Linux Video Editor Cinelerra 1.0 Released

Ogerman writes "At long last, Heroine Virtual's Cinelerra 1.0 has been released. This successor to the discontinued Broadcast 2000 project is absolutely amazing and should give Adobe Premiere and others a run for their money as it continues to mature. So, fire up those digital camcorders, get to work on all your latent indie-film ideas, and help put ol' Jack V. out of a job. Here's the 1.0 Press Release." For those unfamiliar with Cinelerra, check out the screen shots.

Comments

Wow more good news for low budget films

[zorander]

I like the way this is headed. Software like this is going to be instrumental in creating competing products against the mpaa and such. If indie films can be produced and sold _online_ even easier, then there will be more.

Then the giant may begin to crumble...

I'd like to think that, but I'm probably just kidding myself...

Brian

Re:Wow more good news for low budget films

[mholt108]

I think low budget film makers consider being able to make films on a windows PC and a cannon camera grass roots enough! it is already a big "up yours" to studios and has that rebelious feel to it. Maybe the real hardcore vegan filmmakers will go for this.
The real benefit seems to be the renderfarm facility. Not available on Adobe or Apple software out of the box. Admittedly you dont really need it in most cases but it could work out cheaper than doing it in Hardware (on the capture card / effects card)for HDTV or IMAX or the new digital cinema formats.
THe most important thing though is that it does not crash / hang ... anyone had any experience with this?

Re:Wow more good news for low budget films

[i_am_nitrogen]

I think the render farm is a pretty good idea. This product doesn't seem to be the kind of software to compete with Premiere. Even small studios with only 6 people usually have an extremely expensive (as much as $80g's or higher) dedicated render system in the basement or equipment room that does all the editing and effects in realtime, with client computers (usually Macintosh or SGI) doing little more than displaying the result. Larger houses don't usually have computers to do editing (at least not for the user interface), but instead have large consoles.

Compositing and 3D animation/CGI are usually done with single client computers and render farms, however.

Of course, I could be just making this all up.

Re:Wow more good news for low budget films

[MadAhab]

yes, and it happened a decade ago and it was called miramax. if there's one thing major media companies are good at it's knowing how to buy out the competition.

video capture

[Savatte]

My ATI tv-card works pretty well under windows, being able to capture 30 fps at a good resolution. What brands of capture cards work the best with linux?

Re:video capture

[jandrese]

Dunno about the ATI, but any form of Brooktree 848 or 878 based card works great. I even use it under FreeBSD.

Re:video capture

[dcstimm]

I use the Wintv GO Hauppuage card and I can record tv shows with mplayer, xawtv, and vcr,

I like vcr the best because it has timed recording.

Here is a example:

vcr -g /dev/video0 -c 'divx ;-) low-motion' -v -p 38 -F 30 -q 100 -m mono -b 64 -t 32m tv-show.avi

-g is to set the device (my wintv card is /dev/video0)

-c 'divx ;-) low-motion' is the video setting

-v is for verbose

-p 38 is the channel to record

-F 30 is the frame rate

-q 100 is quality and its set to 100 which is best

-m is to set mono or stereo

-b 64 is the bitrate for the mp3 audio (64 is perfect for mono audio and 128 and higher is good for stereo)

-t 32 is the timmer, I have it set for 32min

and last is the file I am saving it to, which is tv-show.avi

Hope this shows you how easy it is.

Plus you can stick vcr in your cron tab to record tv while you are away.

vcr comes with most distros.

demand?

[edrugtrader]

in my opinion the only real demand for this is at home prosumers...

professionals will either use premier or a home grown system.

normal consumers will just use the shitty software package included with their camera.

Re:demand?

[TheSHAD0W]

Put Windows, Mac and Linux binaries into a package and give it to the camera manufacturers at a royalty rate below what the commercial developers can afford. Presto! Now the coders have beer and pizza money.

Re:PRIMVUS POSTVS

[Yebyen]

now that est creativus trollus :)

When will programmers learn?

[stubear]

Have these guys never heard of The Interface Hall of Shame? You should NEVER EVER utilize color in an interface where color correction is required. The UI hinders the user's ability to faithfully adjust colors.

I also wouldn't go as far as saying this application will give Premiere a run for its money because Premiere benefits GREATLY from its relationship with other Adobe applications. I can edit my work in Premiere then import the entire project, tracks, effects and all, into After Effects for post production work and final rendering. Not to mention the ability to import native Photoshop and Illustrator files without any special work arounds.

I also didn't see anything in the feature list which suggested this application is capable of editing web enabled video (QT, Real and/or WMV)

Re:When will programmers learn?

[gwernol]

ave these guys never heard of The Interface Hall of Shame [iarchitect.com]? You should NEVER EVER utilize color in an interface where color correction is required. The UI hinders the user's ability to faithfully adjust colors.

Exactly my reaction, except digging a little deeper I found the application is skinnable, meaning it could be muted to an acceptable level. However if they really want to go head-to-head in the professional market they should change their web site and default skin to something more appropriate.

If they can't get even this most obvious and important UI issue right it is hard to trust them on the rest of the product. It looks very unprofessional. The product names do not help here either.

I also didn't see anything in the feature list which suggested this application is capable of editing web enabled video (QT, Real and/or WMV)

They support QuickTime, and Ogg Vorbis audio support is nice. I assume they support all the QT audio formats as well.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[beens]

To my knowledge, no one is capable of editing web-enabled video like Real, or WMV. Most applications edit in an uncompressed format like avi or uncompressed quicktime (depending on if you're on a Wintel machine or a Mac) and then allow you the option to export the completed cut as a Real or compressed Quicktime file. If not, there are plenty of third party apps that will do it for you. There's good reason for this, in that users who have encoded video for the web probably don't want people to be able to pull it down and edit it, not to mention the processing overhead that would come with having to decompress codecs like real or sorrenson. Plus, you'd run into quality issues when trying to composite visual effects or transitions (wipes, fades, etc). Final Cut Pro can't do it, and neither can Premiere. I certainly don't think this should be a strike against this fine looking application.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, sorry to burst your _open_ bubble, but if this application wants to have any chance whatsoever of taking on Premiere, it's going to have to support EVERYTHING that's out there, especially formats that are immensely popular (like QT, Real, and WMV). Saying that "it only needs to work with _open_ formats" is narrow mindedness at its worst, and is a perfect example of (a) taking something too far and (b) exactly what's WRONG with the "Linux Community" thus far. "We won't do anything YOUR way since we're so damned non-conformist, so you better change EVERYTHING that YOU do to CONFORM to what the Linux folks want, since we're some sort of White Knight of Open Source." Too bad, because no videographer in his/her right mind is going to do anything more than TOY with this application as long as it refuses to support commonly-accepted web media formats, "proprietary" or not.

Bah, why do I bother? This'll get modded down faster than...well, anything I can think of.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I think he was pointing out not that you can't edit these formats, but that outputting them in said formats is apparently impossible. You're right, we edit in different formats, but if you can't output what you need (QT, Real, and WMV being THE dominant ones right now), then the application is quite limited with respect to web publishing.

It'd be okay for doing your own video work, though, so long as you didn't need to exchange media with anyone else in the world (since nearly everyone uses AVI's or QT's for exchanging media).

Re:When will programmers learn?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Sorry to take issue with you, but I thought I'd point out a couple of things:

1. Premeire can export QT, AVI, and version 6.0 includes a Real exporter as well. So Premiere has the ground pretty darn well covered when it comes to export formats.

2. Media Cleaner has its place but if you've got export capabilities from your editing app you don't NEED Media Cleaner. Why in the world would you want to spend extra money on something like MC if you could have those same features built into your editing app for free? Of course, I do MPEG-2 exporting from Premiere via CinemaCraft, but it sure is handy to be able to output any format you could possibly think of if you're handing off clips to someone else.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

And that's where you're thinking stops, eh? Blocky, jerky, postage-stamp-sized video is no longer a necessity on the web.

First off, you've got improved codecs that are making more out of less. Real, QT, and even WMV formats have come a long, long ways in the last 2-3 years. You can get some pretty good video out of them now for realistic (100kbit/sec average) bitrates. Sure, it's no threat to HDTV, but you gotta start somewhere.

Second, bandwidth is increasing dramatically. Back when Real first came on the scene 56K modems were all there were. Now DSL and cable modems are available in about 60% of urban areas and it's increasing fast. More bandwidth equals faster framerates, greater resolution, and better image definition.

Lastly, the audience is changing. Not everyone is trying to broadcast to home users across the web. A substantial portion of work these days comes from the corporate streaming video field. With gigabit and/or fast ethernet links pretty common in big companies it's become quite feasible to stream video to the desktop. This can be a boon to training that would otherwise require a dedicated A/V room and tape replication. It also allows the training material to be more up to date since it can be changed much more easily than physical media would allow.

So, think about more than what's two inches in front of your face before commenting next time. There are larger issues here, and I think the original poster had some good points.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[AJWM]

In one respect it has Premiere beat hands down: adaptability.

I haven't yet looked at the source for Cinelerra (downloading it now), but I have of Bcast2000, which I've used -- and no matter how convoluted, it has to be orders of magnitude easier to modify to fit custome needs than Premiere. (And yes, I'm familiar with the Adobe Premier SDK. Pardon me while I go throw up in the bushes from the memories.)

Premiere is okay as long as you only want to do with it what the programmers decided to let you. It sucks if you want to do something a bit different.

But Cinellera's aiming for a higher level user than Premiere anyway. Using it for web media (although it probably handles some of those formats) is a joke, the thing is designed for HDTV.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[stubear]

I should have been more clear about web enabled video. I meant video which has web enabled tracks and is outputted to QT, Real or WMV (all three support web enabled tracks). By the way, you can now work directly with WMV in Premiere; why you would is another question, but I'm guessing they added support to allow uncompressed,or as uncompressed as possible, WMV as source footage.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I would agree with you except for one thing: how many Premiere/Avid users do YOU know of that happen to be programmers? I'd be willing to bet that the percentage is under 1%. People who handled NLE systems are video people, artists if you will. Most of them couldn't code an MS-DOS batch file much less modify the code for Cinelerra. If you're thinking that perhaps some non-video oriented people (aka. regular old programmers) will get around to modifying Cinelerra then perhaps you're right, but I have to point out that regardless of how bad Premiere's SDK is, people have been coding to it for years and are familiar with its pitfalls and strengths. They are NOT going to run en masse to Cinelerra because the SDK is better! They'll run to it if CUSTOMERS run to it, and customers won't run to it until it can run all the Adobe plugins. That will be a long, long time coming -- if it ever comes.

As for Cinelerra being destined for HDTV, I'd have to agree that it has the capability to go there. The question is, however, will anyone want to take it there? Only major broadcasters are even PLAYING with HDTV these days, primarily because of the expense. "But this is free!" you say? True -- and that, believe it or not, is a huge impediment to acceptance in the industry. Right or wrong, most folks equate the price tag with capabilities, functionality, stability, and "prestige"...how the hell else could Avid still be in business when there are many cheaper alternatives that work just as well or better? A prior poster noted that many studios are buying $40K Avid's "for show" but doing real work on $5K software packages and standard PC's! I know, because I've been there. People don't want to hear whether or not you're using Premiere, Final Cut, or (God forbid) something nobody's ever heard of called Cinelerra. They ask one question "do you have an Avid"?

Yeah, it's stupid, but customers have HEARD of Avid and think it's the top 'o the line. If it weren't for that fact, I think Avid would be damn near out of business, because the rest of the pack has caught up with them big time, especially in cost vs. performance.

I wish nothing but the best for Cinelerra. I'd love to not have to pay what I currently pay for NLE software. But the truth of the matter is something that the Linux Community has ignored and continues to ignore: people don't always shop on price or technological superiority -- in fact they FREQUENTLY DON'T. Just because something is free or better does not mean it'll take over the world. If that were the case then we'd all be running Linux everywhere (or OS/2 about 10 years ago). Wishful thinking is great, but when someone tries to force that worldview onto the rest of us it does more harm than good.

Re:When will programmers learn?

[AJWM]

As for Cinelerra being destined for HDTV, I'd have to agree that it has the capability to go there.

Actually I wrote designed for HDTV -- and I see you agree with that.

Destined for? Who knows. As you say, not many folks out there shooting HD video these days. As for free -- I believe that Heroine Virtual has a package they sell that includes support and/or hardware. They've had a booth at the National Broadcasters Exhibition in the past. (This info gleaned from past versions of their web site, I have no personal contact with them, and my own involvement with video technology has been on the custom tape production side, not broadcast. Hence my interest in modifying the product (whether Premiere or Cinerella or whatever), so that I could automate production of a tape from a library of clips without ever having to use the GUI.)

Re:Interesting, but....

[CMiYC]

Since you haven't used the program (or taken the 10 seconds to read its website) you probably should not have commented. It is no where near as intitive as iMovie. However, iMovie is no where as powerful as Cinelerra.

Cinelerra is meant for people who know exactly what they want. Personally I find it a little too cumbersome most of the time. I prefer Adobe Premiere. However, if I'm not in a hurry I'll sit down and use Cinelerra instead. Sometimes the pain of copying a couple gigs of DV-AVI from my Linux computer to my windows laptop outweighs the learning curve of Cinelerra.

Re:Compatibility?

[glwtta]

only if you can imagine a Beowulf cluster of them

"prosumer" isn't a bad market though ...

[timothy]

A lot of Nikon coolpix users have paid $50 for the famous eBook on using it, and Cinelerra / HV might be smart to make something similar. Canon makes some great video cameras that are widely marketed at the "prosumer" crowd (XL1, GL1), and even though that term may grate on the ears of anyone so labeled, there are a lot of prosumers (arrgh, the sound! the sound!) out there.

Heck, anyone who learned Blender reasonably well (not me) will probably *prefer* the Cinelerra interface to, say, anything made by Apple :)

And if you count that group as including both high-dollar amateurs (dentists, lawyers, even programmers with some extra money) with an interest in creative editing, and low-budget professional users (like the folks who do wedding videos and take your guided horse-ride video etc, as opposed to the makers of Waterworld)*, there really is a big potential audience. Money to spend on it + motivation to learn a rigorous interface ... just like the people who buy the new "mid-range" (but still pricey) digital SLRs.

Also, Heroine Virtual's website is always fun to read, a little bit like Dr. Bronner's soap. When I have (garrh!) a dual 1.6GHz athlon system with a gig of RAM and a firewire card, I hope to find it usable for simple editing, because it looks rather fun.

timothy

* And those overlapping groups is just how I would define "prosumer" anyhow.

Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

First, let's start with the non-flamebait part: it's great to see another relatively cheap video editor out, as it puts filmmaking ability into the hands of the masses rather than just those able to afford $20k+ Avids.
iMovie and iDVD don't count, 'cause those are really just toys for making home movies or submissions to iFilm, but Final Cut Pro is/was a great competetor to Primere, with all of the features at less than half the price.

However, I'm an audio professional, and will happily and uniformly disparage all of these 'tools' for neglecting to have any real ability to edit audio. As just about anyone in the industry will tell you, audio is the bastard stepchild of video/film, with less than a tenth of any movie's budget spent on sound... and yet all of those same people will agree that sound is just as important as visuals, if not more - consider the Blair Witch Project, with cheap, shoddy visuals, but eerie and compelling audio to create the mood... Now imagine a rock-steady camera in a high-budget film, with sound that sounds like cheap vinyl... or even AM radio... It's just not acceptable, and nothing will alienate your audience sooner.

As an example of the downplay of audio, Digital Video Magazine has an ad in the last issue offering a turnkey video editing system... Dual 1 GHz G4, Final Cut Pro2, 80 GB Firewire drive, Superdrive, Firewire Media Converter, Sony's $5000 prosumer digital camera, 23-inch Apple LCD cinema screen, Sony 19" NTSC reference monitor (>$1000!), and... Harmon Kardon SoundSticks!

$20,000 USD for this system, and you're getting a $150 pair of speakers... which, frankly, suck (I just wrote an article to be published in December about those speakers, after running them through tests of frequency response, distortion, noise level, etc., and you'd do better with a $150 pair of headphones... but they aren't as pretty).

Additionally, none of these programs have the ability to scrub audio, a MUST as any real audio editor will tell you, very few of them will let you edit on a resolution smaller than a frame (30 fps means that 1 frame = 33 ms... However, a 5 ms delay is audible as phasing, and as low as a 25 ms delay can be audible as a distinct echo), most of them have linear VU meters (rather than logarhythmic, like our hearing... consider, with 0 dB FS as the top of the scale, -3 dB FS is half the power, and on a linear meter, half the distance down... However, -3 dB is a difference in level that is really only noticed by trained ears... Additionally, the SMPTE standard for digital audio is to have normal level (0 VU) at -18 dB FS... Or almost off the scale on any program with linear meters... That's freakin' insane. As a comparison, try using Photoshop with the brightness on your monitor turned down to almost 0. You're trying to work reasonably at the threshhold of noise of the system you're working on.

Also, the EQs in most of these programs have their frequency range set linearly, too... Human hearing goes from roughly 20 Hz to 20 kHz (roughly - young women and children can frequently hear higher frequencies, usually topping out by 23-26 kHz), but our interpretation of frequency is logarythmic: the top octave goes from 10 kHz to 20 kHz (or, the top HALF of a linear scale). The next octave (or, the next lowest quarter on a linear scale) is from 5 kHz to 10 kHz...
You don't start getting into useful ranges until you're in the bottom 32nd of the scale, from 500 Hz to 1 kHz - the fundamental of the human voice goes from about 125 Hz to about 500 Hz, most of the vowels and formants are from about 500 Hz to about 1.5 kHz, and the consonants are from about 1.5 kHz up to about 4 kHz (for the sibilants). There's very little energy in the human voice above 5 kHz... So have fun setting your EQs properly when you're looking at a linear scale that emphasizes the top two octaves... ABOVE what you're dealing with.

Then again, the two major audio editing software programs on the market, ProTools and CoolEditPro also miss some of these, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. When you deal with sub-standard tools everywhere, you have to give up some expectations

By comparison, look at the Orban Audicy (used in most radio stations for production), and the Fairlight Merlin and D.R.E.A.M. Stations, used for most film/television production.

Sorry. :)

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[foobar104]

Friend, everything you said is perfectly valid, but... video finishing is not audio finishing. Fire, DS, EditBox, et cetera are not audio finishing equipment. They have audio input and output capabilities, of course, and you can mix tracks and whatnot. But that's just for scratch audio. The real audio will get mixed and laid down by an audio professional in a ProTools (or similar) suite after the editor finishes the video.

Basically, the reason why nobody cares about audio in video editing software is because the guy doing the video work is never the same person as the guy doing the audio work. Instead, it's two different people, both highly trained professionals, with totally different areas of expertise.

Now, if you want to complain about how a particular audio finishing program is inadequate, be my guest. But complaining about how video editing software is a bad audio editing tool is kind of like complaining about what a poor job your screwdriver does of carving your Christmas goose.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

Yes, that's quite true, in a professional environment... However, in a professional environment, they wouldn't be using FCP or Primere... They'd be using 20k+ Avids.

In a prosumer, Cannes-Film-Festival-type environment, they'd be using this or either of the cheaper solutions, and editing audio on it, too... Unfortunately.

It happens way too often - I interned at Emerson College in Boston, and spent a large portion of my time helping video/film graduate students fix the audio in their Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project. This is further perpetuated by the software on the market, which pushes audio into the realm of "another" program.

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[mholt108]

I agree with both of you but I have done loads of prosumer editing on indie videos, documentraries etc and have run into the problems described. I do not have the time or money to learn pro audio or hire pro audio people (maybe I should look into it). Having said that I really would like to have better audio capacity in Premiere. My feeling is that the audio got worse in the 4.2 - 5 transition, not in terms of features but in usability.
I would love to see some sort of a toggle between Video edit mode and Audio edit mode. In video mode the editor would look similar to what it does now. In audio edit mode the video tracks would become smaller on the timeline (with a small monitor window or output to external monitor) and the audio tracks would be enlarged with good VU's appearing and an equaliser. Also effects that can be applied easily and accurately to different parts of different tracks and not rendered but use the CPU for realtime playback along with the video. I think that with CPU speeds now getting up there this is realistic.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

What makes you think this is supposed to be an AUDIO EDITING program?

it's a non-linear video editor, which is completely different.

Think AVID or FINAL CUT PRO vs. PROTOOLS

Totally different purpose-- it's're like critizing a word processor because it doesn't have good Photoshop-like paint features.

W

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Yohahn]

Check out Ardour.

They're trying.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Graymalkin]

That is a ridiculous fucking argument. Unless you're making silent films audio is a HUGE part of any NLE system. There needs to be sound effects and dialog and music in a film for anyone to be remotely interested in it. The audio editing in iMovie is little more than adding and removing tracks from the project. Premiere's audio editing (the last time I used it) was pretty much the same quality in terms of features for audio.

It would be stupid to include photo editing components int oa word processor, a video editing system however logically needs audio editing features in order to be fully functional. Why should you have to export your audio tracks into an external program in order to do scrubbing or effects editing? That is like Photoshop requiring you to export your alpha channels into an external program in order to edit them separately from your RGB channels. Audio is an integral part of the video experience yet is treated like a redheaded stepchild when it comes to NLE editors.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[foobar104]

However, in a professional environment, they wouldn't be using FCP or Primere... They'd be using 20k+ Avids.

Not exactly. There's offlining and then there's finishing. If you're offlining you might use a $30,000 Avid Express, but these days it's just as likely that you'd be using Final Cut Pro.

On the other hand if you're finishing, you're using a linear bay, or a DS, or a Fire or Smoke. Those are all $100,000 - $300,000 systems.

There's really not much room in the market for the $30,000 editing system these days.

...Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project.

Um... that's because audio is the last step of the project. Like I said, audio finishing is an art entirely separate from video finishing, and is dealt with using different tools, by a different artist. There's no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. They just don't go together.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

...Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project. Um... that's because audio is the last step of the project. Like I said, audio finishing is an art entirely separate from video finishing, and is dealt with using different tools, by a different artist. There's no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. They just don't go together.

Um... No. Sorry, audio is NOT the last step of the project. That myth is what makes so many films sound like crap.

Audio starts at the same time as the video, thinking about where you're recording, and how best to mic it to avoid extraneous noises. Thinking it comes last leads to thinking, "just use the mic built into the camera, we can fix it later in post," which you most emphatically can't. Garbage in, garbage out. Noisy distorted sound in, guess what comes out.

And again, by your own admission, we aren't talking about $300k+ systems, or even $30k+ systems. We're talking about There is no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. However, in a prosumer video package, there IS a need to have audio finishing tools. They DO go together.

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[AJWM]

It may not say much about audio on the website, but since this is a follow-on to Broadcast2000, it's capabilities are pretty good. As many tracks as you want, various effects and transitions, spatial location, and the usual cut'n'paste, transformation, etc.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[foobar104]

Audio starts at the same time as the video, thinking about where you're recording, and how best to mic it to avoid extraneous noises.

Not exactly. Most film is shot either with reference ambient audio, or completely MOS, and the dialogue is ADR'd later, and audio effects added by foley artists. In video sometimes it's done in situ, but there's a lot of ADR and foley in video as well.

Audio really is a separate art from video.

There is no reason to have professional audio finishing tools in a professional video finishing package. However, in a prosumer video package, there IS a need to have audio finishing tools.

And I would submit to you that the audio tools in Final Cut Pro and similar products are just about on par with the video tools in Final Cut Pro and similar products. ;-)

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

Most Hollywood film is shot with reference... etc.

Most Indie film is shot with minimal ADR, due to lack of time, money, and knowledge. Thus, it's important to get the best audio on the first try. Foley, of course, is done later, but that's signifigantly easier than doing ADR.

Audio is not a separate art from video, unless you're doing something like Koyannisqatsi.

And no, I would disagree that the audio tools in FCP are on a par with the video tools in FCP. While the video tools aren't up there with Fire boxes, they are pretty good. The audio tools are a joke, though... and I like FCP. Primere is worse.

Also, we're talking about people who are concerned about spending as little as possible on their film... hence the need for a free video editor. Let's talk about those, please, rather than multimillion dollar Hollywood productions.

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

Why should you have to export your audio tracks into an external program in order to do scrubbing or effects editing? That is like Photoshop requiring you to export your alpha channels into an external program in order to edit them separately from your RGB channels. Audio is an integral part of the video experience yet is treated like a redheaded stepchild when it comes to NLE editors.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. My analogy is exactly correct. If you want to insert an image into your word processed document you do not create that image in Word. You use a program that is designed to create that document, specifically. If it's a graph, you might generate it with Excel. If it's a bitmapped image, you might touch it up in Photoshop. In fact, you might take your images from one graphics program to another, layering it and adding 3d-generated images, and compositing and in short getting it all nice and ready before you plop it in your word processor.

Now, why does audio work demand its own program(s)? Why is it not like alpha channels in photoshop? Because you're not giving audio post enough credit. It's not as simple as "throw in some effects and some scrubbing" and we're done.

WHY AN AUDIO PROGRAM IS A STANDALONE APP

1. Combining audio and video into one master editing app wastes system resources An audio editing program frequently requires significant processing power to manipulate and add effects to multiple tracks. If your NLE is tapping your CPU w/displaying and uncompressing video, that's quite a bit taken from the audio.

2. You are not editing the final recorded sounds When editing movies, you are generally editing with a "scratch track" taken from the field, which is frequently unusable. It's not the job of the editor to deal with sound issues. It's just not. In many productions, the sound track must be built from the ground up through ADR ("looping"), through peices of alternate takes, etc.

3. Editing and Post-Audio are different professions, different fields. In real life, each is a speciality with its own tools. Expecting an editor to have to deal with audio crap in a NLE, or an audio tech to deal with picture is ridiculous. Even if it's a small one-man production-- when you're editing, you don't need to obsess over sound-- you don't want to have to deal with 50 layers of sound. It's only when you've got picture lock that you move on to the next phase-- the audio, which logically deserves its own program. You can go back and forth anyway, so why not do what makes sense?

4. There is rarely one final audio mix When you mix a film, you will typically create several mixes-- 35mm and 16mm have different frequency ranges-- video sound can be encoded in a number of different ways using a variable number of audio sources. You may want to have many, many mixes of your film (keeping sound effects seperate from dialogue so that you can put alternate language tracks, music tracks may be mixed in different ways, etc.). To try to do all this from a NLE is insanity.

5. Non-linear editors and audio editors are physically different things With an Avid, you got two monitors, maybe a third for video. You've got the keyboard, and you've got the computer. Maybe you have some extra drives, a camera, and a deck of some sort. The only funky gizmo you might have for Avid is one of those shuttle things. Protools looks different. No multiple monitors-- just one big one for viewing one of many many many audio tracks you might be using. No shuttle. No decks. Add in a rack of DSPs, maybe some MIDI devices. A keyboard or two. A DAT, a TASCAM. And of course, any good audio editor will have amixing board-- it's hard to nudge the volume for seven tracks on the fly with one mouse to get just that right dialogue mix with three equalized microphone positions, and some ambiance...

6. Video apps use video plugins, audio apps use audio plugins -- if you wanna compare to photoshop plugins, look at this simple fact-- video apps usually allow for plugins to allow you to do funky effects, video filters, and transitions like wipes, dissolves, morphs -- video stuff. Audio apps usually have plugins like phlange, reverb, pitch shifting, MIDI stuff, effects filters, compressors, and other frequency manipulation stuff. They're different types of effects for different types of programs.

7. Moving between applications is precisely what the OMFI (Open Media Framework Interchange Format) and similar formats are designed to do. You are SUPPOSED to export your audio information and take it into a program that is specific for audio.

So, ok--- could you have some kind of "super-program" that lets you edit picture and do fine audio tuning in the same app? Yes. Would it be unweildy? YES. Would it suck to have to rely on a single vender for all you want in a single program? YES. Would it be a pain in the ass? YES.

Why not just throw in some 3d modeling/rendering software, a compositing progrram, and the script-writing software in there too? And an email program so it can invite your friends to the premiere of your project?

In short-- It is not the role of an non-linear editor to do a significant amount audio effects. As they are different professional fields, they are and should be different programs.

W

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

Thank you, Gray. Excellent example, too.

Read my response.

W

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

Seriously, though, yes, in most professional situations, there's a separate video editing system from the audio editing system... But I think here, we're talking about putting filmmaking ability in the hands of the masses who can't afford Avids... in which case, they also don't tend to want to shell out an extra thousand for an audio editor.

Yes, but just because they're working on the cheap doesn't mean they have to spend shit. There are tons of good free audio editors. I think some of them were already linked to in this thread, but Audacity springs to mind as a simple but free solution. Or, try The Free Protools, which is a fully featured non-expiring non-demo version of Protools you can use for simple projects, no extra hardware required.

Otherwise, if you want better audio editing in Cinelerra, get out the source and your text editor and start coding. I seriously don't understand what all the complaining is about here.

W

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[stubear]

You should check out Vegas Video 3.0 from Sonic FOundry. It started out as an audio editing application with support for one track of video for reference while editing audio but now it supports unlimited tracks of audio and video. In my opinion, all it's really missing is support for real-time hardware such as Canopus DVStorm and an A/B editing style workspace. I'd settle for just the A/B editing workspace as v3.0 supports RAM preview. While not the best solution, if you have enough RAM you can preview non real-time effects as well as real-time effects without any trouble.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Theaetetus]

Re: point 2 - quite valid and true... but, not in the scope we're talking about:

From DV Magazine, the Audio Solutions column from July 2002:

"Mistake #3: Assuming you can fix it in post In Hollywood, noisy dialog is often replaced in post. It's a time-consuming and expensive solution, even when they have the tools and experience to do it correctly. Don't count on this technique to save a desktop video; what you shoot is probably what you'll have to live with."

Re: point 3 - again, quite true... But, we are talking about non-Hollywood budget stuff here. I agree, Waldo, in major budget things, the audio and video will be done by separate people, and in fact the location recording, editing, ADR, foley, mixing, and post will ALL be done by different people. But in desktop video, they will be done by one person... frequently, the cameraman/director/gaffer/producer/etc.

Maybe I can stress this again - we're talking about non-Hollywood budget stuff. What Hollywood budget movie is going to use a free video editor?
So, point 4, while valid, is also thrown out - Indie films aren't going to be mixed for several different formats.

With point 5, again, you're right for big stuff, but for small stuff, you're most likely on one computer, with no HUI or 3rd party controllers, two monitors, if you're lucky, and for the scope we're talking, even with PT, no DSP... just an 001 or even an MBox, with all DSP handled through plug-ins.

Waldo, you're absolutely right on all your points, and I agree wholeheartedly.... provided we're talking about big-budget professional applications... In which case, throw out Avid and ProFools, and bring in Fire and Fairlight D.R.E.A.M... And watch your budget soar into the millions. :)

-T

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

As for PTFree... My job calls for maintaining several audio workstations, including some running PTFree...
One of 'em recently crashed, losing several hours of work by an editor. I called up Digi, they asked what I was using, I said PTFree, and I was told "we don't support that" and hung up on.

Of course not! It's free... you don't expect free tech support too?!!!

I called my local Digi sales-rep, and was told the same thing (though he didn't hang up on me, he tried to sell me the 888/24 instead).

I'm confused. You called a sales rep. You were using a free program. Didn't you say you were talking about non-professional use, people who are doing small projects themselves?

By the way-- why was someone who was doing Protools editing not saving their session regularly?

The official viewpoint of Digi is that PTFree is there to attract users as a demo, but it is unsupported and buggy. They have no intention of offering bug-fixes or support.

It's unsupported, of course (except for the documentation). It's not really THAT buggy, as I've used it for several projects without too much trouble.

As for audio editing, sadly, although I'm on slashdot, I'm not a professional programmer. As it says in my blog, I'm an audio/electrical engineer, and I dabble in programming. I wish I had the ability to write a really good audio editor, but instead, I'll have to content myself with pointing out the flaws in current programs in hopes that some enterprising programmer will take my suggestions to heart.

Or you could learn ;)

W

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[silentbozo]

I agree. I originally cut my projects together with Premiere (this was 6 years ago, the only other option at the time was avid), and unfortunately, put a lot of work into my scratch tracks using Premiere's tools.

Premiere sucks. It's lousy for editing video, and the audio controls are almost non-existent.

Once I learned ProTools, it was like discovering natural light after living life in a cave lit by candlelight. Big difference. I only wish ProTools ran on OS X - that'd be reason enough for me to get an OS X machine...

Of course, now that I'm mixing a clean track, I need to re-record sound effects, so now I gotta learn about mics, and the whole nine yards. Oh well.

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[VValdo]

Yes, but weren't you saying PTFree was a valid solution? A buggy, crash-prone, unsupported piece of software is not a valid solution.

I haven't had any problems with it at all... it is certainly a valid solution for my purposes. As others have pointed out, there are free multitrack audio editors out there on many platforms, so you may have to do some searching around if you don't like PTFree.

W

Re:Yet another video app that ignores audio...

[Graymalkin]

You don't need a full Firelight D.R.E.A.M implementation inside of an NLE but you do need the ability to adequately deal with audio tracks. You don't need to do ADR in the editing room but you do need the ability to manage the tracks coming out of ADR which this program does not allow for in any reasonable way. Audio management in low end video systems is piss poor and typically consists of a fade capability and maybe track placement. You need a bit more than that to work well with audio coming in from an outside source like keyframe synching. You're bringing up great examples that cost thousands of dollars, the market this program is intended for is not a high budget 35mm film but instead a small POS shot on a Sony HandiCam. Why bring up an Avid when talking about low end production?

Cinelerra?

[Dr. Awktagon]

Isn't that a type of seasoning?

..and now, for the final touch, add a pinch of cinellera! Bon appetite!

Re:WANTED: Multitrack Recorder for Linux

[IOdine]

http://ardour.sourceforge.net/

Here you go.

RECOMMENDED FRONT END SYSTEM:

[FyRE666]

From their page:

Dual 1.6Ghz Athlon.
512MB RAM for standard definition.
1GB RAM for high definition.
200 GB storage for movie files.
Gigabit ethernet

So this is the recommended system? If this software outfit are anything like games companies and the recommended systems you see on the side of the box, it looks like you'll need twin Cray 6's with 16TB of RAM to do anything useful ;-)

Re:RECOMMENDED FRONT END SYSTEM:

[edremy]

Well, let's compare it to the system I just got to do video editing:

• 800MHz G4
• 512 MB RAM
• 120 GB disk
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Final Cut Pro

Mine is a very low end system. It's nowhere near as fast as I want: a typical render on a 5 minute scene takes 20+ minutes. I hit swap since I'm also running Photoshop and iDVD at the same time. I'm about halfway through my disk space and I've done maybe an hour's worth of total video. Networking? Don't make me laugh: the only way I output is to DVD since I'll kill our LAN if I tried to copy files around.

I laugh when I hear people commenting on new higher speed computers with "Who needs to run Quake at 400fps?". The real world isn't Quake: video editing will eat anything you throw at it and still want more. The specs listed really are the minimums.

Re:Where is the art?

[Bios_Hakr]

I like IFilm for indie films. Most of the clips are short and have good plots. Others are so long it ceaces to be funny.
Check out "Computer Boy", "The Killer Bean", and "405 The Movie". There are a ton of others that are cool to watch.
The only down side is the WMA/Real format of the films. And the commercials you have to watch between films.

BSD & Avids

[Nessak]

I'm a video engineer who works out of a network Broadcast center in NYC on a syndicated news program. The company justed invested a huge sum of money into a newish Avid system call "Unity for News". No, this isn't for home or anyone who is not professional broadcast. But it is a fiber system with 7tb storage and a number of other cool features.

One of the more interesting (and stable) peices of this system is a box called an Avid Airspace. It's a box with some very fast RAID drives, a few fiber/GigE cards, and three NTSC/PAL video I/O cards. Each one of these cards can take in a 601 digital feed (this is better then D1 digital found on minidv/firewire cameras.) Each one can output a 601 feed too. In fact, the show I work on broadcast live from this box. (Lifetime network also baught a simalar system, I've been told. Aslo a few local news stations are switching over to this system.)

Now the interesting part - these boxes run FreeBSD and a custom WM on X. All the other peices of the new Unity system (all win2k) are flakly, but these BSD boxes not only run great, but they output live broadcast quality video to millions of people daily.

So, will Cinelerra support these cards? I don't think so. (I don't think you can buy one of these cards without the system and I don't think the drivers are Free/Open.) But know that FreeBSD is used in more then just the CGI for big budget films.

Re:BSD & Avids

[Theaetetus]

Excellent point... Just for comparison, I work in broadcast radio, and our automation servers are all running proprietary flavors of Linux, and so are most of the automation systems for TV and radio in this market... Particularly with the proprietary flavors, they tend to be incredibly stable and reliable for situations where a crash could mean tens of thousands of dollars of fines as a result of dead air.

-T

Re:BSD & Avids

[sunya]

While Cinelerra may not support the specific cards supported by Airspace, there are SDI 601 options for Linux, specifically :

www.lmahd.com/sd601.html

and geting these to work with the editor should not be impossible...

Re:BSD & Avids

[TheSync]

The real question is when will you be able to take "off the shelf" components and put together something that can pretty much match an Avid system.

Does anyone remember stand-along word processors? I imagine that dedicated video editors might go that way as well.

We are even getting very close to the point where broadcast quality video servers can built out of off-the-shelf components.

Re:Final Cut?

[beens]

Umm, the old guard is already clutching their avids, methinks. I've been using FCP since it's 1.2 release, and it's 3.0 rivals anything that avid has out right now. The only advantage avid has over the FCP setup is tight integration with hardware, especially the protools stuff (since avid owns digidesign now). But, i think that with apple's recent purchase of EMagic we'll start seeing much better audio support out of Final Cut. The recent release of Cinema Tools for final cut jumps final cut up from a DV toy to a full-fledge HD ready motion-picture editing beast.

AND there are a whole host of good hardware video and audio cards coming out that enable a bunch of good realtime effects and whatnot for finalcut. Bottom line, avid is old news, and I think we'll quickly see FCP as the broadcast standard inside of 3 years.

Wow, that was a pain to compile!

[sanermind]

Took me about 20 minutes of fiddling to get it to make. [Course, the fact that I perversely insist on sticking everything in it's own complete directory, such as /usr/local/APP/cinelerra1.0, and then using a simple script to populate /usr/local/ with it's leafs, did add an extra few minutes bit to it ;)]

Asside from the usual finessing of includes, the toughest bit of the puzzle was the need to apply the compiler -O flag to the quicktime makefile. a52dec was a pain as well. Ah, for the good old days without configure and automake... when men were men and compiling a package would put hair on your chest. ;P

Bitch, bitch bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ. If nothing else, this is a free $1000 Final Cut Pro-ish system, ok? If you were using an Avid (which admittedly outfeatures and outUIs this but is also like 10+ years old and developed by an entire corporation) you'd be paying in the neighborhood of $1600 for the VERY LOWEST end that was just offered (Avid's DV Xpress).

As far as the UI, I think it's been pointed out that this is a skinnable app.

Now, let's get to the heart of your complaint-- Why on EARTH would you want to be editing something in RealVideo? Web-enabled video is a highly compressed version of what hopefully is a much higher resolution, less compressed image at a higher frame rate.

See, here's how it works-- you start with something watchable like DV, film, HiDef, whatever. Then you edit it into a show-- now you have a version you can be proud of..

Then, as a LAST step, you squeeze it down into something like RealVideo, Sorenson, etc.

That's something you can do elsewhere, and it's not something you use a non-linear editor for.

And to address some of the other idiot remarks, you don't use this program for audio sweetening either. This is the video equivalent of a word processor. It's for building a video program, with emphasis on video.

From what I've seen of it, it's fucking amazing that someone's put in the hard work for something like this and then opened it up to the public. It's more amazing that people here are just complaining without having any idea what they're talking about.

Companies like Avid literally charged in the range of 100K for something like this about 5 years ago. Final Cut Pro's $1K price range two years ago or so was a major threat to Avid's business model. Now we've got systems that are GPL'd.. the mind boggles.

I just wish it worked with xvid/divx .avi's. sigh.

[sanermind]

Admitedly, quicktime is a better file format. But avi has just caught on by popular momentum, it seems. All the media capture software I have saves to avi. Cinelerra seems to have some sort of modified quicktime which can contain divx, but I've no idea how to transcode the files I have right now into a format cine can understand. No feature would be more thrilling to me than proper avi handling. It's the -one- missing piece of this beautifull bit of software.

Wow. Those realtime effects just blow me away!!! Finally something that my K7 MP system can be overwhelmed by ...errmm ...Damn, I've ridden the crest and am becoming obsolete already, and I just got this thing 4 months ago. Sigh. Still, if something is going to kick my system's bottom, I'm happy to have an awesome near-professional-level marvel of open source like this to do it.

Wow.

Lossless MPEG-2 editing?

[koreth]

Didn't see this addressed in the documentation, so maybe someone here knows: Will Cinelerra edit MPEG-2 program streams without reencoding the audio and video? It'd be swell to be able to take the MPEG-2 encoded video from a ReplayTV or TiVo, clip out commercials, and burn to a DVD, but the trick is to do it without reencoding (which would cause quality loss.) Obviously the software would have to generate new keyframes in a few places depending on where the edit points were, but it ought to be able to copy most of the stream without modification.

The only software I've found that does this is M2-Edit by MediaWare Solutions, but its UI is awful and it's Windows-only.

Re:Lossless MPEG-2 editing?

[quakeroatz]

They sell a Linux version of M2-Edit Pro, but it's command line only and very expensive.

Linux is Maturing

[mcrbids]

Dunno if you are noticing, but Linux is rapidly losing its rough edges. Been using Red Hat since 5.0, and it's come a long way in the past few years!

New applications are popping out left and right! Open office, Mozilla, Blender, Crossover, etc. Linux is rapidly becoming a very viable contender.

I'm working on a project to digitize a bunch of audio (lectures) for streaming netcast. This is a volunteer thing, and must be done on the cheap.

My Windows 98 system (games, mostly, some browsing) has a SB Live! sound card which comes with Creative Studio.

Great functionality, but DOG SLOW on a system with only 128 MB RAM.

Guess what?!? There's this neat little GTK app I found on freshmeat - close functionality, performs fantastically even with low memory, runs great on my main (but comparable) Linux workstation.

The gaps are filling in fast - this is yet another example.

Wahoo!

Re:years ago

[i_am_nitrogen]

...ease up the installer...names packages in accordance to functionality...

Well let's see.. LindowsOS does both those already. Your other point about X isn't really valid, because although it'd be nice to replace X with something like DirectFB, it's not really necessary, and would be difficult to do (X has hundreds of drivers, and the linux kernel has only a few framebuffer drivers. The conversion process is not trivial. I wrote an accelerated client driver for the 3dfx voodoo 3/4/5 for libfbx, and while it wasn't that difficult, it's not something you can just write a script to do).

Re:Where is the art?

[akb]

Check Indymedia video page with material from 90 grassroots indie groups worldwide and my new project, a video portal using a hacked version of Scoop.

ifilm

[akb]

Well I'm biased but I don't like ifilm. I don't think they can be described as "independent", their investors include Sony, Eastman Kodak and Paul Allen. A lot of their content is stuff that's 3rd rate mainstream tv fodder. What's the point of being independent if you attempt to emulate bad mainstream stuff, that's not very interesting.

Re:Free is relative...

[Tord]

Maybe the "free as in price" aspect isn't so important here, but don't undererstimate the "free as in freedom" aspects of this product.

I'm sure that eventually will advanced homeusers and hackers involved in indie projects start to hack the code and add cool features and effects. This will make the program grow and become more sophisticated and useful over time.

wow it's even GPL!

[Micah]

I thought the BCast2000 author pulled it due to alleged liability problems with open source code. Yet when you click on the Cinelerra download link, it brings up the GPL license!

Sweetness, but what gives!

Thanks guys! Now if only I had a use for it... will have to think of one. :) oh wait I only have an athlon 700. :(

Broadcast 2000?

[steveha]

I'm puzzled. Heroine Virtual wrote Broadcast 2000, and then pulled it from the web site, saying something about being afraid of lawsuits. I thought they were out of the NLE business.

Now I am happy to see Cinelarra, but I'm wondering if they will be yanking that one of these days like they did with Broadcast 2000.

(Fortunately, with free software, the project can live on after being disavowed by its creator. Cinelarra, now that it has been released under GPL, is here to stay.)

steveha

Good tools for simple video editing?

[steveha]

I would like to migrate all my old video tapes onto a digital format (preferably DVDs). I'm wondering what would be the best editing tool.

Probably all I really need is something to crop out the bits I don't want to keep: the last 30 seconds of the show that came on before the one I wanted, the commercials, etc. A full NLE is overkill.

What tools, that run under Linux, should I be looking into? Thanks for any advice.

steveha

Re:Good tools for simple video editing?

[Gordonjcp]

Run VirtualDub under wine. It "Just Works (tm)".

MacOS X port?

[Gorimek]

Is there a MacOS X port ?

Since it's supposed to be so easy to port from Linux to MacOS X, I assume that applies here too?

I'm a fairly happy iMovie and iDVD user, but I wouldn't mind some extra options and capabilities for free!

Thanks for your comment.

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for your comment. It was useful to me.

Re: Augmenting crappy sound for video

[Amizell]

I don't know much about audio, though -- I would love to hear any suggestions or resources you could point me to, esp. regarding isolating human voices

The best tip I've heard on this is to get yourself a minidisc recorder. It is small enough to fit in a person's pocket, records decent quality sound (certainly good enough for spoken word, not bad even for music) and can power a small lavalier mic. When you begin shooting a new scene make a loud percussive noise (clapper, anyone?) so that you can line up the audio from the minidisc and the camcorder visually in your editing software. Poor man's SMPTE. : )

alex

Problems with Cinelerra

[thomasvs]

It is good that applications like these are making their way to Linux. However, some things are really bad about Cinelerra and it's developer and it's important that they're noted so that the community can try to resolve these.

• ANY application developer that serves RPM's on their homepage and recommend you to "install them by using rpm --force --nodeps" really shouldn't make RPM's AT ALL. There is nothing worse than telling users of your software to mess up their packaging system. If the answer to this is "well that's because RPM sucks", then you don't know what you're talking about. It's perfectly possible to make good RPM's. In fact, if prodded, I'll make them from cinelerra to prove my point.
• A really bad issue in Cinelerra is how it incorporates every outside library inside it's source tree instead of using external libraries. We all need to promote code reuse. Taking other people's code and putting it in your tree is bad for several reasons : you're bloating your software when you should be reusing libraries; fixes to those libraries do not go back upstream to the original library and thus the community isn't advancing. There aren't enough advantages to "stealing" code like this to warrant it. Please force the author to reuse software properly and play nice with the rest of the community.
• Broadcast 2000 got pulled from the site due to "copyright problems" or "disillusion with the community on HeroineWarrior's side" (depending on who you ask). So what has changed about that now to ensure this won't happen to Cinelerra ?

I'm certainly going to try the final release, and HeroineWarrior knows what he's doing and has the advantage of actually having produced usable apps. But, in my opinion, applications like this are a nice transition but ultimately a dead end for the community. No one benefits much from applications like these. We should stick to what makes open source as good as it is : code reuse, polishing, cooperation.

What a cinelerra system would cost (one attempt)

[timothy]

Out of curiosity (well, and lust), I wanted to see what a low-end -- but complete, new -- system capable of running Cinellera would cost. That is, with no parts cannibalized from current computers, as if I was building / installing this sheerly for video play in addition to existing systems. (Actually, as you can see, I cheated in here with one or two things, but only slightly.) I decided I don't need video capture (yet), but I do want firewire in so I can play with video from my camcorder. Also, a CD-RW drive for making disks for give-away. The only place I went above the recommended minimum (I think, since I glanced and sought, didn't really study) is in spec'ing 1800 rather than 1600 dual processors.

Prices are from Pricewatch as of 20020813; most of them are the current lowball bid there, but some are just *near* the lowball bid. Slightly arbitrary, but hoping to avoid the worst liars.

To cut the drumroll short, the total price of the system I assemble here is (very close to) USD1350. Probably, the US is the cheapest place to make such a system, and only you can adjust for local currencies elsewhere :) Even so, that's not a cheap computer considering what can be had for under a thousand dollars right now, but is *is* less than most laptops, and cheaper than the lowest end G4 tower (and I am not knocking Apple hardware or software here, please don't start :)).

So here is my hypothetical firewire-only Cinelerra system -- is there anything hugely wrong with it? I've listed the components that I found, some with some additional info grabbed from the pricewatch product information. I'm not very familiar with dual athlon motherboards etc, perhaps I've picked a lemon, but this is all a thought experiment anyhow.

(At the end is another bit on price, lowballing even more, trampling on the recommendations :))

timothy

Case: $95

Skyhawk AL-ATX4378-9/450 aluminum midtower Silver 8bay ATX.3 fans sky hawk ,p4 450w(460w power now)

[Wasn't sure if much less power would be adequate for a dual athlon
system]

Motherboard and CPU: $297

Tyan S2460 RETAIL BOX 2Yr Warr. PCI-1 AGP - DMA100 -DDR memory ATX,Tiger
MP AMD Dual AMD-762 Chipset

with cpu - Single Athlon MP 1800+ with Coolermaster heat sink & fan
-complete combo kit ,with 1 yr warranty .

(Part - S2460@1800(1)+)

Additional CPU: $125

Actually, listed for $137 at the moment, but I'm taking a slight liberty with this component, on the basis that I would order everything else, assemble, test, play, etc, and order this a month or so later; I bet by the time everything was in place, that will have been a fair price drop to
calculate.

Video Card: $50

Would not be anything fancy, I realize.

1 GB DDR RAM: $222

ONLINE ORDER ONLY -
major names, 512MB PC2700 333MHz DDR SDRAM CL2 CAS2.5 2.5v, 6 layer
board,dealer OK

$111 -- x2 = $222
240MB of Hard Drive: $264

120.0GB EIDE 7200RPM INTERNAL Model# IC35L120AVVA07, Part# 07N9219 - OEM,
DRIVE ONLY - 120GB

These are IBM drives, for good or ill ;)

$132 x 2 = $264

Firewire Card: $50

(just guessing; I don't see a list of supported cards on the HV site, so I'm guessing midrange of the first page of results :))

Sound Card: $25

(here too, I'm hoping that's good enough for a conservative estimate for a compatible card, even if it's not a great one.)

CD-RW drive: $35

(That's a computer-show price, but not that unreasonable for simply watching sales etc, IMO)

Keyboard and Mouse: $25

That $25 is for a logitech marble mouse. Keyboard scrounged.

Monitor: $200

(Scrimping here, but hey, *some* monitor is going to cost $200 or less, and even a small LCD can be had for $300 ... with video, I know it's a bad place to cut corners, but, well, this is all about cutting corners!)

That makes (in order) $(95, 297, 125, 50, 222, 264, 50, 25, 35, 25, 200)

Which, if I've just tossed the sums together correctly, comes to $1388. Rough number, since only some of those items include shipping cost etc, and obviously some of them guesstimates anyhow.

Now, subtracting certain things to arrive at a nicer price:

To make it a 512MB RAM system lowers it by $111 (new total, $1289)

Going with only one 120GB HD (hey, I've edited small videos on my 10GB iBook) subtracts $132 (new total $1157)

Going to a single Athlon 1800MP (dammit, any program that needs TWO of those is outright *nuts*! :)) cuts back $125 (new total tantalizingly close to a thousand: $1032)

Now, further scrimping on the basis that sound cards are ubiquitous and cheap ($10 at a computer show, saving $15) (and Yes, that I'll have a cheap one as a known limitation to this system), that I have an existing monitor, keyboard and trackball as well as a KVM switch to let me use them (letting me chop $225), that PC 2100 RAM can be had for $93/512MB (saving $18), that I could "scrape by" with a single 80GB drive instead ($85 shipped, saving $47) lets me cull another 47 + 18 + 15 + 225 for a total of $305.

Now, I'm down to a case / motherboard / single processor / video card / 80GB drive / firewire card / sound card, with scrounged keyboard and mouse, but the price is much more attractive - $727

Now, can anyone comment on whether such a system, though below the recommended list, would actually be a workable way to use Cinelerra?

Batch Capture?

[maddogsparky]

I've been looking for some software that will let me batch capture home movies with my ATI All-in-Wonder card from my NTSC camcorder, compress them, and automatically put them on VCD via scripting.

Can you do something similar with the setup you described? To be honest, I haven't tried Linux on my current desktop; I've been putting it off until I could find a setup that works well. When I do, I'll buy bigger harddrive and maybe even a new PC (I'm running a Compaq PIII 450) so I can archive a whole tape all in one shot. Ideally, I would hook up the camera, boot up my PC, pop in a blank CD, start the program, press play, go do something else for a while, come back in x hours and have a fresh VCD waiting for me.

Re:Batch Capture?

[maddogsparky]

Thanks for the info.

For me, the biggest part of the equation is automating the capture and compression parts. Burning a VCD should be a simple operation, but would have to be manual if the source is too large to fit on a single CD. I have the tools to do it right now (barring lockups due to Win98 drivers), but not the time to do every step manually.

Small pipe, can't dl from sourceforge

[Taco Cowboy]

I am on smallpipe connection to the Net (56K), so whenever I need to download megabyte-programs, I have to use the "download managers" to assist me in downloading.

In that way, if the connection is severed during the downloading, I don't lose everything. The "download manager" will save the portion that I've downloaded, and then will continue, from the point of the very last byte of the last download, on the next session.

I have tried to download Cinelerra from Sourceforge, [ http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/heroines/hvirtu al-1.0.0-1.i686.rpm ], using the "download manager", I get errors all the time.

This is what I get when I use the "download manager" trying to download cinilerra from Sourceforge -

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/heroines/hvirtu al-1.0.0-1.i686.rpm?use_mirror=umn

and instead of the 7 megabyte file, I got a 10K file.

Can anyone please tell me what to do ?

Thanks in advance !

I understand your point, but...

[Omega]

I understand your point about code reuse and library sharing -- but I don't think you're seeing the whole picture. Many people are pissed off at the dependency hell they experience when they want to install one simple app from freshmeat. What good is a 500k source download if you need 20M of the latest libraries just to support it? Not to mention the time you spend hunting all over the web to find the latest versions.

HeroineWarrior knows that it's using esoteric libraries, they even say so:

Finally, since everything is built around the same esoteric, obscure libraries, everything tends to reflect improvements in the libraries simultaneously. It's not economical to update 5 obscure packages simultaneously every time one obscure package changes.

And who's to say that library changes and improvements don't make it back upstream? Programmers don't live in a vacuum -- otherwise they wouldn't be using outside libraries to begin with.

Aside from that the code is full GPL, so it's not stealing if the source (and any library changes are distributed when the binary is distributed). So if you want to redistribute a more difficult to install version (without restriction) -- you can! Not only that but you can personally fork the project and start developing it as you see fit. The GPL gives you those rights. The authors of Cinelerra are just trying to minimize the difficulty that people may experience with installing the software while trying to share something they think other people will find useful.

And it's free! You don't HAVE to accept gift-horses, you know.

kill the lan?

[No-op]

maybe you should consider real network hardware. we have a large installation of Foundry Networks gear and we happily throw around terabytes of data daily.

nothing churns more happily than servers with fast storage abilities, multi-gigabit interfaces, and no network latency.

that and your mac has 64bit PCI slots- use them!

Re:kill the lan?

[edremy]

maybe you should consider real network hardware. we have a large installation of Foundry Networks gear and we happily throw around terabytes of data daily.

I work for a small (~750 student) woman's college in a small town in Virginia. I'd love all the fun hardware you list, but I ain't getting it.

Re:kill the lan?

[No-op]

it's actually surprisingly affordable these days, with the dotcom fallout and manufacturers heavily over-manufacturing (they were expecting the bubble to never pop?)

In a realistic world, I would say that for your heavy bandwidth needs you could pick up a decent ~24 port gigabit switch for under 10k, if you shopped well. that could host all your servers for that matter, as it would have full wire speed capacity. for a lesser port density (say 8 gig ports) you can even get down under maybe 3 or 4k for a real hardware device (foundry, juniper, xtreme, etc.)

there is always a cost/performance point, but when you're buying macintosh hardware you've already made the decision that cost/performance is irrelevant, to a certain extent.