Cinelerra is a video editing and track-based digital compositing program (an NLE, Non-Linear Editor) designed for Linux. It is a free software distributed under the open source GNU General Public License. In addition to editing, it supports advanced composition operations such as keying and mattes, including a title generator, many effects to edit video and audio, keyframe automation, and many other professional functions depending on the variant. It processes audio in 64 floating-point form. Video is processed in RGBA or YUVA color spaces, in 16-bit integer or floating-point form. It is resolution and image refresh rate independent. The HV & GG variants support up to 8K video. The GG variant can also create DVDs and Blu-rays.
Because of UI limitations, Williams rewrote significant parts and released that as Cinelerra on August 12, 2002, while Broadcast2000 was withdrawn by Heroine Virtual in September 2001. Cinelerra became the first 64-bit media production application when it was rewritten to work with the AMD Opteron processor in June 2003 and was presented at SIGGRAPH 2004 in San Diego. Since then, many versions have been released.
The original version is still being produced by Williams. There have been several spin-offs made by the open source community, Cinelerra-GG and Cinelerra-CVE (a fork of Cinelerra-CV) are presently under active development. For a complete overview of versions, see the Variants section below. Even though the different variants look the same, there are considerable functional differences between them.[1]
An overview of the different variants that released more than one version:
| HV | 1.0.0 (2002-08-12) | 10 (2025-04-18) | Ubuntu | Yearly | DE, EN, ES, EU, FR, IT, NB, SL, PT_BR |
| CV | 1.1.5 (2003-04-29) | 2.3 (2015-08-13) | Old repos of Linux distros | Frozen | DE, EN, ES, EU, FR, IT, NB, SL, PT_BR, RU |
| GG Infinity | 5.1 (2016-03-31) | 2025-12 (2025-12-31) | Linux AppImage / Current repos of Linux distros | Monthly | DE, EN, ES, EU, FR, IT, NB, SL, PT, RU, EL, HI, HU, JA, KO, UK, VI, ZH |
Cinelerra uses its own widget toolkit Guicast (the Cinelerra GUI library), not conforming to the human interface guidelines of major Linux desktops such as GNOME and KDE. This has the advantage that it looks and works the same no matter which distribution or desktop is used, and removes being dependent on a changing version of the desktop (for instance GNOME 2 / GNOME 3). Guicast was written by Adam Williams. The repository of Guicast is available on GitHub [3]
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At the National Association of Broadcasters' 2004 Electronic Media Show, Cinelerra received Bob Turner's "Making the Cut" award, given to "the best and most exciting post-production products seen at the convention"..
In December 2018 Libre Graphics World included Cinelerra in its comparison of the sustainability of video editors for Linux.
Since early 2015, Cinelerra.org has an open Git repository on Google Code for analysis and for input; however, that platform is read-only since 2015-08-24. At the present time, this repository does not contain source code. The project released a studio centric version 5.0 of Cinelerra. The goal of Cinelerra.org was to develop a more professional value to the product as of 2016.
In January 2016, the main developer of the project William Morrow working behind cinelerra.org ("Good Guy") left cinelerra.org, continuing to work on Cinelerra 5.0, then on Cinelerra-GG 5.1 with help from the Cinelerra-CV Community.
At the present time, Cinelerra.org supports Cinelerra-HV work. Its website links in the download section to both the HV and GG versions.
HV has used SourceForge since the beginning (first source 2001-09-09), but does not react to bugs, patches and feature requests on that platform. The source on SourceForge is only made available as complete download for each release. Intermediate access to source files on SF is not possible. Any bugs and usability issues found and resolved by the community that are submitted to Heroine Virtual often result in no immediate response, and it is not until a new release that there is any indication that Heroine Virtual has incorporated these changes.
Intermediate access to source files as well as an immediate response is possible in the HV-repo on GitHub. The developer responds to bug reports, requests for fixes or additional features through this platform. Use GitHub Issues to track ideas, feedback, bugs, or usability issues.
To distinguish between the different variants of the software, the releases made by Heroine Virtual are also called Cinelerra-HV..
Cinelerra-CV allows the community to contribute to an open repository where changes to the code are accessible to everyone. Mailing list exist where more experienced users and developers can provide support to less experienced users, and developers can hold technical discussions. Cinelerra-CV is also packaged for a wider range of distributions. It also has a different compiler system: system libraries are used extensively, and the autoconf/automake tools are used to configure the compilation system.
Although Cinelerra-CV may technically be called a fork, the relationship between Heroine Virtual and Cinelerra-CV is rather friendly. Heroine Virtual at times contributes to discussions on the mailing lists, and incorporates many of the changes made in the repository.
Heroine Virtual posted the following message on their website describing the relationship:
Up until Cinelerra 2.1 the versioning of Cinelerra-CV followed that of Heroine Virtual. After Heroine Virtual released a new version, Cinelerra-CV merged relevant code from the new HV variant and into their variant. CV was appended to the end of the version number to indicate the community version (For example, after the 2.1 merger the CV version was labeled 2.1CV).
Starting with release 2.2, Cinelerra-CV uses its own versioning scheme, but still merges code from Cinelerra-HV. Following the 26th June 2019, the official web pages were taken offline and the URL redirects to the website for Cinelerra-GG.
The new official site of Cinelerra-CV was published on July 1 2020. The source code of Cinelerra-CV is available from the new official repo on GitHub [7]. The new official Cinelerra-CV Mailing List is available here. The Cinelerra-CV Mailing list from 2001 is archived. The complete collection of old (previous) Cinelerra-CV Mailing List archives is referenced/linked from this page of the new official Cinelerra-CV site.
Cinelerra-CVE Cinelerra-CVE repo is an experimental fork of Cinelerra-CV, created by the main Cinelerra-CV developer (2012-2018) Einar Rünkaru in June 2008 and published in the middle of March 2010:
The project maintained active development ever since, yet there is no usable application as of October 2023, since the core team decided to build the engine and infrastructure bottom-up, while the UI is developed to match the capabilities of the core.
Lumiera is not a fork of Cinelerra. Not a single line of Cinelerra code is now used in Lumiera. Lumiera is built from scratch, starting with the engine core, yet pursuing a similar vision and expanding on some of the ideas and approaches found in Cinelerra. The project grew out of an effort to amend long standing problems present in the Cinelerra-CV code base at that time. The actual technology however is built ground-up, using contemporary methods.
The project remains in a pre-alpha status of development with a yearly development news update Lumiera news.
Lumiera's native interface will be written in GTK+, although other interfaces will be possible, since the user interface is loaded as a plug-in.
The goal of the Lumiera project is to build a free open-source nonlinear video editing and compositing application (NLE).
An important issue is that Cinelerra-GG reduces reliance on system libraries by including them where practical, like ffmpeg and OpenEXR. This makes it more predictable on different platforms, and also allows it to pick up new versions before the platform does.
Cinelerra-GG is determined to get as close as possible to what can be expected from professional level video editing software (NLE) for the Linux platform.
Its software features include support for recent versions of ffmpeg, extensive color correction tools, Ultra HD up to 8K, more than 400 video- and audio effects, two interfaces for audio plug-ins (LADSPA, and LV2 such as Calf Studio Gear), multiple denoisers and motion stabilizers, multi-camera editing, proxies, smart folders media filtering, 8, 10 and 12 bit color spaces, advanced trim, live preview of resources, shared tracks, group edits, horizontal and/or vertical timeline split, rendering pre-configuration options, and the ability to save workspace layouts. It supports over 400 video/picture formats for decoding, and over 140 for encoding, including Apple ProRes, AV1, and WEBP. It has a ¨Sketcher" plug-in for free-hand drawing, supports creating HD Blu-ray, and DVDs, and some OpenCV plugins like FindObj. It allows nested clips, and clip sharing between projects ("file-by-reference").
Its hardware support is for jog-wheels ShuttlePRO V.2 and ShuttleXpress from Contour Design, multiple monitors, HiDPI, and hardware-supported decoding/encoding via VAAPI/VDPAU/CUDA.
Like the other Cinelerra variants Cinelerra-GG uses its own GUI. It has eleven GUI themes to cater to user preferences.
The GG variant is under active development, with regular stable releases. It is supplied as a 64 or 32 bit AppImage for Linux. The source code is available as (manual) monthly download or from its git.
Before 2021, it was supplied as a multi user program pre-packaged for eight different Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, OpenSuse, Slackware, Fedora, Centos, Mint), and FreeBSD. When the applicable repository was added to a distribution's update manager, the monthly updates would appear automatically. In addition, there were single-user builds for the eight Linux distributions plus Gentoo, as tar files. All those builds are available in 64-bit, for Debian 9, Slackware and Ubuntu 14 there are also 32-bit single user builds. As a proof-of-concept, with the 2020-01 release was a Windows version with limited functionality; for details see the manual's chapter 1.
In addition to the GG variant's monthly releases, it is also available in two Linux variants dedicated to multimedia: AVLinux, and Bodhi Linux Media. It is also included in DeLinuxCo, and in lightweight Elive, of which the 32 bit version is usable on older computers.
Cinelerra-GG communicates with it users and developers through three platforms: its forum (user oriented), a bug tracker (feature requests, bugs, roadmap), and a mailing list (developers discussions). Each monthly release has a significant number of changes resulting from discussions and exchanges of information on these platforms.
Cinelerra-GG has an extensive, actively maintained manual in both PDF and HTML form, which is also accessible from within the Cinelerra-GG program. The manual is helpful for both beginners (e.g. Quickstart section) and professionals. There is also a YouTube channel with tutorials.
The differences between the GG and other Cinelerra variants can be found in [22].
| Broadcast | 1.0 | 1996 | From the "Secrets of Cinelerra" by A. Williams:
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| Broadcast | 2.0 | 1997 | From the "Secrets of Cinelerra" by A. Williams:
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| Broadcast 2000 | Beta 1 | 1999-05-10 | From the Heroine Virtual website's Broadcast NEWS section:
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| Broadcast 2000 | Beta 2 | 1999-09-09 | From the Heroine Virtual website's Broadcast NEWS section:
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| Broadcast 2000 | Final | 2000-01-10 | From the Heroine Virtual website's Broadcast NEWS section:
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| Broadcast 2000 | Bcast2000 a | 2000-07-20 | From the Heroine Virtual website's Broadcast NEWS section:
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| Broadcast 2000 | Bcast2000 b | 2000-10-11 | From the Heroine Virtual website's Broadcast NEWS section:
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| Broadcast 2000 | Bcast2000 c | 2001-01-10 | From the Heroine Virtual website's Broadcast NEWS section:.
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| 2000-06-15 | Founding of the Cinelerra project. After numerous discussions between Adam Williams and Michael Collins about the direction of Non-Linear Editing on Linux, Williams presented the name and concept of Cinelerra to business partner Michael Collins in Sunnyvale, California. | ||||
| HV | Beta 1 | 2002-06-10 | HV's SourceForge backup files show frequent activity up since 2001-09-09 straight up to release 1.1.0 . | ||
| HV | Beta 2 | 2002-07-12 | |||
| HV | 1.0.0 | 2002-08-12 | Initial release. | ||
| HV | 110802 | 2002-11-08 | This release still identified itself as version 1.1.0, but had considerable changes compared to the 2002-08-12 release, for instance LADSPA support and titler changes. Because there are 3 separate blocks of comment in the change log since the 2002-08-12 release, this is more like a version 1.1.3 . | ||
| HV | 1.1.5 | 2003-02-11 | From the change log in the source (selection):
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| CV | 1.1.5 | 2003-04-29 | HV code "forked" into a community CVS version. | ||
| HV | 1.1.6 | 2003-05-12 | From the change log in the source (selection):
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| HV | 1.1.7 | 2003-08-11 | From the change log in the source (selection):
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| CV | 1.1.7 | 2003-10-05 | Merge with community CVS version. | ||
| HV | 1.1.8 | 2003-11-11 | From the change log in the source (selection):
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| HV | 1.1.9 | 2004-02-11 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| CV | 1.1.9 | 2004-02-17 | Merge with community CVS version. | ||
| HV | 1.2.0 | 2004-05-11 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 1.2.1 | 2004-08-12 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| CV | 1.2.1 | 2004-08-16 | Merged with community CVS version. Special enhancements were added to this version E.g. H264 Kod. Cineon used at NAB under Fedora 1,2 and BSD 5, this could handle 4k film 4096x4096 if graphics card permits. Fast frame rate in excess of 210 frames per second at 720x480 29.97, while bringing in live HD video in the timeline from a video camera. video4linux driver Zoran chip. | ||
| HV | 1.2.2 | 2005-01-10 | From the change log in the source (selection):
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| CV | 1.2.2 | 2005-01-18 | Merged with community CVS version. | ||
| CV | 2.0 | 2005-09-29 | Merge with community SVN version. | ||
| HV | 2.0 | 2005-10-04 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 2.1 | 2006-07-02 | From the change log in the source. (selection):
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| CV | 2.1 | 2006-09-07 | Merge with community SVN version. (The first use of git and a multi-person merge) | ||
| HV | 4.0 | 2008-08-11 | Since all versions 2.0 onward 10bit (useful for prof. Cinepaint) and 16bit RGB(A),YUV(A) have been removed and replaced with RGB YUV Float instead. | ||
| HV | 4.1 | 2009-09-25 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 4.2 | 2010-10-17 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| CV | 2.1.5 | 2010-11-21 | From the Cinelerra-CV website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 4.3 | 2011-08-06 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| CV | 2.2 | 2011-11-13 | From the Cinelerra-CV website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 4.4 | 2012-09-07 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 4.5 | 2013-10-25 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 4.6 | 2014-09-10 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| org | 5.0 | 2015-07-04 | Cinelerra.org releases a studio centric version of Cinelerra titled 5.0. Cinelerra is now fully integrated with FFMPEG and supports numerous 4K and 2K uncompressed cinema standards from such camera manufacturers as AJA, Blackmagic Design, and Red. | ||
| 2015-08-13 | From the Cinelerra-CV website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 4.6.1 | 2015-11-09 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| 5.1 (GG) | 5.1 | 2016-03-31 | The first of monthly releases of a branch separate from the HV, CV and .org versions, first under the name Cinelerra 5.1, but from September 2018 as Cinelerra-GG Infinity. | ||
| HV | 6.0 | 2016-11-17 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| HV | 7.0 | 2017-10-13 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| GG | 2018-09 | 2018-09-30 | First of monthly releases of the Cinelerra-GG Infinity version, this is a rolling release. See the release notes which cover monthly releases since mid-2016, initially not under the GG name but as version 5.1 . | ||
| HV | 7.1 | 2019-01-23 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| GG | 2019-01 | 2019-01-31 | The 5th monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity adds support for jog-wheels ShuttlePRO V.2 and ShuttleXpress from Contour Design. | ||
| GG | 2019-04 | 2019-04-30 | The 8th monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity allows GPU-accelerated decoding for some video formats. | ||
| GG | 2019-05 | 2019-05-31 | The 9th monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity adds GPU-accelerated encoding for some video formats. | ||
| GG | 2019-07 | 2019-07-31 | The 11th monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity has significant improvements in masking. | ||
| HV | 7.2 | 2019-10-11 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| GG | 2019-10 | 2019-10-31 | The 14th monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity adds scaling for HiDPI monitors, and speeds up AV1 decoding. | ||
| GG | 2020-01 | 2020-01-31 | The 17th monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity adds OpenSuse Tumbleweed as supported platform, and Gentoo as single user platform. In addition, a limited Windows version is available. | ||
| GG | 2020-07 | 2020-07-31 | The 23rd monthly release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity adds aligning video using timecodes, two more subtitle formats, and auto-rotate for videos with rotation metadata set. | ||
| GG | 2021-02 | 2021-02-28 | The 27th release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. The release format is changed from distro-specific packaging to AppImage. Other changes: autosave backups optional feature is now a Settings in Preferences under Appearance; additional FFmpeg video/audio render formats available such as dnxhr variants; aspect ratio and interlace improvements; batch Render menu now has a hidden feature to prevent mistakes which can be turned on/off; Openjpeg upgraded from 2.3.1 to 2.4.0. | ||
| HV | 7.3 | 2021-03-04 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| GG | 2021-05 | 2021-05-31 | The 29th release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. It adds context-sensitive help via alt-h. | ||
| GG | 2021-07 | 2021-07-31 | The 31st release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. Updates to x264, x265 and AV1 codecs, H.265 10 and 12 bit support updated and combined with 8 bit, improvements in EDL export, PAL/NTSC color space split. | ||
| GG | 2021-08 | 2021-08-31 | The 32nd release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. The built-in ffmpeg upgraded to version 4.4, over 20 new audio/video effects, configurable fast/slow speeds. | ||
| HV | 7.4 | 2021-10-21 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| GG | 2021-10 | 2021-10-31 | The 34th release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. Additional render formats (Cineform, DPX, MXF), Hungarian as GUI language added, fix for title fade, fix slow startup due to unneeded discovery of plugins. | ||
| GG | 2022-03 | 2022-03-31 | The 39th release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. A pre-built version for FreeBSD 12.3 and FreeBSD 13 is available in the test section. For aarch64 an AppImage can be built. Multiple libraries updates, faster AV1 support, build scripts improvements, dvd render improvement. | ||
| GG | 2022-05 | 2022-05-31 | The 41st release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. Built-in OpenJPEG upgraded from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0. LV2 audio plugin improvements. Fixes for Blu-ray, non-linux platforms, Timecode (Ctrl-!), and memory/resource leaks. Various build improvements, vaapi render formats QT and MKV added. | ||
| GG | 2022-08 | 2022-08-31 | The 44th release of Cinelerra-GG Infinity. Built-in FFMPEG libraries upgraded from 4.4 to 5.1 . 11 new video plugins, 10 new audio plugins, and multiple render formats added. | ||
| HV | 8 | 2022-10-23 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| 2024-05-17 | From the Heroine Virtual website's NEWS section:
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| 2024-06-30 | NEWS | ||||
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