Where Kinema falls short of Premiere Pro

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (new file: ROADMAP's "Where we are lacking" re-measured against Premiere Pro 26.5.2 and the open issue list) · Target: Adobe Premiere Pro 2026 (26.5.2)

Every known shortfall, one entry each, ranked by what most stops an editor using Kinema for real work. This is the work list: agents should prefer it over adding checklist items. Numbers are in target-app-parity.md; estimates are Opus 5.5 agent-hours, calibrated there. When you close or shrink a gap, update its entry, its parity doc and the revision history.

Summary by kind: feature gaps G1, G2, G12, G13, G18, G19; UI / UX G8; file formats G2, G10, G13, G15; codecs G3, G10; hardware G5; localization G14; stability and platforms G4, G9, G17; performance G16; ecosystem G11; measurement G1, G6, G7; web G20.

G1. Nothing compares our output with Premiere's

• Missing: a fidelity harness. Every effect, transition, Lumetri control, blend mode, keyframe interpolation and audio effect counts once it exists; nothing renders the same project in Premiere and Kinema and compares frames or samples. Effects described as approximations count the same as exact ones.
• Evidence: catalogue tests check names and folders only. Anima's live After Effects comparison (its gaps.md G1) found real bugs in features marked done on its first run.
• Impact: "ready for real work" stays an estimate; colour and effect differences surface only when a user notices.
• Done when: a corpus of original test projects (our own media), opened in Premiere through FCP7 XML / OTIO, rendered by both, with per-effect PSNR / ΔE and audio-sample scores reproducible from one command; Premiere output stays local in plan/premiere/ (gitignored). Owner runs Premiere (installed). 40–70 h. Doc: target-app-parity.md.

G2. Premiere's .prproj cannot be opened

• Missing: import of Premiere project files. grep -ri prproj crates apps finds nothing. Today an editor must export FCP7 XML, AAF or OTIO from Premiere first, losing bins, effects and most metadata; there is no "Selection as Premiere Project" export either.
• Impact: the beta bar requires opening the target's main format; every switching editor's existing work is behind this.
• Approach: .prproj is gzip-compressed XML. Clean-room from projects we author ourselves in Premiere (the owner has plan/premiere/fixtures/kinema_ref.prproj): sequences, tracks, clips, in/out, speed, transitions, markers, bins, labels, then the common effect parameters (Motion, Opacity, Lumetri basic, Volume). Report what was not imported. Export later. 60–120 h. Doc: file-format-parity.md.

G3. 10-bit and 4:2:2 camera media needs hardware

• Missing: our H.264 decoder is 8-bit 4:2:0 only (crates/h264/README.md: no High 10, High 4:2:2, 4:4:4, lossless, interlaced field / MBAFF); HEVC has no 4:2:2 / RExt. Most mirrorless and cinema cameras record exactly these (Sony XAVC S-I / XAVC HS 4:2:2 10-bit, Panasonic, Canon XF-AVC, Fujifilm).
• Evidence: #626 (Panasonic Lumix 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 MOV). On macOS VideoToolbox decodes 10-bit 4:2:2 H.264 / HEVC on chips that support it; Windows Media Foundation and Linux decline them, and there is no software fallback, so the clip fails. Premiere decodes them everywhere (and in hardware on Apple silicon, Intel and NVIDIA Blackwell).
• Impact: camera originals from most current cameras do not open on Windows or Linux.
• Estimate: H.264 High 10 + High 4:2:2 (chroma geometry, deblocking, transforms) 15–25 h; HEVC Main 4:2:2 10 (RExt subset) 15–25 h. Doc: codec-parity.md.

G4. Crashes at start-up, and no test CI on pull requests

• Have: a graphics start-up fallback (#820): after two starts in a row that died within 15 s of launch without painting (a driver crash in wgpu instance / device creation; hangs, later crashes and concurrent instances don't count), the next launch moves on to DirectX 12 only (Windows), then a software adapter (WARP, lavapipe, llvmpipe) with CPU compositing, and keeps the mode that works; a start-up error wgpu reports moves on in the same process. A fallback mode shows a notice with Use Default Graphics; --graphics default|dx12|software picks a mode by hand. An explicit WGPU_BACKEND stays in charge. On Windows, a GPU that Vulkan lists through two installed versions of one driver (GPUs on different driver packages) draws with the newer one instead of dying inside the stale one (kinema_gpu::adapter).
• Missing: a launch that never fails, and CI that runs the gates.
• Evidence: open issues: macOS 12 Monterey aborts on a missing VideoToolbox symbol (#468, #661, #655), Intel UHD graphics (igvk64.dll, #512), Windows 11 does not run or fails after setup (#380, #582, #413, #477), crash on new project + import (#439), "it just keeps crashing" (#687). .github/workflows/ holds release, packaging lint, FreeBSD and Windows ARM64 builds; none runs cargo test or cargo xtask ci on a pull request, so 243 PRs merged since 10-05 were gated by contributors' local runs (main needed "green again after the batch merges" on 10-10).
• Impact: a user who cannot start the app gets zero value; regressions land unnoticed.
• Done when: weak-linked or runtime-loaded OS symbols on old macOS, a software / safe-mode start when the GPU adapter fails (done, #820), a PR workflow running cargo xtask ci on macOS, Windows and Linux, and a crash-report triage pass. 40–80 h.

G5. Hardware acceleration is partial

• Have: hardware decode on macOS (VideoToolbox H.264 / HEVC), Windows (Media Foundation / D3D11: H.264, HEVC, VP9, AV1) and Linux (VA-API and NVDEC: H.264, HEVC); hardware encode VideoToolbox H.264 / HEVC 8-bit, NVENC H.264 (Windows, Linux) and HEVC incl. Main 10 HDR (Windows); GPU compositing, blend modes, 34 effect ids incl. Lumetri basic / creative / vignette, GPU export rendering (#421).
• Missing: zero-copy decoded frames into wgpu (every frame is read back to the CPU and re-uploaded); VideoToolbox Main 10 / HDR HEVC encode and B-frames; ProRes hardware decode / encode on Apple silicon; Intel Quick Sync and AMD AMF encoders (and their 4:2:2 decode); VA-API VP9 / AV1 and VA-API encode; HEVC encode on Linux; AV1 hardware encode; ~48 of Premiere's ~82 accelerated effects (keys, masks, Lumetri curves / wheels / HSL, distortions, transitions); external video I/O (DeckLink / AJA, Mercury Transmit), control surfaces (EUCON / Mackie); a CPU fallback adapter renders everything on the CPU (#632).
• Estimate: 120–200 h (hardware we don't own needs a human). Doc: hardware-parity.md.

G6. No real-world media corpus or workflow acceptance tests

• Done: first scripted MCP workflows (#835, apps/kinema-cli/tests/it/workflows.rs): the kinema-cli mcp binary imports ffmpeg-made phone-like VFR H.264 + AAC MP4 and long-GOP H.264 Matroska with two audio tracks (AAC, AC-3), edits (extract, audio gain, title; ripple trims, colour matte, cross dissolve), exports H.264 MP4, and saves a project that a new process exports as ProRes; ffprobe / ffmpeg check streams, frame count, duration, frame placement, A/V sync, title pixels, dissolve mix and audio levels. Skipped without ffmpeg.
• Missing: a pinned corpus of phone, camera and screen recordings (variable frame rate, damaged files, long GOP, odd containers, multi-track audio), each with an import → edit → export round trip checked against an ffprobe / ffmpeg oracle; scripted MCP sessions that do real jobs end to end.
• Evidence: export stopped producing frames with iPhone HEVC clips on Linux (#480); WebM shows black (#432); only the first audio track imported (#397, #416, #601; multi-stream support landed in #361, reporters not yet confirmed); bitrate target produced 6.1 Mb/s for 40 (#371).
• Done when: corpus fetched pinned and sha256-verified (as Picto's cargo xtask corpus, craftrules standards/test-corpora.md), runs nightly, ≥ 50 files. 40–70 h.

G7. No measured parity tool in CI

• Done: cargo xtask parity measures menus (#781): our shipped menu bar (the tree the app builds, examples/menu_tree.rs) against a reference list of menu paths, by default the local plan/premiere/menus.json; presence and placement reported separately (same path, elsewhere, missing), app / Help / recent / account / macOS items out of scope, a markdown checklist, and --min to fail below a presence threshold. Without a reference it prints our inventory only. --area effects and --area transitions (#831) measure the Effects panel the same way: the effects and transitions the engine's effect definitions list (examples/effect_catalog.rs in kinema-project) against a reference of folder paths or bare names (default the local plan/premiere/effects.json / transitions.json), placement by folder, Presets and the other area out of scope.
• Missing: the other areas (commands, panels, preferences, formats), fidelity tiers (exact, approximate, stub), a CI job, and a committed docs/parity-checklist.md.
• Evidence: the 92% menu figure in this pass came from an ad hoc label-matching script; it has not yet been re-measured with the tool.
• Estimate: 8–17 h left (the menu snapshot is local-only, so CI needs a committed, Adobe-free list of menu paths for --reference, or the check runs only where plan/ exists).

G8. UI fidelity: monitor handles, Effect Controls, docking

• Missing: on-screen transform handles for Motion / Transform in the Program monitor (#639); Effect Controls keyframe zoom bar, draggable divider, row lines (#640–#645); panel docking rearrangement (#493); clicking empty space to deselect (#683); filmstrip thumbnails (#614); marquee selection in the Project panel (#578); Freeform bins and middle-mouse pan (#579); Program monitor Button Editor (+) (#431); keyframe curves for Position (#448); transition editing controls (#577: Effect Controls has the transition's own timeline, drag to slide or resize; the A/B previews with Start / End sliders remain); track renaming (#654); window controls on macOS (#637); UI scale on X11 (#457).
• Estimate: 120–200 h. Doc: ui-parity.md.

G9. Windows and Linux at run time

• Have: files given at launch (terminal, Open With, file associations) open whatever the case of .fcproj and are made absolute, and arguments that are not Unicode no longer stop the start; kinema-cli import stores no Windows \\?\ paths (#850).
• Missing: routine runtime testing off macOS. Linux playback stutter (#617), Wayland title bar (#433), case-sensitive extensions (#593), "Report an issue" link (#642), Windows bins cannot be left (#587), Sequence Settings won't open on Windows (#586, #351), old hardware (#491).
• Estimate: 50–90 h (overlaps G4's CI work).

G10. Container and codec gaps on import

• Have: E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus) in MP4, MOV, Matroska and MPEG-TS (#647): independent substream, 1–6 blocks per syncframe, spectral extension. MP1 / MP2 (MPEG audio Layer I / II): own decoder (#809) in raw files, MP4 and MOV (#800), MPEG-TS / PS and Matroska (A_MPEG/L1 and L2, #1402), including the bit rate / mode combinations ISO/IEC 11172-3 disallows but ffmpeg writes (its mono default is 384 kbit/s). Radiance HDR (.hdr) stills and image sequences (#1407): RGBE as linear float, flat and run-length scan lines, any axis order. OpenEXR stills and image sequences (#828): scan-line, uncompressed / RLE / ZIPS / ZIP, half / float / uint, RGB(A) or luminance, decoded to linear float frames and bit-exact against ffmpeg; PXR24 (lossy 24-bit float, 16 lines per chunk) decodes too, bit-exact against OpenEXR (via OpenImageIO, #828).
• Missing: free-format MPEG audio, E-AC-3 adaptive hybrid transform, enhanced coupling and the extra channels of 7.1 dependent substreams (played as the 5.1 core), AVI (#598; listed as an extension but no demuxer), WMV / ASF, DV / DVCPRO / DV100, MPEG-4 Part 2, FLAC in MP4 (#603), camera RAW (R3D incl. R3D NE, ARRIRAW, Sony RAW / X-OCN, Canon RAW, BRAW, ProRes RAW; #345, #383), JPEG 2000 / JPEG XS MXF, the rest of CinemaDNG (lossy / JPEG XL DNG, MXF-wrapped, opcode lists, Raw settings; DNG frames and folders import since #1065); stills: PSD, EXR beyond scan-line RLE / ZIP / PXR24 (PIZ, B44, DWA, tiled, multi-part, deep), HEIF / HEIC, AI / EPS, and the rarer DPX layout, run-length encoding (Targa and DPX stills and sequences import since #821, packed 10/12-bit and Y'CbCr DPX since #841, deeper than 8 bits kept at 8); transparent video (#402); Sony start timecode in rtmd (#460); stereo 3D flag (#500); MKV multi-audio (#601).
• Estimate: 120–200 h (camera RAW alone 60–100 h, and some SDKs have licences we cannot use: clean-room from public specs only where specs exist). Docs: codec-parity.md, file-format-parity.md.
• Have: Matroska AAC / MP3 / AC-3 / E-AC-3 sample-aligned with the signal the encoder was given (the exact CodecDelay is trimmed, not the 1 ms-rounded one; #790).

G11. No plugin hosting

• Missing: VST3 / Audio Units, OpenFX, Premiere / After Effects plug-in APIs, UXP panels (#325).
• Impact: many professional editors depend on third-party effects and audio plug-ins.
• Needs: an owner decision (FFI under the unsafe rule, AGENTS.md §0.3). 200–400 h.

G12. AI features

• Missing: Object Mask (Premiere 26.0, #406, #694), Generative Extend (needs a large video model; not reachable locally), media-intelligence search, caption translation, model-based Enhance Speech, Auto Reframe beyond heuristics, auto colour, Auto-Tag Audio Types.
• Have: local Whisper transcription (off in releases, G19), Kokoro-82M text-to-speech narration (#278), scene edit detection, colour match.
• Needs: openly licensed models we can ship. 150–300 h.

G13. Delivery formats

• Missing: AV1 export (software or hardware), MPEG-2 / DVD / Blu-ray, DCP, JPEG 2000 MXF, AS-10 / AS-11, XDCAM HD MXF, P2, PIZ / PXR24 / B44 / DWA OpenEXR compression, MP3 audio, interlaced encoding, smart render, HEVC software encoder (HEVC exists only where a hardware encoder does).
• Have: PNG, TIFF, BMP, JPEG, Targa and DPX (10-bit) image sequences (#779); OpenEXR sequences (half float, linear; uncompressed, RLE, ZIPS or ZIP; #806, #874); AAC Audio (audio-only .m4a, or ADTS .aac; #814); ProRes 4444 / 4444 XQ in the export UI (#342).
• Estimate: 60–110 h. Doc: file-format-parity.md.

G14. Localization: 3 of the 12 key languages missing (Hindi, Arabic, Vietnamese)

• Have: Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, French (#498) and Portuguese (Brazil) (#859) catalogs cover ~99.6–100% of the ~3,500 cataloged strings; Ukrainian ~10% (menus).
• Missing: Hindi, Arabic (no RTL interface layout or catalog; the interface has Arabic and Hebrew fallback fonts and shows captions in reading order, but other names and fields keep egui's left-to-right run order; Arabic titles reported broken, #395), Korean (#508; needs Hangul fonts in craft-fonts), Vietnamese; Premiere also ships Russian. Engine errors, CLI and MCP stay English. Apart from the German menus (#630), no language has a recorded native-speaker review.
• Done: Indonesian (#867): id.tsv has every entry of the Spanish catalog (~100%), in Edit ▸ Language, Settings ▸ General and the native macOS menu; System Language picks it for id-* (and legacy in-*) locales. Native-speaker review welcome.
• Done: Italian: it.tsv has every entry of the Spanish catalog (~100%), in Edit ▸ Language, Settings ▸ General and the native macOS menu; System Language picks it for it-* locales. Native-speaker review welcome.
• Done: German: de.tsv has every entry of the Spanish catalog (~100%), beyond the menus of #630 (panels, dialogs, effects and their parameters, settings, status messages). The menus are native-reviewed; review of the rest welcome.
• Estimate: 150–230 h. Doc: localization-parity.md.

G15. Interchange never validated in Avid / Pro Tools; slow XML import

• Missing: AAF and OMF exports have never been opened in Media Composer or Pro Tools; FCP7 XML / OTIO import of a Premiere sequence took 97 s / 66 s for three media files (#461); file.import merges into existing project content in headless round trips (#592).
• Estimate: 20–40 h (needs a human with Avid / Pro Tools, both installed on the owner's Mac).

G16. Performance reports on 0.5.0

• Missing: steady UI under load. Constant lag after 0.4 → 0.5 (#525), ~100% CPU (#523). AV1 software decode of a single-tile stream is bound by its serial tile decode (65–80 % of a frame; no row-level frame threading, references are waited for as whole frames); 8K is not real time.
• Done: Render (Effects) In to Out renders only the frames between In and Out, as partial previews named by segment hash and relative frames, instead of every segment In/Out touches (#424); Render Audio still renders whole audio segments. AV1 software decode runs deblocking, CDEF and loop restoration in parallel 64-row bands, bit-exact (#847; 1080p GOP 1.16–1.30×, low delay 1.28×, 2160p 1.14× at 16 threads). VP9 software decode loop-filters a frame as a wavefront over superblock rows on the decoder's pool instead of on one thread, bit-identical, 1.2–1.5× faster with 16 threads (#980).
• Estimate: 30–60 h. Doc: performance.md.

G17. Audio device and playback reliability

• Evidence: Asus Xonar DX output broken (#605), no audio (#602), audio cuts out with overlapping clips (#336), buggy audio (#410), Linux stutter (#617). No ASIO; cpal only.
• Have: a stream the device drops while playing (an ALSA xrun cpal reports as POLLERR, an unplugged device) is restarted with the same rate, channels, clock and mixer position, so sound resumes instead of playback going silent (at most 3 restarts in 10 s); a panicking mixer plays silence (#840).
• Estimate: 20–40 h.

G18. Effects depth: approximations and missing behaviour

• Missing: Warp Stabilizer is 2-D (Premiere's is 3-D subspace), Morph Cut has no face tracking (and occlusion edges are soft), Lumetri HDR-aware maths, multicam paging beyond 16 angles, redesigned 26.0 mask tools (a stored, re-editable corner radius: rounding bakes fillets into the path, so a rounded corner cannot be re-rounded later).
• Have: Optical Flow time interpolation synthesises motion-compensated in-between frames (dense coarse-to-fine Lucas–Kanade, CPU; #780); Morph Cut morphs the subject along that optical flow instead of cross-dissolving (CPU; #805); Transform shutter angle motion blur (#415); Ultra Key Setting applied as a parameter preset (#458); rectangle and polygon masks round their corners with circular fillets (masks.add cornerRadius, masks.roundCorners, every path keyframe; #813), from an on-monitor corner-roundness handle with a live preview (one undo step per drag; #844); Shift snaps pen mask segments and dragged-out Bézier handles to 45° steps (#853), and Shift constrains vertex and whole-mask drags to 45° steps from the press point (#1408).
• Estimate: 60–110 h.

G19. Speech to text off in release builds

• Missing: the whisper feature is off by default and in releases, so Transcribe Sequence, text-based editing and auto captions need a source build.
• Estimate: 5–10 h (model download UX, licence check).

G20. The web app shell

• Missing: file access, WebCodecs decode, audio in the browser build beyond what exists; image-sequence export downloads drop frames in Chrome (#378).
• Estimate: 40–80 h. Doc: web.md.

Revision history