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Linux may be free, but there's no truly viable MS Office alternative, nothing that matches Exchange, there's no professional level Photoshop, there's nothing to edit videos with, nor post processing, good luck doing complex audio work

Ardour, anyone? It has been around for quite a few years, and is a really great professional grade DAW/production system. Try googling before posting something quite that ridiculous.

If you are a creative professional -- Linux is completely worthless. Sorry, but it is. I wish that were not the case, but there's no professional-level creative apps for Linux.

I guess all those Xara users, Ardour users, Cinelerra users, MainActor users, Blender users, VariCad users, Jahshaka/CineFX users, etc, are completely boned.

Of all the programs available for Linux, few are of comparable quality to those available to Windows or OSX.

That's just stupid. There are programs of poor quality on all of the major operating systems. Linux has its share of badly put-together programs, but saying that "few" are of comparable quality simply illustrates that you don't spend very much time with Linux systems or just have very poor choice in software.

As far as I know, the only H.264 encoder that is regularly superior to x264 is the offering from MainConcept. Read the Fifth Annual MSU Codec comparison, recently published in May 2009.

For quality comparisons, x264 and MainConcept are clearly the best options, with MainConcept slightly ahead. However, on speed, x264 is quite slow. It depends what it more important to you. For me, it's quality and I'll take the speed hit. x264 is truly fighting it out with the commercial products for market leadership.

While the article summary is, strictly speaking, probably correct in stating that "x264 is NOT the best encoder around", it is pretty damn close to being the best H.264 encoder around, and clearly better than its rivals in some areas.

Linux users usually don't like to pay... for things that aren't any better than what they can get for free. Have you looked at Ubuntu Studio at all? What about Studio 64? Are you at all familiar with what's there? Did you know that MainConcept has codecs and a codec support SDK for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Flash?

What are the big advantages of your specific product? Is it worth $137 more than what's available? The main uses for your product seem to be steganography or synthesis of unusual sounds. I use Power Station Industrializer and some other specialized synthesis software for that. I use specialized steganographic software if ever I want to do that.

If I was convinced that the professional (or casual) license fees for your software were worthwhile, I'd pay them no matter what platform I was going to run it on. If I have something that's good and free that covers the same needs, it undercuts your pricing. That doesn't mean that being a Linux user makes me unable to evaluate costs and benefits. Weighing costs vs. benefits is why I have a mix of Linux, OS X, and Windows around in the first place.

In >20 years how many times has Dvorak actually been right?

Also, last I checked, there is already proprietary software for Linux already and GPL hasn't stopped them due to any viral "tainting."

(Yeah I know one of those is going GPL soon but isn't yet)

Then there are those which skirt the GPL and where the legality is questionable, such as NVidia's and ATI's video drivers.

Take a look at MainActor http://www.mainconcept.com/site/?id=954

I don't know if this is what you mean, but there are propetairy pproducts for Linux that do video editing.

Insightful? How about Kino or Cinelerra or Lives or Mainactor?

if you are okay with non-free then Mainconcept make a pretty decent video editor. On the Free/free front Jahshaka hit rc3(?) recently. On KDE you have KDEnlive....

1920x1080 res at 60% quality at only slightly more than real time on the dual G5? I dig that. Gonna' have to check that out...I'm on the g/f's G5 now. =D

Although a friend of mine who works for broadcaster-codec developer Main Concept told me that they've recently developed a 1920x1080 codec for Pentium 4 machines that encodes two passes at real time. Two-pass encodes are usually VBR, as opposed to a CBR encode that is usually used for percentage-based quality, and would generally take twice as long to perform. To do two passes with h.264 at real time for 1920x1080 is impressive indeed, since I did 2-pass encodes using x264 for DVD resolution (~720x480) at a bit under half real time (1-pass encodes, of course, were more or less at real-time - depending mostly on which deblocking options I picked) on my Athlon 64 machine. Although that was months ago when most AVCs were fairly early on in their lifetimes.

By the way, I'm impressed that you manage to deal with 60gb with OS X also installed for your PVR. I'm doing standard res TV, and the 80gb in my MythTV box is awful slim! I made heavy use of it for today's (American) football games. Although, there are 7200 RPM drives all the way up to 100gb (I'm using a 60gb Hitachi in my laptop, myself). I guess you switched it out a while ago before they got to that size?

They're really expensive in 2.5", though, and I'd rather just spend the dough on 3.5"ers for my file server.

part of the reason it pales in comparison to most other packages, is (last time i checked).. cinelerra wasn't for profit ;) ..hard to compete in development when your competition make money handoverfist vending their products.

that said, the high cpu/ram requirements are for realtime 2k, if i recall.. not realtime 480i. you can get by with much less if you're just doing DV. those requirements are onpar with almost any OS doing realtime 2k unless the suite comes with custom hardware tuned specifically for the app.

the price on Shake for linux ($4999) is a direct representation of the budgets of the people who want to use Shake for linux, i think. if you're on a tight budget, you're using a G4 or ibook or whatever and shakeOSX.. if you have crazy cash for a renderfarm etc.. shakelinux. I know it sucks, but that's life.

as far as NLE in linux for $499 or less, have you checked out MainConcept's mainactor5 for linux ($199?)? I haven't used it, but it might be promising for your needs.

• MainActor
• Kino
• Piranha
• ...

It's advanced, but difficult to use. (In prior versions anyhow)

For ease of use w/ most of the advanced features checkout MainActor from Mainconcept

http://www.mainconcept.com/mainactor_v5.shtml

Free to DL and test. (Watermark in output)

Compositing and 3D yes, editing no [...]

*Yay* you can get your dv into linux, and we all salute the effort you probably have to put in in order to do so, but you're all but shafted as far as editing goes from there.

No, not really

One of these years I would like to make/find an end to end open source solution, specifically optimized for the DV to DVD videographer market. However, in true Unix tradition, each separate tool I currently use does its job very well in my opinion.

Although I have no real basis for comparison to FCP or Premiere as the only Windows video editing software I have used was the bare bones single-track editor that came with my firewire card over 5 years ago. I only made one video before my permanent switch to Linux.

I use Gimp to do what most people do with Photoshop: General Image Manipulations.
I am not a Photographer or a full-time Graphics Designer (although I love hand-drawing and designing Logos)
What I don't like about Photoshop is not the software itself but the OS : modal windows.

Gimp (and most apps in Linux) - you have that freedom of floating dialog boxes instead of Modal-windows; so you can get under it.

The general averseness with Gimp is twofold:

1. People are way too accustomed to Photoshop and unlearning stuff is short of painful.
2. Gimp on Windows/Cygwin sucks sucks badly. And sadly that is Windows-users gain their first impressions of the software.

In Gimp if you are stuck - right click (navigate the menu from thereon to do almost anything).
Gimp is definitely better what it used to be (I abhored the 1.x versions), and not that sub-standard in comparison to Photoshop.
I don't deny however that Photoshop itself is an extremely professional state-of-the-art software and that in many fronts it still beats Gimp (as I keep hearing: CMYK / Pantone profiles).
But there is much more to Gimp than people are vaguely aware.

For me its refreshing and exciting the whole evolutionary (if not revolutionary) process. Sure many Linux-ported applications are still sub-par in contrast to Windows-only:

Photogenics, MainActor, QCad / LinuxCad

Some got the timing wrong and had to pull-out as Linux wasn't popular then: NetObjects Fusion for Linux and MusicMatch Jukebox.
Others were bullied by the Microsoft lobby: most notably games.
While others still support a Linux version to this date: Maya Complete and Mathematica (way too expensive I rather settle for the free Blender, Octave and Pov-Ray)

Which leads us to the Open Source:

The were have a vast library of resources just to cater for the Designer.
But sadly we got tired and old in learning new stuff.

I cannot comment on the world of Mac. Which should be more user-oriented than developer-oriented; a means to an end as you stated.

While Microsoft itself - is a damn pain in the arse. People are stucked with it for lock-in reasons including proprietory formats - that is how they bred so many software houses writing apps just for it.
Rebooting, desinfecting - recovering corrupted documents is a hassle any business and I could do without. And so .. I resist.

Use Mac / Use Linux / but using Microsoft = very unwise.

Man
The company is German !!
Just write to them and they will port it.
I mean its one country that port their software to Linux easily without a fuss:

SoftMaker
MainConcept
RibbonSoft

MainActor 5 for Linux offers professional features almost identical to the features you already know from the Windows version, including DV capture and MPEG-1/2 import and export in a new interface.

For lighter work, there is Q DVD-Author. It is FOSS and works well for making DVD's with menus, etc.

True, since currently there is no retail version of MainActor even from Main Concept, just this Preview/Beta. I'm just using this opportunity to voice with my cash that I do want a non-Windows easy to use video editor on my X86 hardware. iMovie/FinalCutPro are nice, but I'd rather not sell my car to buy a Mac to use those apps.

Examples? Video editing.. nothing available for linux can touch adobe Premiere.. not even the old version 5.0 of it.

Taken a look at Cinelerra lately? Or MainActor?

Is MainActor a commercial Linux video editing application or is this a Suse created application?

It's here. It's a commercial video editing app. It's pretty cool when you know what the hell it is you are doing. As far as I was able to use it was editing frames in movies, but hey, I don't want to give out too many ideas to the goatse.cx guy.

First -- This person has asked a perfectly valid question. He wants to use Linux for video/digital film production. Comments that tell him/her to get illegal copies of software or to switch to a Mac (which just assumes he has the extra money to run out and buy one) are not only not helpful, but are basically a rude way of saying, "I don't have an answer for you, but I want to act like I do, so I'll just suggest something that doesn't really answer your question."

Second -- This is definately an area where Linux does not have the software. I've spent years in video. I d/l'ed Adobe Premiere (the 30 day demo version) and found it extremely easy to use for someone who is used to "real" video editing. I've tried Cinelerra several times, in test installs, and I've found it to be anything BUT easy to comprehend. This stuff about it being "advanced" or for "advanced users" doesn't wash with me. I have the experience and it's just a pain in the but to find your way around the program. The interface is anything BUT intuitive. (As someone pointed out earlier, in editing, this is a time when you need to focus on the work, not on getting your tools to work.)

Now, after those comments, here's what, to me, seems a useful suggestion and what I am currently planning. The company Main Concept is a German company. The last version of their editing program, Main Actor (V. 3.65) cost US $100 and worked on Linux and Windows. It's not Premiere, but for $100, I found it a good comparison. Currently the program is unavailable because they are preparing for the release of version 5.0. If you go to their site, you can download a Windows version of their V 5.0 beta 3 and test it out. This version is roughly comprable with Premiere 6.0. Some features aren't as good, but some are better (for instance, there was no smart gain for audio, but there are more sound adjustment abilities in MA than in Premiere). When I last corresponded with the people at Main Concept (when the beta 2 was out), they were still integrating some features into the betas and final version.

It will probably cost more than the US $100 price of their last version, but I wouldn't expect it to be any more than $150 or so. While it's not open source, and it's not free, it is a good solid program and will do what a video editor needs. They are also working on porting their effects program over to Linux as well.

I don't expect to see much more in the way of video editing in the open source field for a while. It involves too much GUI programming and the kind of intuitive feel that programmers seem to hate to deal with unless they have to.

German company MainConcept makes a video editing software for Linux and Windows platforms. Check out MainActor.

The cross-platform compatibility is done with Qt, so the basic user-interface quality is very good. Some strangeness in some video editing UI concepts, but otherwise excellent.

I've tried the Linux demo version abt two years ago. It was rather nice even then.

Price $99.

Playing games is how I relax between projects. Either running Age of Kings, or Starcraft, or sniping some fools in Rainbow Six, its all about relaxation. Some of the games I play, can be run in linux, unreal tournament for example.

The other, is DV editing on firewire. I can edit in Linux just fine, and as the firewire support becomes more stable, I'll soon be able to drop the MS OS. Its the capture and export to tape that I tend to have problems with in Linux. (side plug for a decent company making a linux port is MainConcept)

As video has become a central way to entertain, inform and influence the public, "the people," not just government and big media companies, must be given the power to create decent video presentations..

If you can't run one of the more popular commercial non-linear editors (Avid/Final Cut Pro/etc) I offer the following list of Linux alternatives.

(And before you mod me offtopic, note that Trinity uses Gstreamer. So there.)

NON-LINEAR SYSTEMS

Broadcast 2000 -- One of the more developed linux editors. Works with a variety of hardware. I personally haven't used it, but there is at least one company out there selling pre-packaged versions of this.

Trinity -- Another Linux solution - still very early in development. Uses Gstreamer though

MainActor -- I think this is a commercial Linux product, about $100.

And for fun...

AUDIO EDITING SYSTEMS

ProTools FREE - This is a commercial product, but this free, non demoware version, limited to 8-tracks, does not require dedicated hardware. It does require Mac or Windows, though I have no idea if it will run under WINE.

ProTUX - Although the web site denies it, this is basically an open source ProTools.

Audacity - A cross-platform open source audio editor.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I know about.

W
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