I do this for a living. Most people shooting family vids or youtube vlogs/video essays would find Kdenlive perfectly well suited to their needs. It does simple transforms, titling, adjustments, etc. And it looks like a normal NLE. When you hit a wall with it, the move to a commercial program will be easy.
I mean, I dunno about you but for me this is money. I make money with these tools. I prefer Linux for privacy reasons, but I’m not religious about it when it comes to money. We all gotta eat.
The Blackmagic folks might help. Especially if you paid for Studio. I don’t work there and can’t make promises, but I’d definitely make a stink about that. At least get a formal statement from them on Sony support in Linux.
My in-house is an old GH5s w/ a Shogun. But if the client pays, I prefer to rent an URSA mini. So I haven’t hit this.
You could use gpu passthrough with iommu and qemu to a virtual system and run Win. A real PITA. I know.
I’d bitch about that on the blackmagic Resolve forum. That’s a serious hit to your workflow. Call out Dwaine, he works there and does Linux support. Nice guy.
Go with an LTS version. Fedora is upgrades twice a year. Mint is just Ubuntu. I’d choose 22 04 Mint over Fedora for this reason. But Debian Stable is old yet tried and true. Plain Debian works.
Yeah. On Win and Mac, it imports anything. But on Linux, the paid Studio version will import x264/x265 with mp3 or PCM (wav) audio. Not AAC. People don’t like that. Lol
But you’d be insane to edit with these interframe formats. And most commercial editors would auto-convert ingested x264/265 to an intraframe format like Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHR anyway. They’re essentially containers for jpeg or png frames instead of compressing collections of frames. Much easier to scrub the timeline that way, though the files are huge.
On Linux, Resolve (both free and Studio) imports DNxHR with PCM audio and edits that like butter. ffmpeg easily converts prosumer camera x265/aac output to DNxHR. Or Shuttle encoder, if you want a GUI. And most pro cameras output ProRes, ProRes RAW, or DNxHR directly.
Also, Resolve on Linux will ingest all Blackmagic RAW file formats, if you have a Blackmagic camera. And the little BMPCC 4k is still a steal at $1200 or so. As long as you light your subject properly, that little camera shoots gorgeous photography.
Resolve is a pro tool. But a project takes time to set up. For little things, I’d go with Blender’s VSE, which is full featured but has a terrible interface, or kdenlive, which is a Windows Movemaker like toy, but has a normal interface you’d expect from an NLE.