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Free Realtime Video Editing for Linux
paRcat writes "Broadcast 2000 Final has been released. To those that are into realtime 640x480 video editing, this is good. It's an awesome package, and all free! Here's the link." Has anybody out there tried this yet? It sounds great, but so far we haven't been able to dig up anyone who's actually worked with this software to get their take on it.
SOC/RO Update: This BroadCast 200 Finale Program really rocks. Let me tell you, in terms of realtime, 640x480 video editing for Linux, nothing comes anywhere near its realtimeness, editing capabilities, or its nonpareil 640x480ness. If you've got to shoot photon streams through slits to kill cats named Belfry, consider nothing else. This is perfection. But what, truly, is perfection? What is perfect? What is ideal? Do we all have our own ideals? Is there some, ideal video editing tool for linux out there? Plato wondered about ideal video editing tools nearly 10,000 years ago. Unfortunately, Aristotle soon realized what was going on, and decided to take him down. Linux was the Open/Source Operating/System that launched 1,000 ships, some headed to Troy, some headed to the Carribean, some headed to unknown desitantions far away, to do some unknown deed, to some unknown people. "How are your stocks doing?" Well let me tell you, my stocks are doing fabulous. Especially my fine art stocks. Those companies may not make money, and may rely on outmoded business models, but boy do they perform fabulously! My stock in Applied Brushstrokes (NASDAQ: CRAP) has split four times in the past six months. My dead animals have provided me with many fine stock tips these past few lonely weeks. My insane robot pal, KZ-467Y, had told me that I needed to get out more: "You need to get out more." But I did not heed his advice. "Listen," I said, "I will get out when I attend the Poke/Mon Championships, held July 3-7, in the Tampa Bay Convention Center, in Tampa, Florida. Until then I do not need to leave the company of my dead animals, except to steal pricey toothpaste." "Indeed," said the wild and crazy KZ-467Y, "you think that by sitting all alone, in your abandoned dumpster, with your dead animals, you ever will amount to anything?" "No," I explained, "but I have an idea..." I began to whisper my idea to him. Four short (40-50 minutes each) hours later, I had him convinced. "That plan is indeed crazy my friend," he nodded confidently, "but it's so crazy, it just might work." Later that night, I took out the following items: one (1) small, airtight, pressure-resistant box, one (1) cat named Belfry, one (1) vial of poison gas, one (1) subatomic particle. I then put Belfry the cat inside the box with the molecule. I placed a computer controlled device that would release the poison gas if the particular subatomic particle was detected on the vial of the poison (naturally). I then placed this in the box as well, on one side. Not knowing which side the molecule was on, I forcefully inserted a divider into the now-closed box. Now here is the question: is the cat dead? Or is it in a state of half-deadness? Obviously the cat is dead, because I cut it in half while putting the divider in. Doh!
but may not...I had to copy the libbcase.so file from the bcast2k directory to /usr/lib and/or /lib/ for it to work right. Just saying that because it says there may be a linker error if you don't have a libc6 system and as a newbie it scared me a little at first...
What in the world is wrong with you people? Of course this is for real. And of course you don't need 1 terabyte raid, etc. Wasn't it obvious by the "falling in love" comments, that the web page author has a sense of humor? And the "harras the author" email links?
What, so, now any joke or quirky humor (which some of us happen to like) means that everything else is invalid?
Yeah, ok, let's see, I think I'll waste a ton of time making up a WHOLE BUNCH of crap about a fictional video editing package, just as a setup for a few measly half-jokes at the bottom of the page.
At least there are a FEW of you who realize how FUCKING COOL and IMPRESSIVE this package is. Are you all linux advocates like you claim so fashionably to be, or not?!
Sheesh, people...... c'mon now..
All I have to say is........
HOOOOOOLY SHIT!!!!
These people have to be the absolutely most stupid, slow brained monkey fucks I have ever
encountered in my life.
IT IS A JOKE. HAHAHA
Practice laughing with me boys and girls.
"HA HA HA"
The author is making a JOKE!!!!
How dumb can you fools be?
How long have you spoken English?
Where are you from?
Do you know what sarcasm is?
Do you know when not to post and shutup? (I don't)
To spell it out ONE MORE TIME
The author is making a joke about the preferred
hardware for video editing to use his real application.
Wow - I can't believe I had to do that.
"The programmer should ALWAYS provide a good build system."
This reminds me of something that came up w/ the CmdrTaco interview last week. He suggested he hadn't released the code yet because he hadn't done all the little things, like documenting and setting up a proper configuration system. The response was that he should release it anyway, and the community would fix the problems. I'd say the same philosophy should apply here. I'd rather have the source now, then wait for the programmer to LEARN to setup a proper build system.
It's the chance of news stories like this that make me reload slashdot every few hours. I have downloaded the source, and yes, it IS gpl'd.
From README.src:
"Broadcast 200 is GPL. Through the magic of credit, the development costs have been shielded from the user."
When I went to CDIS college for a week, one of the things they showed us was video editing. I ventured a question: How much does the hardware and software cost? The professor gave me a rough estimate of ten thousand dollars. I sadly thought that such a potential low-barrier entry market should not be made high-barrier by the cost alone.
GPL'd software is not the end of all the caveats to make software great, however. One of the things that makes the GNU project's software so great is portability. Also, a lot of the GNU project's software is very solid. I am very interested in a professional video editor looking at this software and giving us input.
Kudos to the Broadcast 2000 team.
What are credits?
This is absolutely perfect timing, too, as we're just about to embark on our first sci-fi film. This could not have been released at a better time, if the writers had tried.
So, once again, a VERY big thanks!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A friend of mine picked up an ATI All-in-Wonder (or was it an All-in-Wonder Pro?) a month or two ago, and after spending a few days futzing with beta software he had TV-out working well. I don't think the TV input is supported yet but it was under development. IIRC it was only recently that ATI saw the open source light, so all the Linux driver software (including Mesa modifications, I believe) is in a fairly alpha stage. If you're desparate you could always get a separate bttv card for input.
This looks like an inspired piece of work. Instead of worrying too much about hardware compatability as yet, you could always import/export your footage under W95/NT and then edit the hell out of it via Linux.
By the looks of the screenshots, this software was used in the making of Titanic!
; )
**>>BELCH
At least my video card can grab in 768x576, but you usually have some kind of cropping, since most TVs don't show (and aren't supposed to show) the entire screen area. I'd guess you messed up at least one of those PAL resolution numbers (your aspect ratio is 5:4 instead of the right 4:3).
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
I believe standard television translates to 320x240 interlaced... so 640x480 is what you would need to produce TV quality signal from your computer.
From what I've seen, you can do a lot with iMovie on an iMac DV. I've played around a little with the software in the store, and I was pretty impressed at its smoothness and capability. That system costs in the $ 1,299 range.
Right now, I use EditDV for the Mac. I'd probably try B2000 if it had support for QuickTime, since I know of no FireWire capture software for Linux. Anyone have information on that?
D
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Missed the "real time" part - iMovie isn't real time. But it's still pretty cool, and definitely cost-effective.
D
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Humph. I tried Premiere and would do pretty much anything to avoid using it again. (I use EditDV on a Mac).
If this is really real time, it's a significant breakthrough - real time typically requires horribly expensive equipment. Only reason I'm not downloading it in a rush now is that I need support for my FireWire video camera.
What decent bcards are compatible with Video for Linux, anyway? I had the impression it was for pretty low-quality cards.
D
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Another thing that would be great, which I don't think even Adobe Premiere can do, is to use the capabilities of your 3D card to accelerate video transition processing. Think about it... all these fades, wipes, blends, flips, and wraps could be done in an instant using a good 3D card. Why not put it to use in processing full-motion video? It should be able to do it in realtime, quite easily.
Yeah, but honestly the big cost for the average joe is the hardware. All prosumer level capture cards come with NLE software (many with Premiere itself). You do not need an Avid rig to do work that is good enough for internet distribution right now (if broadband ever becomes super widespread this may change). I have a $500 DPS EditBay analog capture card that I can get 3:1 compression out of. It looks damn good, I know several people who have done some simple TV work with this card. You can get cards for a few $k that will give you broadcast quality results. Avid has a lock in the movie industry. We will see how they stand up, but it doesn't look good for them. As a way of comparison, Avid is the SGI of the video editing world, they were top notch for a long time, now consumer level stuff is starting to get to their level.
Q.
NTSC is 720x486 @ 29.97 fps
PAL is 720x576 @ 25 fps
640x480 is the "standard" internet distribution resolution. So no, this is not TV production level, but it is fine if your only doing internet distribution.
Q.
It's probably too late, this story is 1/2 way down the front page and all the moderators have used up their points or moved on to greener pastures (or at least less crowded ones).
In any case, I'm lending my karma whore +1 bonus to the parent of this reply. Go read it, it's informative.
What hardware would I need to load in a movie? WHat hardware would I need to put it back out to a VCR?
I'm not directly familiar with Broadcast, but I have had some pretty good results messing around with Adobe Premiere and Aftereffects. I have an Asus V3800 TNT2 with TV out, and exporting to a VCR via that, was quite simple. As for getting video in, check out http://roadrunner.swansea.linux.org. uk/v4l.shtml which has some pretty good info on linux supported video capture cards, as well as other v4l stuff.
hummer
It'd be neat if I could do it all under Linux and not have to get Premiere for Win2K or whatever.
I think it was a joke... (As this whole thing may be... -- If you plan on doing something with this, you might be wise to check the source code before you run the binary). Afterall, it said that it was developed on a P150... I seriously doubt that that even met -any- of the "requirements"... :)
Specifically which card? There is no mention of output of ANY KIND at hauppage's website and email to sales@hauppage.com bounces.
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Yes, this card (and the G400) looked good. But the only link I could find to info on Linux drivers lead me to a page that implied they didn't yet work.
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Whop! And all this time I had been pronouncing it as tho it had an 'a'. Oh well...
An Athalon is an AMD K7 x86 processor. It competes with the pentium and Intel. The two routinely switch off for which is faster.
No, 7200 RPM with three the bit density of any SCSI drive out there is rather fast...
Faster then the fastest 10000rpm scsi drive actually, but it does have higher CPU usage.
Checkout www.storagereview.com for the real skinny...
(a combination of aureal density and rpm is how you get hard drive speed, not rpm alone)(well, plus seek time, buffers, interface, etc..)
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
ACtually, after comparing your scsi drive to the Maxtor DiamondMax plus 40, the CPU usage is about the same (under windows 98 and NT anyway), and the Maxtor is quite a bit faster.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Which 40 gig ide drive is slow?
The Maxtor Diamond Plus 40 is curently the fastest IDE drive out there. There is also a Maxtor Diamond 40 which is 5400 RPM and a bit slower, but still faster then most things going...
Check out www.storagereview.com for info on the speed of the more recent hard drives.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
OK so i read the date wrong but the spirit of my post was still right... it was meant as a joke, it's not a bug.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
One word: Moron. In case you didn't notice it was November 10th... not actually in the year 2000. It was a joke, not a bug. :-)
:-)
Sorry if i come off as flamebait but that's just idiocy
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Considering 3dfx's new 3500 card that supports hardware MPEG compression on capture, driver support is a really big deal these days. Capture cards are becoming much more powerful and much cheaper ... it'd just be nice to use them.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Using the +1 to inflate the previous posters score won't work. If the 'audience' has reparent on (I'm guessing 1/2 do), they'll only see your post. Second, unless they're browsing in nested mode (not the default), your 2 won't make the parent appear any higher up the list. It's usually better to just repost the data with your +1 and due credit.
I must thank you for your try, though. Moderators sometimes need a little, um, outside help.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Wait! There's more!
A new version (0.15.6) of bttvgrab is available, also today. This is a simple but nice frame grabbing program for BT848 cards.
I've been looking into using bttvgrab as a cheap replacement for a VCR, but haven't found the time yet. Has anyone done this?
Does anybody know if this system will use the Video Capture card which has been put together by Linux Media Labs? (www.linuxmedialabs.com)
They are good people. They also do some other projects like quicktime for linux, etc. Check out their main page
--
rm -rf ~/.signature
It is software like this that makes Linux truly viable and usable. Especially in the eyes of the main stream media.
It's biggest competition is a $500 or more piece of software that will only run on an MS platform. This fits perfectly with "selling" the OS as a mainstream, desktop solution.
Think of it like this: MS develops apps that people will want to run. They spend money to create software and hardware that only works with it's OSs in order to stimulate the sales of that OS. People not wanting to spend alot of money on apps and software are going to LOVE this Linux based solution.
Now if the higher end video capture and DV editing cards came with support for linux... My Canopus DV Rex M1 simply won't work under linux... yet...
--Alex
This is a signature virus...
And there's an unhealthy amount of anonymous cowards praising this package in a rather juvenile style.
If it's real and works well then that's really cool. If it's something more sinister. BTW: If it's a real project, I'd be real keen to help - gimp style plugins / scripting would be cool.
:wq
Umm NTSC aspect Ratio is 4:3. 640x480 fits this ratio. The Toaster was nice in it's time but it's not broadcast quality. I wonder if there is a reason Adobe Premere, Adobe After Effects, The Turbo Cube non linear system, Matrox non linear, Type Deco C.G., Chyron and many more use 640x480. Oh yeah.. 640x480 includes the overscan area. It's not just overscan top and bottom but side to side too.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Without having looked at it, let me ask... how does it deal with codecs? Does it come with a set bundled, or do you have to add codecs like with xanim? What codecs are included?
--JT
In the "Readme.src" file...
:P)
----SNIP-----
This source tree is for reference and posterity purposes, and possibly
MMX. There is no support for building the source code. You should
have already run the binary and decided Broadcast 2000 does something
that you really want to do on a Linux box. If you can't build it, you
should be doing other things as regards your GPA.
----SNIP----
And sure enough, there was just a make file, no configure script (which is when alarm bells start going through my head). I started compiling from the top level directory, and it stopped at
jpeg.c: In function `quicktime_read_markers_jpeg':
jpeg.c:209: `jpeg_saved_marker_ptr' undeclared (first use in this function)
jpeg.c:209: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once)
Which is not exactly an error caused by misconfiguration in the make files. I'll start
going through that code now...
I hope what he put there was another one of his "jokes", because that kind of attitude really sucks. The programmer should ALWAYS provide a good build system. It takes VERY little time to do if you know how all the code is supposed to fit together. It is MUCH harder (and wasted time), for a prospective user to do the same.
If I run into a lot of annoying configuration problems, I'll write my own damn autoconf file for this code, and release it on a web page (since the author has little interest in including it in his package
Building the code should not be made artificially difficult. You're not going to get rid of the losers in that way (the losers will all be screaming about RPM's (I am not implying that everyone who uses RPM's are losers)), but you are
going to annoy the prospective programmers who are going to have to go through the code and reconstruct what you already KNOW. In my opinion, a sloppy build system is the product of sloppy programmers.
I have followed the Broadcast 2000 development for a while, and I am both impressed by and thankful for their work. The drivers appear to be the missing link. Unfortunately, on the Broadcast 2000 page, they skip the issue of drivers, simply saying that any "Video4Linux" drivers will work, without so much as providing a link to a Video4Linux project page.
At least it's a good sign that they're sticking to a standard, rather than creating their own drivers. Unfortunately, the driver situation seems to be quite a mess. There's Video4Linux, Video4Linux 2, LiViD, and other projects and I'm not sure how they're related. Most of them seem to support mostly TV-in-a-window cards rather than full-motion video capture.
It looks like work on the Matrox Marvel drivers is coming along, which is good for me because I just bought an Athlon 550 and Matrox Marvel G400-TV! >geek gloatCineGX which seems to have disappeared. The idea was to create a framework for handling video, applying filters and codecs in a pipelike fashion. That would mean that you could, say, stream an AVI file from your disk, and show it as a picture within a live TV feed, showing it on the screen and spitting it into an MPEG2 file on disk all at the same time (provided you have enough processing power and/or hardware assistance). Most editing could be reduced to problems of mixing and matching streams and filters. The editing GUI would exist only to provide a project management function.
They're just pointing out that it's not a perfect product, that's all.
:)
If you'll read the news section, you'll see that these people put their heart and soul into this project. (and sunk a good deal of money in it, too.) After releasing a preliminary version to see if anyone was interested, and seeing that it wasn't quite so hot of a market as they thought, they decided to instead release it GPLed to the public.
It's not vapourware; I'm using it right now on my system. And from what I've seen so far, it looks very nice. Clean interface, highly configurable, standard interface design, lightening fast toolkit, plugin support, etc. Plus it comes with source! Sweet!
This is the product I've been waiting for.
(I just wish my ATi TV tuner had a video4linux driver, so I could really test this puppy out. Could someone test out it's performance for us with a supported card, and tell us how it performs? It'd be neat to know how well it captures--whether or not it drops frames, and stuff like that.)
James
I'm so lost it's not even funny.
I have a very simple need:
1) Load software from camcorder
2) Edit (resequence)
3) Record back onto tape
Coincidentally I found this software (again) on the morning of it's release. I was ecstatic.
Then I looked around to figure out what card to buy. Clearly it needs TV in AND TV out.
Well, I can't find a SINGLE FREAKING CARD ANYWHERE that:
1) Support TV out
2) under Linux
3) today
Does ANYONE know of ANY CARD that meets these conditions?
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http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
This is real.
Here is a link of me using it. http://thunklife.com/bc2k.jpeg
It seems like half of us have sence. And look, im not posting anonymous.
This software is top notch. I'm using it to edit a documentary about Linux. Go to the site to download some clips and see what bcast2000 is capable of producing.
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I mean, if we're going to have a million TV stations on the internet running out of people's homes, we have to have a way for those people to edit their shows, right?
Avid (makers of $100K non-linear editor systems) better watch its ass. I knew this kind of thing was an inevitability, but didn't realize it would be available so soon.
Here are some other links to similar projects:
http://www.geocities. com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/6309/index.html - the Free Film Project
Freefilm.linuxbox.com - not up yet, but coming
Of course the big players now in this industry are Avid (with the Media Composer, Film composer, Digidesign (Protools), etc.), Media 100, and Adobe (who has Premiere 5.x). If this actually exists, man, that would be great!
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Now I can make commerical quality p0rn at home with my Linux box (No pun intended!). I just bet this is what Linus was thinking when he started making Linux!
However, on a serious note, this is cool. Now if I could get Quake3 to give me a serious Frame Rate, I would *finally* be happy.
Linux O Muerte!
If Jean Louis were to follow the pack and go with digital democracy, open-sourcing the BeOS could push this sort of thing into overdrive. To combine the digital media capabilities with the most peer-reviewed OS around has got to be a great thing.
Until that time, Linux should probably focus on building market share by improving the Gimp and developing a strong vector graphics app to compete with the main 2 commercial OSes. Only by gaining a market share by slowly building people's confidence in the product can attract the proper attention. Otherwise, you'll get Joe Hollywood-Wannabe trying this system out, and finding the man pages way too convoluted to follow. Video editing for Linux will gain a bad rap and go by the wayside, unfortunately crippling an otherwise fat-potential business within the next handfil of years.
By the way, aside from pure evolution - what kinds of long-term goals do the Linux community forsee?
- passion
This is real. I have used this, it works well. If your not going to download it that is fine. But it is real. I am running it on my Pentium 200 mmx (not a PII). With a SB16 kernel driver. No OSS-Comercial.
I am not using the Video features, just the Audio. For Audio it is the fastest editor for Linux.
If you are still a sceptic, but want to believe. Check out freshmeat.
Look up the previos version Broadcast on the net.
This is real, I guess you nay-sayers just don't have faith in Open Source -- or know what it means.
I've been working on a GPL'd video editor for unix for sometime now.
I'm looking for people willing to help with the project.
http://www.crow.atu.com.au
Eric
I downloaded the Binary version of this early this morning. Very Impressed. I had played with a Beta, this is much better. Just the nonlinear sound editing capabilities alone are unmached in Linux or GPL software -- let-alone the video. This version has support for any sound card supported by the kernel, the previos version Broadcast. This is a major leap in the Field of MultiMedia for Linux. As well as the buz in the SoundStudio mailing list. Personaly I had a fear this would not be GPL, as this was a major project, and it was not GPL in the BETAs. In fact the BETAs I saw had timebombs in them, they would expire.