Ubuntu / Linx platform

[Doc Therbligs]

Looking for information on editing packages for Ubuntu platform systems. I’m going to build a dedicated editing setup for HDV Editing and was wondering if I could get away from a Microsoft environment without going to a Mac.

Microsoft is the necessary evil at this point in time. :hv20-smilie68:

Thanks

[bluegrass]

Looking for information on editing packages for Ubuntu platform systems. I’m going to build a dedicated editing setup for HDV Editing and was wondering if I could get away from a Microsoft environment without going to a Mac.

Microsoft is the necessary evil at this point in time. :hv20-smilie68:

Thanks

I will be following this line of thinking very closely. Where I work, my boss has directed me to look into the Linux platform and I have since ordered and received 3 free Ubuntu disks. The amazing thing about Ubuntu is they provide the opportunity to look at Linux by booting the OS from the CD. We are getting a little more than fed up with Microsoft forcing their new OS down or throats via the hardware supply chain. It's become next to impossible to purchase an XP Pro laptop. I successfully downgraded one to XP Pro and than the next one came along that was a slightly newer model and I was unable to downgrade it to XP Pro. It is certainly not best practice for an organization to introduce such a radically new OS without it being proven that it will reliably run all existing software applications.

I think that multimedia applications for Ubuntu Linux will come. It won't be right away but they will come.

[Worley]

What we need is a well-respected company to take a leap of faith and port their NLE to Linux.

Adobe, perhaps? It's done for the Mac, and there are (I think) fewer Mac Users than Linux Users.

I'm sure that if the right app comes along, then Linux Users would pay for it. I don't see why everything on Linux should be open source...

[MiCCA]

How about Kino (http://www.kinodv.org) for linux? Is it compatible to capture hdv? :hv20-smilie51: (This is only app that I have found via googling for linux platform.)

Another one found :hv20-smilie03: named Cinelerra (http://cv.cinelerra.org/)

[yorugua]

How about Kino (http://www.kinodv.org) for linux? Is it compatible to capture hdv? :hv20-smilie51: (This is only app that I have found via googling for linux platform.)

Another one found :hv20-smilie03: named Cinelerra (http://cv.cinelerra.org/)

Hi there,
I used dvgrab 3.0 on a thinkpad with opensuse 10.3 to grab content from the hv20 and also kino/ffmpeg to create a mpeg2 file, which I ended up copying to a Playstation 3 and from there to my HDTV. It worked, but it still was my first effort to get the thing going, I'll try to get back to this on the weekend.

What I'm looking at google now is a way to convert the dvgrab output to a mpeg4 format compatible with the PS3. Hope this threads becames full of good info!.

You need one of the latest dvgrab releases to be able to grab hdv from the firewire port. I found most of the packages on the public suse repositories ready to install.

have fun.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

There is no *good* HDV video editor under linux. Stop searching. Things crash all the time. I tried them all.

[darosk]

There is no *good* HDV video editor under linux. Stop searching. Things crash all the time. I tried them all.
Quoted for truth.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Check out Ubuntu Studio (http://ubuntustudio.org/). I've been meaning to try it out for some time now, and I finally got a DVD burner for Christmas... when the next version of Ubuntu comes out in April, I'll think I'll try out Ubuntu Studio when they have it in that version. I used to work with the guy who is now head of the project, and if he's any indication, it should be very good for video editing. How it will do with HD, I don't know. Right now, as a student, I have access to the Mac Lab with FCP, but eventually I'll probably only have Linux for a while after I graduate.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

UbuntuStudio is a distro, not a video editor. It is restrained in its choices for a good editor as much as any other Linux/BSD distro.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Of course Ubuntu Studio is a distro. :) I didn't mean to imply that it was an actual video editor. I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that it is a distro meant to edit video and audio (and images), so it might work better than a standard distro. For one thing, the kernel is set up differently to allow for better editing. Just a possible option... if I install it in April, I'll report back with my findings (probably in the summer... two studio courses, photoshop and FCP, will keep me busy enough!).

Linux/BSD distros are restrained when it comes to video editing, but the question was whether or not it could be done, not if it was optimal...

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

And I answered. From my point of view, it can't be done. The tools that are available are way too sub-par. No matter how you configure your kernel, if the tools on top don't do what you need, it's a useless platform. I use Linux btw, but I don't use it for video editing.

[rperez333]

Linux is good in various areas, but unfortunately, not for video editing. Until Windows 7 is ready, XP is the more inexpensive and fast plataform.

[helcik]

have you tried to setup any windows NLE on linux via WINE?

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Never use WINE, or OS emulation, for something as heavy as video editing. WINE is slow and crashy.

[NotPhil]

Linux/BSD distros are restrained when it comes to video editing, but the question was whether or not it could be done, not if it was optimal...Yes, you can edit HD video in Linux, and, yes, it's, sometimes, a little flaky. Here's what I use:

dvgrab for video capture.
Avidemux or mencoder for 2:3 pull-up, demuxing, muxing, linear editing and transcoding.
Cinelerra for non-linear editing and compositing.

Not all of these tools are well documented, and it's not always obvious how to get the output of one to work as the input to another, so you'll probably want to hang around your distribution's help forums for advice.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

DVGrab works. The guy who wrote dvgrab and Kino, came to my house for lunch once, and he used my HV20 to fix HDV capturing while there.

Avidemux's pulldown removal is buggy, it does not resize the audio correctly to fit the pulldown removed video. And its developers are a nightmare: they don't want to fix the bugs reported to them. I know, I tried about 10 times.

Mencoder has problems with very large m2t files, and it also loses A/V sync after a while.

Cinelerra is a joke. Except of its archaic and ugly interface, it is as crashy as everything video-related in the Linux world. Exporting in a delivery codec out of Cinelerra, is an exercise in patience as well. Until recently, or is it still the case?, it didn't support Huffyuv, which is the only serious intermediate codec under Linux.

[NotPhil]

Avidemux's pulldown removal is buggy, it does not resize the audio correctly to fit the pulldown removed video. And [...] Mencoder has problems with very large m2t files, and it also loses A/V sync after a while.I haven't had any problems with Avidemux, but I have noticed that, sometimes, mencoder will lose audio-video synchronization. I haven't tried anything very large yet, so I can't speak to the problems you've had with big files.


Cinelerra is a joke. Except of its archaic and ugly interface, it is as crashy as everything video-related in the Linux world.I don't like it's interface either, and its online community is blatantly unhelpful, however, the software actually does work, once it's installed correctly and once you figure out what it does and doesn't do (which isn't always the same as what its labeled functions imply it does and doesn't do).

Exporting in a delivery codec out of Cinelerra, is an exercise in patience as well. Until recently, or is it still the case?, it didn't support Huffyuv, which is the only serious intermediate codec under Linux.I don't use Cinelerra for transcoding and I use MJPEG/WAV formats for my work files. Cinelerra does handle m2t files fine, however, and it does have some uncompressed or lightly compressed formats available.

One noticeable hassle, however, is that Cinelerra loves QuickTime while Avidemux and mencoder love AVI. Even though they all say they'll work happily with both containers, the truth is you should convert your files to MOVs when you use Cinelerra, and then back to AVIs for Avidemux or mencoder.

Yes, it's not ideal, but it actually does work.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

If someone would led you a Windows PC with Vegas or Premiere in it, or a Mac with FCP, you wouldn't go back to this workflow, I am sorry to say.

And Cinelerra is easily crashed btw. Exporting MJPEG to feed it to mencoder or ffmpeg for the final export is not a great idea either, as MJPEG is a lossy codec.

[bluegrass]

Just curious. I thought the Macs OS was Unix since 10x. Don't you think sooner or later some group of Linux engineers will develop a good video editor for it. I don't know much about it but I have the impression that Linux is slim & trim compared to Windows and therefore could make a faster platform for video editing. From the way you sound, it will never happen.

My son is supports a bunch of AT&T servers and says if he didn't need Windows for VPNing for his support position and maybe one or two other Windows applications he would switch his home systems to Linux.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

>I thought the Macs OS was Unix since 10x.

Mac OS is a completely different beast. It has unix in its kernel and basic userland, but it does not use the same media frameworks, libraries, or UI/APIs. Porting a video editor from OSX to Linux would be like re-writing it from scratch. There is an ObjectiveC API that's similar between the two platforms, but no one in his right mind would use it because it doesn't have hooks to the Linux media frameworks. It's essentially a rewrite, practically-speaking.

>Don't you think sooner or later some group of Linux engineers will develop a good video editor

Absolutely not: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/01/18/vindication/
I am shouting for a good video editor for Linux since 2003: http://www.osnews.com/story/5335/ NOTHING has appeared yet!

Video editor development is much more complex than people think, and requires so many different parts of different projects to work at 100% stability and speed, AND communicate with the base project, that it means that it requires some extremely good project management. Something that simply does not exist in the open source world. Everyone is out for himself in the OSS world, projects do not co-operate to the point required to create something really good, or complex. Even other complex OSS apps, like Blender or Firefox, required less co-operation from other OSS projects than a basic video editor would need. This is why Firefox exists, and it rocks (especially after some Google money got thrown into it), and any OSS video editor still sucks balls.

>I have the impression that Linux is slim & trim compared to Windows

Aha. Yeah. Let's all ride the hype train. For command line and servers, sure. But not for media, UI, or gaming performance. Any Linux's video editor is many times slower than even an average windows video editor. And crashier too.

>he would switch his home systems to Linux.

If he doesn't do video editing, or IM A/V chatting, it's a good idea. Most of my laptops run Linux too, not Windows. They work fine for basic email/browsing. But the workstations that I do video editing on, they all run Windows.

I would suggest you read this http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/ to get rid some of the Linux hype that the Linux wheenies spread everywhere on the internet. This guy, who is actually a Linux developer (not a Windows or Mac user), says it like it is. Whatever he says there, I am in agreement 100%, and they were my opinions exactly, since I got into Linux in 1998.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

BTW, the first two people who replied in that blog post of mine linked above, are:
1. My husband, JBQ, who is a media engineer and worked on video technologies in the past. He speaks from experience. He currently works for Google's Android platform.
2. Richard is the developer of a Linux video editor. He would normally be one that would hate me for the things I say, the way I say them. But he agrees with me in the situation (we have talked about it in other occasions as well).

There's also the guy I mentioned above, the author of DVGrab and Kino, Dan Dennedy who lives close to my house. He also agrees that creating something like Vegas, or even iMovie, on Linux, will probably never come because of all the work required and the WAY the work has to be done between different projects.

KDEnLive is indeed probably the best so far on Linux. But it still doesn't hold a candle not even to the imovie 06's basic interface. Not by a long shot.

And the reason I shout and bitch about it for years is exactly because I care. I don't code anymore, and even if I did, I wouldn't make a difference. It's just that I can't stand people giving false hopes, or hyping things that simply don't work correctly. I hate lying.

[NotPhil]

Don't you think sooner or later some group of Linux engineers will develop a good video editor for it.Well, I'm sure Eugenia will disagree, but Lumiera (http://lumiera.org/credits.html) sounds promising (http://www.uluga.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6520125). It might be a while before they're ready to show it to the public, though.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

There are at least 2 other new video editors in the works. I just don't expect any one of them to become as stable or as useful as other OSS projects, e.g. Gimp, Firefox. Because they are more complex, and require more co-ordination. And IF they do, you are looking at a 10 year period. That's how long it takes to mature complex code. Even Photoshop needed as much (this is the developer part of me speaking).

[bluegrass]

Eugenia - I should have just kept my mouth shut. You're so gd for advanced from me in computer knowlege it isn't funny and believe it or not I've been in computer hardware maintenance since I suspect way before you were born. My first computer job started the first time a man walked on the moon, July 20, 1969. I've watched disk drives change from the pizza oven style on 360s to what they are today and I still can't come close to your expertise.

I've about given up with trying to keep up with computers and just want to be a knowlegeable user to make good use of the technology. I just want technology to keep getting simpler to accomplish a technical task and doing it better. I'll leave the "geeky stuff" for the younger generations. By the way, I wouldn't touch Linux with a 20 foot pole. It's funny, even though I guess Macs or simpler to use and maybe better than PC's for creative stuff but I still don't think I'll ever touch one of them either. I guess I'm just plain stubborn or set in my ways. There are economies too, I guess that enter into the picture. Thanks for sharing your expertise concerning Linux.

[Buckshot]

I was really hoping to find a video editing program and run Linux solely as an OS. Looks like I'll have to got to a dual boot system and find a program that can burn to BD

[NotPhil]

I was really hoping to find a video editing program and run Linux solely as an OS.Just because Eugenia dislikes it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. As I mentioned earlier, in this thread, I'm using Cinelerra, and at least 119 videos on this forum's favorite video site, Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:cinelerra), were edited with it.
Looks like I'll have to got to a dual boot system and find a program that can burn to BD If you wish to do that, go ahead, but it will only be because you want a dual-boot system, not because you need one.

[Kris]

I still have an old PowerBook G4 (15" display, 800 MHz, 1GB RAM) and want to use it for audio recording "on set". I'm a day-to-day Linux and BSD user but don't have any experience with audio/video.
My plan was to install Debian Testing (or unstable) and use Audacity. The alternative would be to use the old OSX that came with it.
Thoughts, comments?
I only have the builtin onboard soundcard, would I need a better one?

Since the PowerBook has Firewire, could I use it as an external monitor for the camera as well?
I'm also going to test KDEnlive and report back.

[iThinkergoiMac]

I still have an old PowerBook G4 (15" display, 800 MHz, 1GB RAM) and want to use it for audio recording "on set". I'm a day-to-day Linux and BSD user but don't have any experience with audio/video.
My plan was to install Debian Testing (or unstable) and use Audacity. The alternative would be to use the old OSX that came with it.
Thoughts, comments?
I only have the builtin onboard soundcard, would I need a better one?

Since the PowerBook has Firewire, could I use it as an external monitor for the camera as well?
I'm also going to test KDEnlive and report back.

Debian is probably a no-go, unless you can find someone who has made a PPC version. The normal version works with Intel processors only. You're probably better off with the version of OS X that came with it (10.3?). For $130 or so, you could put Leopard on it (pretty sure you still meet the minimum system requirements, but don't take my word for it). At the very least, you could upgrade to 10.4 for not much money and just use Audacity in OS X. My iBook G4 came with some recording software as well, but I can't remember what it was called.

The onboard soundcard is pretty decent, you should be fine with it.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Found out that your PBG4 doesn't officially support Leopard, but using the link below you shouldn't have a problem with it if you wanted to go that route.

http://lowendmac.com/osx/leopard/openfirmware.html

You don't really need Leopard, though... it's just FYI. I would recommend going up to 10.4, though... you can get it for fairly cheap on eBay...

[Kris]

Thx. I'll probably tinker with Linux first since I never really liked OSX but it's good to know I have some options. The G4 shipped with 10.2 (Jaguar) btw.
A quick research showed that upgrading to at least 10.4 (Tiger) does indeed make sense due to the better support for video editing (Core Video) eventhough I'm not sure I'll ever use the laptop for that.

In retrospect it's pretty amazing how in all those years of computer usage I've stayed miles away from anything audio/video. Talk about a blindspot :)

p.s.: Debian still got PPC support, you must be thinking of Ubuntu who dropped it (I have one of the last PPC-Ubuntu releases currently installed on the box).
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/index.html

[iThinkergoiMac]

Ah... I'm an Ubuntu user, which as you know is based on Debian. So I kind of assumed that Debian had also dropped it... good to know that PPC is still supported (would have been nicer to know before my iBook died, probably would have played around with it).

I would venture to say that audio work in Linux would work well, but as you can tell from the previous posts here, your options for video are limited. You'd do alot better in OS X for video editing... good luck!

[iThinkergoiMac]

Just noticed the external monitor question... not sure on that one... but I don't think so... unless you mean monitoring it via something like FCP. Maybe someone else better knows the answer to that one...