This is the third part in my series comparing MainActor and Cinelerra. In this article I’ll focus on initial impressions. What is Joe User going to notice when he initially opens each app?

Cinelerra

Here’s a screenshot of Cinelerra when it first starts up (click the image for a zoomed in view). As you can see, it uses a “floating windows” interface, meaning that there is no parent window. This is actually a very good thing, because it means that windows can be distributed over multiple monitors. Multiple monitors increase productivity when video editing. (If you only have one monitor, multiple desktops are a reasonable poor man’s alternative in some situations; ctrl tab allows you to switch between different desktops. However, the advantage of multiple monitors is that you can tweak parameters on one, while seeing the effects of your tweaks on another, all without shuffling pesky child windows…yes, MainActor, I’m talking about you. More on this point in a sec.)

Having sung initial praises for Cinelerra’s UI, I have to balance this out — one of the most striking things when you first start it up are the ugly, childish, icons in the resources window. I realize that this is the open source world, and that anybody is free to submit new icons, but frankly that’s no excuse. It just looks unprofessional. (The rest of the UI, otoh, looks quite polished. Just a minor tweak would up the initial impressions quite tremendously.)

Cinelerra’s windows are rather confusingly titled, also, at least for newbies: we have: “Program”, “Compositor”, “Viewer”, “Resources” and “Overlays”. The function of each is admittedly fairly obvious once you rtfm and start using it, but to diminish the initial novelty shock, a change here would go a long way.

Another point worth mentioning here, which is somewhat neutral: there are a *lot* of functional icons. The first time viewer is immediately aware that there will be a lot of learning involved to master the interface. On one hand, this is perhaps daunting (”I just want to edit my daughter’s birthday video, dammit”); on the other, this shows potential (”there’s power in these here hills”). Also, all of the icons have nice tooltips, which also give the keyboard shortcuts.

MainActor

Here’s a screenshot of MainActor when it first starts up (click the image for a zoomed in view.) In contrast to Cinelerra, it uses an MDI (multiple document interface), which means that all child windows sit inside the parent application window. This is a pain in the butt if you are using multiple monitors - sure, you can stretch the parent window to fill both monitors, and then arrange the child windows within to suit, but then I lose all of my desktop manager’s interface niceties. I.e., it’s all MainActor, or it’s something else; I can’t alt-tab between MainActor windows and other programs, e.g. AviDemux, GIMP, an xterm, or whatever else I might be using at the time; I can of course alt-tab between MainActor and other apps, but I can’t use them alongside each other. This may seem a minor point; it may even seem a subjective opinion; but I am pretty convinced that there is an emprical efficiency loss when interfaces are arranged like this (somebody feel free to arrange a study :)). I contacted MainActor’s technical support about this, and they promised to table it for discussion.

On the other points of comparison, MainActor’s interface looks a lot more professional. Effects are organized in a two pane tree based window (which is not perfect; more on that in a later article), which looks significantly better than Cinelerra’s scattershot kindergarten resources. The titles, too, are more friendly; we have: “Browser”, “Media Player”, “Preview”, “Timeline 1″, and “Effects”.

We’ll be right back after these messages
So there you have it; the initial 5 minute impression of each app. The next article we’ll get down to trying the applications, and actually editing some video. Stay tuned.

All In Series

1. MainActor vs Cinelerra -- Background
2. MainActor vs Cinelerra -- Installing
3. MainActor vs Cinelerra -- UI, First Impressions
4. MainActor vs Cinelerra -- Simple Editing, Part 1
5. MainActor vs Cinelerra -- Simple Editing, Part 2

Related Leave a Comment