Hi everyone,

a new Qt6 alpha is online, built on 2026-10-27. It brings two new features, the patchbay styles and the footer styles, and the fixes for what you reported since the alpha of 2026-10-22. Thank you, Terje, Igor, Andrea and Thomas, for testing and for the detailed reports, videos and screenshots.

Download (sorted by date, the newest on top): download.cinelerra-gg.org

• CinGG-qt6-alpha-20261027-x86_64.AppImage, sha256 fdd3de0172e3f2712aad0ff674d5c33a52034697b4e5143e4fd413b7a4b8377a
• CinGG-qt6-alpha-20261027-anylinux-x86_64.AppImage for older systems (it brings its own glibc), sha256 8465fa6e4a8dfcf976954e74198ee73660f778efac004ab96be9c9d3c7f206b6

The source is public: git.cinelerra-gg.org, branch main, 69 commits since the alpha of 2026-10-22.

1. Patchbay styles

The patchbay can now be set up the way you like it: like DaVinci Resolve, like Kdenlive, like Premiere or Avid, or entirely your own. A right click below the tracks lists the styles: Classic, Compact and Single row. The patchbay also adapts to its width: drag it wider and the faders and fields grow, drag it narrower and it hides what no longer fits, step by step.

In the Patchbay Styles window you build your own styles by dragging elements: the track label as a column over the full height, short (V1, A1) and upright; a new row for gang and master; a fader and a level meter standing upright at the right edge. A preview shows the style on a low, a default and a tall track. There are also new elements: a vertical fader, the fader value, a Solo switch (plays and renders only the soloed tracks) and an effects switch that turns all effects of a track off and on again.

Video, 2:17, English with subtitles: the patchbay styles and the style editor

2. Footer under the timeline, and its styles

The footer below the timeline is one row now: the selection fields (start, length, end), the zoom, the curve range and a message slot on the right. Messages fade out after a while, errors are counted, and a click shows the history. The Display button opens a small window for the track heights, the waveform, the title bars and the curve ranges, where a click on a curve's colour mark picks its colour. The Up and Down keys zoom again, with Ctrl the waveform, with Alt the curve range.

Like the patchbay, the footer has styles. Classic shows it as in the old Cinelerra: duration, waveform, track heights, curve range and the selection fields. Modern is the new default. In the Footer Styles window you make a copy and drag the elements into the order you need. A right click on a free spot of the footer switches between the styles.

Video, 1:35, English with subtitles: Classic, Modern and the Footer Styles editor

The film in both videos is Tears of Steel, (CC) Blender Foundation, mango.blender.org, licensed CC BY 3.0. All videos with .srt subtitles: qt6-alpha/videos.

3. Fixes from your reports

Terje (GNOME, native Wayland):

• The interface was too small on a 27-inch WQHD screen. Settings, Preferences, Appearance has a new row Interface Scale, one value for X11 and one for Wayland. Terje, set Interface Scale (Wayland) to 1.40, that is what QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1.4 did for you. It applies after a restart, which Cinelerra offers.
• The X in the title bar of a floating window (Compositor and the other docks) closes it again.
• A docked window dragged by its title bar comes loose on Wayland. This is tested on KDE only. Terje, could you try it on GNOME?
• Window, Show Compositor and the other Show entries carry a check mark while the window is shown.

Igor:

• A drop from the Resources panel onto the Viewer or the Compositor works.
• Draw media in the patchbay hides the media of the clips.
• A track that is not armed keeps its keyframes, the mouse no longer adds or moves them there.
• The pointer shows the I-beam over the timeline in Cut and Paste mode.
• The transport buttons: Settings, Preferences, Appearance, Icon size sets their size.

Thomas (video of 2026-10-20, private email): after a click on a patchbay switch, moving the mouse over the same switch of another track switched it as well. The switches now act on the press, and dragging across tracks only works while the button is held.

Andrea:

• The knobs of plugins such as Motion: the needle sat off centre and turned strangely with the theme images. Needle, blue arc and the drag angle now take the centre of the knob.
• The reset button that every effect has in its header in the Effect Inspector (the circular arrow) works now. It sets the effect back to the plugin's factory defaults at the current keyframe, as one undo step. If an effect cannot be reset, the footer says so.
• QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland always gave X11: that is on purpose while an X11 display is there, the variable for Cinelerra is CIN_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland. The log now says so. Easier still: see the new setting below.
• h264_vaapi crash (Assertion pic->nb_dpb_pics < 16): the AppImage uses ffmpeg 7.1, and that assertion is in line 62 of hw_base_encode.c only from ffmpeg 8 on. Which build did you use, and what does ffmpeg -version say?
• The fontconfig warnings of the anylinux AppImage: could you send the exact lines?

4. Two new settings for everyone

• Display platform: Settings, Preferences, Appearance has a row Display platform with Automatic, X11 and Wayland. Automatic is the default and behaves as before (X11 when there is an X11 display, also XWayland). It applies after a restart. CIN_QPA_PLATFORM still wins when you set it.
• Own configuration folder: the AppImages now keep their settings in ~/.bcast5-qt6, so an installed Cinelerra keeps ~/.bcast5 to itself. On the first start the AppImage copies your ~/.bcast5 there, without the index files of your media. Nothing is lost, and the two programs no longer read each other's plugin index. This came from Thomas, who wrote a start script for exactly this. Set CIN_CONFIG if you want another folder.

5. VAAPI with ffmpeg 9

Andrew, thank you for all the work you put into ffmpeg in Cinelerra over the years. You wrote that you hope AI assistants can help here. I would like to try exactly that. The part that burned you out, chasing every API change of ffmpeg, is the part an AI does tirelessly. What it cannot do is know where Cinelerra's ffmpeg code hides its traps, and that knowledge is yours. So if you ever feel like it, no pressure and no deadline: a look at a patch, or a one-line hint like the MLT patch you pointed us to, already helps a lot. Phyllis, I would like to help with VAAPI and ffmpeg 9. One thing I noticed: the MLT patch fixes a hwupload/buffersink filter graph, and Cinelerra does not use that graph for encoding. It sets up the hardware frames itself (ffmpeg.C, av_hwframe_ctx_alloc and av_hwframe_transfer_data), so the fix will probably look different.

The catch: I have no hardware for VAAPI encoding, only an NVIDIA card, so I cannot test it myself. Terje, your Arc A750 encodes h264_vaapi and hevc_vaapi with ffmpeg 9.0.2. Your test shows that the driver and ffmpeg 9 work on your system. It goes through the hwupload filter, though, and Cinelerra takes another way to the GPU, so only a Cinelerra build can show whether its encoding works. Would you run test builds if I prepare a patch? Anyone else with an Intel or AMD GPU is welcome too.

How this is made

As before, the code is written with Claude (every commit carries the Co-Authored-By line). What I rely on is testing: automated tests that run the real program, code reviews of each larger change, and my own check of every feature before it is pushed. That does not make it free of bugs, so please keep the reports coming: bug.cinelerra-gg.org or this list.

Cheers,
Sam