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Good News For Creating Quicktime On Linux
"I've been finding Kino handy for capturing from VHS and Hi-8 because the auto-split avoids sync issues with large files. Cinestream (Windows NLE) can't seem to keep long captures in sync when I use my Sony DVMC-DA1 box but capturing in Kino has been a simple un-attended workaround. Now that it captures in Quicktime, it's even better because I can feed the Quicktime files directly to Cinestream with no pre-processing, and the quality is very good.
If you also install Cinelerra, you can also view some types of Quicktime in Linux. Cinelerra is an awesome multi-track NLE with several supplied effects/transitions/filters, but it also includes "X movie," which plays DV files captured with Cinestream as well as some other types (but nothing with Sorenson).
Both Cinelerra and Kino can open and edit Quicktime files from Cinestream.
Oh, what about audio? I've been trying a program called " Ardour" which is a real-time 24-track hard-disk recorder on Linux. Of course it's useful for "simpler" things too like a precision audio editor.
So Linux is coming a long way as a viable platform for high-quality editing (with nice interfaces too). And since it and the apps are free, that goes a long way. Microsoft said in a recent filing that it may be forced to lower prices due to competition from free software. Maybe one day the only people who pay for an editing package will be those who need support or buy it preconfigured with hardware."
Good, now we can create it, but when will I be able to view quicktime on Linux?
So Linux is coming a long way as a viable platform for high-quality editing
To bad they are about 5 years late.
Just in case it's already /. !
:-). One additional improvement, which seems to help, is the AV/C Poll Interval in preferences. The polling thread appears to be too intensive for some devices. The default is now 200ms, which is a fairly safe value, but you can try increasing it up to 999. On the other hand, my camera handles the lowest value of 10ms just fine. Also, now Kino waits for 3 failures to retrieve this information in a row before giving up and resetting the state of Kino's transport buttons.
Summary
The latest version of Kino fixes a number of bugs while improving the user interface and adding support for Quicktime DV files and dv1394.
Audio Encoding
This release fixes a number of audio encoding issues, which also requires libdv version 0.99. Kino 0.6.3 will still use libdv 0.98, but libdv 0.99 is required to completely fix it. Movie projects with mixed audio formats work better now not only in FX. In addition, with mixed audio format projects, new resampling options in Export provides a more consistent stream to IEEE 1394 devices or DV output files.
Audio Crossfade Effect
Also, while speaking of audio, the FX/Audio/Transition/Switch has been changed to a Cross Fade with user-definable spline-based controls for the fade out of clip A and the fade in of clip B.
dv1394
This release adds support for dv1394. dv1394 is optional and is not the default for both capture and export. As a result, Preferences has changed quite a bit to accomodate this change. If you have previously had trouble exporting DV back to your camera because your camera did not accept the signal, then you should try dv1394. It reportedly works for nearly everyone where video1394 would not work. dv1394 is a new module in kernel 2.4.19 and later, or you can get it from Linux 1394 Subversion. A special new feature with dv1394 is a "Preview on external monitor" preferences display option. With this enabled, as you work in Edit or Trim, all video preview is also output using dv1394! Carefully, read the new dv1394 help page at http://www.linux1394.org/dv1394.html before attempting to use it.
Quicktime
The release also adds support for Quicktime DV that is compatible with Heroine Virtual's Broadcast 2000 or Cinelerra. This is native support meaning you can capture to it, edit it, and export it using Export/DV File. You must explicitly configure Kino for Quicktime using the --with-quicktime configure option.
Capture
A major bug affecting Capture and AV/C was located and fixed. Enabling AV/C would start a thread to poll for transport status and timecode. There was a bug in the timecode routine that can deadlock the thread. For some devices AV/C has not worked well. This was addressed partly with libavc1394 0.4.1 but Kino has made some improvements as well (including the above bugfix
Eye Candy
There is some nice new user interface features too. First, there is the More Info panel that expands to show detailed information about the file, video format, and audio format for the current frame. Second, in the scene strip on the left of the window, the current scene highlights. The previous two additions only work when timecode update is enabled, so if you are constrained on CPU power, you can leave all these things disabled for better performance although the overhead is very slight on and, for example, an AMD 800MHz shows no penalty. Third, there is a newly designed scrub bar and trim control. Finally, a convenient command reference window is available under the Help menu or by pressing Ctrl+F1.
MPEG Export
A cleanup option is added to Export/MPEG that is enabled by default. Disable the option to prevent the exporter from deleting temporary files in case mplex fails. Also, there is a bugfix to properly split into separate mpeg files for each scene--this option does not use mplex splitting, so this works very good for creating multiple chapter DVDs with dvdauthor.
Jog/Shuttle Controller
If you are a USB Jog/Shuttle user, then we now use the HID driver and not custom modules. We do not know if this works OK with the Sony controller. If you use the Sony controller, let us know. It it still easy to compile Kino for use with the custom modules. However, the HID driver works good with the Contour ShuttlePRO, loads nicely with hotplug, making this a more simple ready-to-use option for users.Using a shuttle controller in conjunction with the new Preview on External Monitor feature is very nice! Note that keymappings have changed some with the move to the HID driver; however, key mappings are now configurable in Preferences. One can press the key (combinations too!) on the controller with the dialog open to select it.
FFMPEG Libavcodec
If you are trying to use Kino on a PowerPC, you can try to enable FFMPEG libavcodec using the --with-avcodec options. The libavcodec DV decoder adds accelleration for PowerPC whereas libdv does not. See configure --help or the README for more information. We will not be embedding any libavcodec source code at this time to avoid any legal ramifications. Therefore, this option may be out of sync with the latest libavcodec API from time-to-time.
From v0.90pre2 changes: "experimental Sorenson 1/3 encoding (using quicktime DLLs) (only to AVI, and these files can only be played with MPlayer! It's needless to mail us about when will be MOV encoding too, as neither we know:) "
.mov support in other programs, I doubt finishing .mov support in Mencoder will take long.
Mencoder is part of MPlayer."
It is not complete, but chances are you can encode/capture avi-ish Sorenson with Mencoder. This will probably work with most of the extra filters and encoding options to make changes the video. Seeing
Although I bet linux still not that great for MOV editing/encoding, it's coming along quite nicely right now as you can see.
xinehq.de
Install the latest beta, grab the Win32 codecs (ask on the mailing list if you're not sure where to get them from) and you're done. It can even do streaming, it has a Mozilla plugin...
With the existance of DivX, Xiph.org and many others.
Not saying there aren't any, but I have yet to see a QuickTime video that matches the quality of some of the other formats. A visit to TheForce.net has given me this opinion.
__________________________________
Free your mind - Flush your toilet
xinehq.de
You need the latest beta, and you have to also get the Win32 codecs (Quicktime included). If not sure where to get the Win32 codecs from, ask on the mailing list.
It works fine, it can play streaming material. It even has a Mozilla plugin.
And it's not just Quicktime, you can play basically any multimedia format: DivX, DVD, SVCD...
...if this sounds like a rather open ended question, but we have MPlayer playing pretty much any a/v codec on the planet right now, and we have decent video tools (esp. Cinelerra). What's stopping people getting together to make it possible for all the codecs being used universally?
ie- So that you're able to open sorenson encoded files seamlessly in cinelerra, and encode/save out to various divx mutations.
Come on people, we're so close!
I unserstand that libavcodec does this with many files (mpeg derivatives), but not the *ahem* less legal ones.
I can't wait until the day I plug a Firewire dv cam into a mandrake box, a dv cam icon pops up on the desktop and allows joe to edit away to his heart's content.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
You can view them with Mplayer. Just get the required codecs. Quicktime, realplayer, win32, etc up at: http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/
AS someone working in a Regional TV station I would love to be able to switch our production facilities away from the MS based systems we are using now and move them to a Linux based system.
I am starting to write something for this myself but I would like to know how close we are to actually achieving this aim. I have looked at several of the packages on offer such as KDENLIVE and Cinelerra but none of them are what I would call studio ready.
Well I keep hoping.
Well, it's Sorenson's codec, not Apple's. If you don't QuickTime player but just the codec, go bug Sorenson.
Random is the New Order.
Does anyone else think that Apple is going to shit a brick over this? I'm sure they don't mind Linux users being able to view Sorenson encoded files because they arn't really loosing anything, Linux users just otherwise wouldn't view these files. But now people have an option to make quicktime moves without paying for Apple software. (I'm saying this assuming that Apple dosen't make any free Sorenson encoding programs)
my other penis is a vagina
Over the past several months, I've been using Kino to edit together a wedding video for my brother-in-law and his wife. I did the original filming with two cameras, so I had some extensive editing to do. Wanting to get away from Windows and the 4GB file size limit, I decided to explore Kino.
After some work setting it up, everything worked surprisingly well. DV capture (from a Sony TRV-950) was painless and the editing went pretty smoothly. I ended up having to create a separate audio track to dub over the entire video. It was at that point that I discovered a bug in Kino's dubbing feature. Because of the way audio was handled, there was a progressive desynchronization of the audio and video. The good news is that after posting some messages on their forum, the issue got fixed in the CVS (and I presume the new version incorporates the fix).
I've been exporting the finished product (several gigs of DV) to VCD, and the results have been very satisfactory. All in all, anyone who wants to try editing DV video in Linux should at least give Kino a good try- the interface is clean and relatively intuitive and I was able to figure things out without a lot of trouble. Before using Kino, my only experience had been a little work with Pinnacle Studio 7.0.
Actually, QuickTime the file format is completely documented and open.
Apple's implementation is propritary, as are some of the codecs. But as a file format, it is radically better than AVI for doing media authoring.
An open source implementation would be good forever.
My video compression blog
is quicktime the prefered format for video? i prefer Xvid(open source, high quality, high compression).
its very nice to have so many options available, especially on linux now. i have been using crossover plugin to play quicktime movies on my linux box but now ill be able to play them native.
good work.
It uses mplayer to open video files, so anything that mplayer can open, LiVES will let you edit.
Quicktime has always been a completely open format, and is the industry standard for editing tools. Programs like xanim could open and play Quicktime since many years ago. Now, the Sorenson codec is proprietary, but if you're making your own video just don't use it. You'll want to keep the video in DV format anyway while you're editing, then at the end export it into any format you want. What is it with you guys, you act like the whole world revolves around surfing the web on your Linux box downloading LOTR trailers. Somebody makes those videos you know, and for them Quicktime is great. Stop all the hating.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
To all of the above posters saying things like "why QuickTime when {DivX | MPEG4 | Ogg Tarkin | AVI} is so much {better | smaller | easier | open} ?" I'll tell you two things:
1: When editing video you want the LEAST compression possible. BIG files are a PLUS. That's why this guy uses DV encoded files, it's the same compression done by his camera, so he loses nothing while capturing and editing.
2: QuickTime isn't a compression, not even a file format, it's a software architecture. When he picked his camera, the choice of compression was made for him (DV), and when he chose the NLE (Cinestream), the file format was fixed (mov, quicktime's native format)
This isn't about viewing video clips on the 'net, for that he'd reencode as MPEG4 after having his master tape.
-Kz-