deselect the clips by clicking somewhere else on the timeline or desktop, then click on one of the newly formed clips to select it and move it. Otherwise both halfs of the newly cut clip remained selected and moved with each other.
The timeline has a tool bar across the top that enables you to access all of the most important functions with the click of a button. This program is also capable of multiple, tabbed timelines, which are called ?nested? timelines in other NLE programs. This advanced feature did not show up until recently on some of the more popular NLEs so it's great to see it here on a newcomer and the only commercial one available for Linux. Of course, there are also context menus that drop down when you right click on the timeline or other objects on the NLE interface. The timeline has switchable background rendering for transitions and effects that works smoothly and you can monitor it by the little green render bar that appears under the yellow work area bar.
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| Transitions and Effects |
The transitions and effects are as simple as drag and drop, and MainConcept has given MainActor enough capability in this area to keep most editors happy. It also has a pretty good selection of audio effects to works with although it would be nice to see a future version that can take advantage of the VST filters that are available with the GNU license. There is basic color correction and filters to adjust the other properties of each clip. The titling function can also be found here as an effect called ?text.? Why an effect? Probably because you can adjust it's parameters with key frames and curves just like the other effects. Every project function can be found in the easy-to-navigate browser window, but the Effects window is where you adjust the parameters of each effect or transition. The transparency and position parameters of each effect are independently adjustable here as well. Most functions also seems to be key-frameable, with curves, in the Effects window, just like a full-featured compositing program. This is a pretty advanced capability for an inexpensive NLE. The strength of this NLE shows itself here as well, in the neatly organized, simple to use layout of this window.
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| MainActor's Titler is pretty full featured. |
The documentation mentions an external display plug-in that's supposed to allow you to monitor the output through your DV camcorder VCR, but the window where this is supposed to be selected is grayed out on my project window. I suspect this is only available in the Windows version at this time. There have been new improvements in the IEEE 1394 drivers and plug-ins for Linux that may be implemented in future version of MainActor for Linux. I noticed this and a few other minor differences in the documentation that shows that it was not created just for the Linux version.
When you are finally finished tweaking your masterpiece, MainConcept has given you the benefit of their encoding expertise on exporting the video. Their DV codec and their MPEG encoder are renowned and included in many of the most used NLE software packages on other platforms. In my opinion it is worth the price of the whole NLE just to have this encoding software and these codecs available for the Linux platform.
When you click the Export Timeline button or Ctrl+E on the keyboard, a dialog box pops up with some basic export settings, that allow you to choose how you want to export the timeline. The default for DV is an AVI file, and you can see what the properties of the file will be right there in the window. When you click on the top center menu, then you get choices of what type of DV or MPEG file.
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| Format Settings |
Click the Format Settings button and you get basic parameters that you can modify, or click the Advanced settings button and you get MainConcept's full-featured encoder interface. If you are already familiar with it from another NLE or the standalone encoder, then you can tweak away at your own peril, because most all of the encoding parameters are laid bare there.
Conclusion:
MainConcept's MainActor 5.5.7 non-linear video editing package is an easy to use, well organized, and relatively full-featured video editing tool. There are still a few quirks in the Linux world that MainConcept needs to deal with on a regular basis, which will keep this NLE a little behind in it's development. However, those who use Linux should be very happy to find a video editing program as capable as this, that is available right now, for this platform and for whatever distribution you use. MainConcept is a solid company with a good reputation, and they are keeping on top of new developments in Linux code. Finally, the DV codec and MainConcept MPEG Encoder make the cost of entry worth the price. For more information, visit http://www.mainactor.com/
Dan Conklin is a multi-media producer with 20 years of experience in broadcast, commercial, and corporate video and audio production. He is currently employed at Food For The Poor, in Deerfield Beach, Florida, the fifth largest relief organization that operates in the Caribbean and Latin America. There he enjoys being an idealist and a producer at the same time.
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