Linux Media Arts Advances Video in Linux

GigsVT writes "Linux Media Arts has introduced a line of video capture and hardware MPEG encoding cards with full Linux support. The sd601 is a full featured hardware video solution including hardware dissolve, key, wipe, and split screen. At pricetags around $3000 US, they aren't cheap, but this could break Linux into the video editing market. This isn't vaporware, they are selling these right now."

Comments

Video Toaster

[Anonymous Coward]

The Video Toaster can do all these things, and the Amiga runs Linux like a champ. Thanks to the 68030 and higher's RSMUL and deep vectorized floating point (Intel and AMD are still catching up to the 68030's multimedia/vector instrcutions), despite the fact that it's not a performer in other areas, the 68030 still runs rings around the next choice for raw bus bandwidth.

An Amiga with a Video Toaster 2.0 and a time base corrector can be had for around $1200, and with any of the seven mainstream Linux desktop video packages, it can be slaved as a second system, so you control it from a cheap, fast PC running Linux, with the Amiga doing the majority of the hard work.

Video Toaster users are the few sane remaining Amiga fanatics. Most television shows and minor Hollywood production companies still use Video Toaster for the few things you still can't do in Adobe Premier and After Effects.

Re:Is it open source or not?

[LinuxParanoid]

Hmm, they did cross-link to Heroine Warrior, whose site says:

After a long period of deliberation on the matter, Broadcast 2000 has been removed from public access due to excessive liability.

We've already seen several organizations win lawsuits against GPL/warranty free software writers because of damage that software caused to the organization. Several involved the RIAA vs mp3/p2p software writers. Several involved the MPAA vs media player authors. You might say that warranty exemption has become quite meaningless in today's economy.

While not related to either of these cases the distribution of Broadcast 2000 enhanced to unacceptable levels the risk of an individual experiencing significant financial damage due to the extremely expensive nature of high end video production and the high risk inherent in professional video business marketing.

This has forced us to reconsider our liability protection at this time. We still plan to continue offering minor works for download and in the coming years, as the liability issues surrounding open source software are resolved, we expect to issue newer major works.



Hmm.

--LP

You can get the source, poke around here:

[LinuxParanoid]

There does appear to be a Sourceforge-related project. The discussions forums have some pointers to non-US (not DMCA affected?) mirrors of the code.

--LP

Re:What is the quality?

[decefett]

Apart from running on Linux, how is this $3000 solution better?

The card is a professional solution for the professional broadcast market, for what it does $3000 is actually pretty resonable.

This product takes SDI (Serial Digial Interface) for video input which is the standard to broadcast video, it runs at 270Mbs and is not found on anything but professional (or at best "prosumer") gear.

This is not the first pro card that does SDI under Linux either, IIRC Optibase have a Mediapump card that does SDI under *nix.

Re:starwipes

[skribe]

A wipe is a way of 'cutting' between two shots. The existing shot is wiped away and replaced by the new shot. It's used a lot in Star Wars. A star wipe is a wipe in a star shape. Usually starting in the middle of the existing shot. Inside the star is the new shot. The star expands outwards until the new shot replaces the existing shot. Quite common in late 70's-early 80's music videos.

mJPEG hardware and Linux

[tcyun]

Linux Media Labs is another group that is providing video hardware that runs under Linux. I have seen motion JPEG work very successfully in a research environment (Internet2) and I know that the test machines are being deployed. You can find out more about the test machines that I am talking about via
Google.

Re:$3000? Just buy a faster CPU

[HeUnique]

You really don't know anything about video, do you?? this is PRO equipment, not something which gives you a compress video (a.k.a MPEG, MPEG-2, etc)...

Target environments

[XNormal]

I'm not sure how many video professionals would actuall trade their current desktop video production environment for a linux-based one, but this kind of hardware may be very useful for unattended video work - you know, the box that is sitting there in the rack and encoding, decoding, switching, inserting, etc.