Getting Started with PiTiVi

When you have finished editing your project, the final step is to combine all of your edits into a final video that you can share with others. This process is known as rendering your video. Fortunately, like everything else in PiTiVi, this is simple.

Click the Render project button and a dialog box appears. Click the Choose File button and select where you want your rendered file to be saved. You now can click the Render button, and your video will be rendered by default as an Ogg Theora video.

If you want to control what kind of video format and size is rendered, click the Modify button.

Figure 4. PiTiVi supports a wide variety of output formats.

In this dialog box, set the visible size of the video in the Video Output section. There are a variety of defaults here, but you can select Custom if you want to specify your own size. In the Audio Output section, you can specify the audio quality of your video. Finally, in the Export to section, you can choose which codecs are used in your project. An important note here is that the Container file type can often contain a different type of codec. As an example, the .avi container can have many different types of video codecs inside.

When you are happy with the settings, click the OK button to accept the settings, and then click the Render button in the render project dialog box to start rendering the video. Rendering can take a while, so go grab a cup of coffee. Afterward, you will have your fully edited video ready to view and show others. Congratulations!

In this article, I've explained how to get started with PiTiVi and how its simple and usability-oriented design and toolset can be used to create a range of different types of videos. Although simplicity sometimes can be confused for lack of capability, PiTiVi certainly can meet the needs of many home videos for sharing with friends and family.

Although PiTiVi is simple and flexible, the project is by no means standing still. The team already is working on transitions and titles for videos as we speak. PiTiVi has a rosy future, and so, therefore, does video on Linux. Be sure to let Linux Journal know what kind of videos you are making with it. Good luck!