Building a Video Editing Box?

RexDart asks: "I'm building a new AMD64/939 box and would like to build into the system: capabilities to capture video from analog and digital sources; edit; add text and overlays; and maybe do the occasional DVE. This is for home movies, wedding videos and occasional project for work. This will be a dual boot Linux (Red Hat or Ubuntu most likely) / WinXP system. Open source, free, software would be ideal (Audacity will definitely be installed), but commercial solutions are not out of the picture. I'd like to keep the media production on the Linux side of the system and reserve WinXP for gaming, but is Linux up to the task?" "Given the above considerations, the questions:
1) What's a good recommendation for video capture hardware?
2) What's a good recommendation for software?

I don't expect a definitive answer, but would like to narrow the starting points of my research.

Thanks!"

Comments

Get a Mac instead.

[LordNimon]

is Linux up to the task?

No, it's not. Get a Mac, and you'll have all the tools you need, the ability to play a few games, and a Unix OS to satisfy your geek side.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Sentry21]

Not to mention the ability to run Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro, arguably the finest video editing package(s) out there. For video editing, FCP is a make-or-break for me, and I wouldn't consider not using a Mac.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

Would still need a way to play windows games without horrible slow down crawls that we get in emulators.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Lussarn]

Unix OS to satisfy your geek side

Some of us du serious work on *nix, it has nothing to do with satisfying geeks sides. We go to great length to find the *nix OS that are the right one for us, thats why there are different distributions of Linux for example. It mostly has to do with how configs are setup, package management, stuff like that. Why on earth does evey mac fanatic thinks that just their OS (which doesn't even include most basic packages without resorting to third party solutions like fink or portage) is the right one for every *nix user out there?

Stop treating the *nix part of OS X as a god dam checkbox in a product advertisement from Apple.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[swillden]

No, it's not. Get a Mac, and you'll have all the tools you need, the ability to play a few games, and a Unix OS to satisfy your geek side.

I disagree with this, after having done the comparison.

I got a mini DV camera for Christmas, and bought my wife an iBook. Although I didn't want to hog her new computer, I did think for a while that maybe I should use it for video editing. After trying for a while, I'm using Kino on Linux.

The problem with iLife tools is that although they're very polished and slick, they're also somewhat limited. Some of the problems I found are:

• iMovie can't handle the anamorphic "widescreen" format that my camera optionally produces. I looked to see if there's some filter I can use to stretch the video out to its correct aspect ratio, but there isn't one. Kino just does it.
• iMovie won't output any formats other than its own, DV or Quicktime. That's fine if you are going to use iDVD (see below), but that doesn't work for me.
• I couldn't find a way to make iDVD produce a DVD without a menu, and it wasn't obvious how to make my own menu themes since I didn't like the ones Apple provided.
• iDVD will not output the DVD image in any format at all, as far as I can tell. You can only burn the DVD but, of course, the iBook doesn't have a burner.

There were some others as well that I'm forgetting, because I gave up on using the iLife tools for video editing a couple of weeks ago.

Now, my situation is a little different than that of the questioner, because I'm not really willing to spend much money on buying video editing software. If there were something in the range of a hundred bucks, I'd consider it it, but certainly no more... I spent all my money on the iBook and the camera!

IMO, for typical home movie stuff, making DVD slide shows for weddings (which I've done), Linux is perfectly adequate, and depending on what you want to do, may actually be a better choice than a Mac.

Gimp runs much better on Linux than on OSX, too, which is valuable when building slide shows.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[jjshoe]

Mac OSX has a bsd 'like' micro kernel, NOT a unix 'like' operating system.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[CompVisGuy]

The recent MacWorld Keynote said that Final Cut Express HD will cope with the widescreen format, and I believe this is true for the new iMovie, too. Advice: Buy a Mac with a version of Final Cut HD.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

• The new iMovie supports HD camcorders and 16:9 widescreen formats. It's available January 22nd either bought separately or with any new macs bought after that.
• No reason why you can't output to QuickTime or DV and then use a program to change the DV to something else (I often use D-Vision to create Xvid AVIs). What formats did you have in mind?
• I believe the new iDVD lets you create menuless DVDs as well. Comes in the same box as the version of iMovie I mentioned above.
• The new iDVD does let you output the DVD to a disk image

• Looks to me like your gripes have all been answered. If you have any other questions, you can feel free to ask me -- I'm pretty handy at Mac video editing for an amateur.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[jefflinwood]

iDVD will not output the DVD image in any format at all, as far as I can tell. You can only burn the DVD but, of course, the iBook doesn't have a burner.

iDVD '05 (or whatever it's called) will support saving a DVD image. iDVD Features

I've never used this software, but here is a web page that explains how to do the same thing with iDVD 2.0-4.0 Burning iDVD to 3rd party drives

It sounds like what you actually want is Final Cut Express, which was going for $99 with the purchase of any new Mac a while ago. I think it's $299 now.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[notsoclever]

But iMovie DV comes with every new Mac, and already supports 1080i and 16:9 and so on.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[CompVisGuy]

Yes, but if you want to do semi-professional movie editing, then you might want a product aimed at the semi-professional market, rather than the home market. Of course, there is a continuum, it just depends upon your needs and depth of pocket. iMovie DV might suit the OP fine.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

No offense, but there is alot of good editing video software that work very well on a 2ghz system, which would still be hell of alot cheaper than a mac. Besides that, you haven't really given much evidence that shows that a Mac really does better editing than what you can do on a PC, last time I checked, they could both do the same stuff.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[daviddennis]

The reason the Mac is so highly recommended for this particular application is that it has the best video application made, Final Cut HD and Express.

For what he's doing, I don't think there's any difference between Express and HD. Express is just $99 when purchased with any new Mac, and that beats any other solution hollow for both quality and cost-effectiveness.

Fink and Portage are no more third-party than a Linux distribution, which is a system put together from disparate components from different vendors. As RMS says, it's "GNU/Linux", meaning that it's Linus' kernel + third-party software including the various Gnu commands. I don't normally care for RMS' nomenclature, since I think it unnecessarily confuses the person on the street, but it does make this point clear.

I have a job now where I am engaged in Linux server script development, video editing and motion graphics. With the Unix side, Final Cut HD(*) and Motion, I have all the tools I need on my Mac at a quite reasonable price.

D

(*) I purchased FC HD before Express came out. If I were developing today, I would have no reason to get anything higher-end than Express, particularly with Motion handling titles.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[daviddennis]

Others have pointed out that the new version of iMovie has solved most of these problems.

What's really solved these problems is Final Cut Express, which has all the features he needs for $99 when bought with a new Mac. FCE has the same professional video editing features as Final Cut Pro. It also includes LiveType and SoundTrack for titling and music composition respectively. That's a very fun bonus, especially for wedding work.

It blows anything on the PC end out of the water. Adobe had to write creaky old Premiere into Premiere Pro and it still doesn't match the Final Cut Express feature set.

If you want to have fun with compositing and animation, nothing beats Apple's new Motion software, although it requires a dual G5 to run well.

D

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[TheWanderingHermit]

Maybe the can do the same stuff, but as a video professional, my opinion is that the Mac does it better. It feels more like a video editor and lets you think more about editing than how to edit.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[TheWanderingHermit]

After trying for a while, I'm using Kino on Linux.

Works great for amateur use, but if you're ever going to do professional editing, you can forget Linux -- at least for a while. Main Actor (for Windows and Linux) is the very bottom end of what I'd even look at for professional video editing (and that includes, from my point of view, doing a wedding for anyone). That doesn't mean I'd use it. Premiere (Windows only, AFAIK) is the low end of what I'd actually use for professional editing.

But I also get the idea you're talking about hobby work, and it isn't clear if the poster is actually talking about pro work.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[norkakn]

[OSX:/bin] jsdobbie% ls
[ csh echo ln ps sh test bash date ed ls pwd sleep zsh cat dd expr mkdir rcp stty zsh-4.1.1 chmod df hostname mv rm sync cp domainname kill pax rmdir tcsh
[OSX:/bin] jsdobbie%


huh?.. I'm running Nicotine behind my browser as well. And it is a Mach like microkernel, not BSD like.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[swillden]

Looks to me like your gripes have all been answered.

Cool. So for $80 I can upgrade to versions that will do what I want.

I'm pretty comfortable with the Linux tools, so I think I'll stick with them, but it's nice to know Apple is fixing these problems.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[notsoclever]

And Final Cut Express is $300, and provides everything that the prosumer would need and then some.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[swillden]

What's really solved these problems is Final Cut Express, which has all the features he needs for $99 when bought with a new Mac.

Can I get a copy for my month-old Mac?

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[voidstin]

"there is alot of good editing video software that work very well on a 2ghz system, which would still be hell of alot cheaper than a mac."

such as? vegas? premiere? avid xpress? your definitiion of 'good' must be different than mine.

FCP/Decklink/G5 all the way.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Yaztromo]

iMovie won't output any formats other than its own, DV or Quicktime. That's fine if you are going to use iDVD (see below), but that doesn't work for me.

Strange -- I export from iMovie to Xvid directly all the time without any problems.

To do so, you need to select Export -> QuickTime -> Advanced, and then select the output codec. If you don't already have them, go out and get the free DivX, Xvid, 3ivx, and RealVideo 10 Quicktime codecs, just so you can export to any of these formats if the need arises.

Mind you, I do have QuickTime Pro, so it could be that the option to export to different codecs isn't available in iMovie if you're running QuickTime Standard. Regardless, as a defniitive statement, your claim is incorrect, as it is possible to export to a variety of different formats from iMovie -- I do so on a regular basis (and not just for the codecs listed above, but for the other dozen or so that are included with QuickTime).

(And no, this isn't with iMovie 05, although I do have it on order).

Yaz.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[swillden]

go out and get the free DivX, Xvid, 3ivx, and RealVideo 10 Quicktime codecs

Where can I get these?

Thanks.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Yaztromo]

Try the following:

• 3ivx Codec
• DivX Codec
• Xvid Codec
• Real Export Plug-in

Enjoy!

Yaz.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

Yeah, if the Linux tools do what you need and you're fine with using them, go ahead and stick with them.

Still, for the others out there who haven't decided, at least they know those issues have been fixed.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[RustNeverSleeps]

You can get it, but I think it's $149 when purchased separately. The new version of Final Cut Express (FCE HD) is $299, but it also adds Soundtrack (previously a standalone app) and Livetype along with the ability to edit HD video.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[swillden]

really, it's the fault of camera manufacturers adding non-standard features

It may be non-standard, but it's quite useful. I wouldn't want to lose it.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

No offense, but the mac is made to be dumb proof, it's not made to feel like a video editor. You might just be feeling it's a video editor because you can figure out how to use it without reading a few pages of the helpfile.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

Video Edit Magic Express, muvee autoProducer 4, virtualdub (free), Home Movie Editor, Colorful Movie Editor, Movie Tome Editor, Gazelle Movie Editor etc...

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[TheWanderingHermit]

I have a business that got started because of a suite of programs I wrote. It took me 3-4 years, doing almost nothing but programming 24/7. I used to program in 6502 Assembler, back when the Apple //e was a big deal. I hadn't programmed in a decade, and learned Perl, Java, Javascript, HTML, TCL, and several other languages to get this done (many of the languages I had to learn didn't even exist when I had programmed before). All this was done, btw, to create a company that fund me starting a video production company where I can write my own scripts and shoot them, instead of spending my time with video shooting weddings and school plays.

In short, I have no problem dealing with more than just a simple to use program, which you call dumb proof. I have had to learn, on my own, how to design a user interface that makes a complex setting editor seem simple to clients who barely know how to click their way through a series of folders on a Windows system. I know that on /. there is a tendency to look down on ANYTHING that doesn't require a strong computer background to understand, but there's also a lot to be said for using a tool that works.

When I pick up a hammer, I don't have to read the directions. I've used it, I know it, it works like all other hammers I've used. Rather than spending any time learning to use it, I can go directly to the task at hand. When I pick up a new video camera, in most cases I can use it almost immediately, since most features are the same from camera to camera (I can rarely even tell you what camera I am using, since I don't remember model names and numbers well -- I often just know by the feel where the controls are).

The same is true with editing. There are interfaces and customs that have evolved over the history of video production. When I sit down at an Avid, I don't have to waste time thinking about HOW I'm going to edit, I spend my time thinking about WHAT I'm editing and can focus on things like what is the right transition, is the pacing of this scene what I want it to be, do I need an establishing shot, or is it clear from the interior sets where the characters are. If I have to spend time reading manuals, looking up features, and continually checking helpfiles, then I'm spending my time (which, as a video professional, is very valuable) NOT editing, but learning a new system.

So you may like to use words lime "dumb proof", but it's not that simple. I can handle the full, 100% geek stuff, but if I'm doing a job, I want to sit down and use the tool and be productive as quickly as possible and have as much power at my fingertips as possible immediately. If the programmers at Apple have been able to produce a program that is powerful, gives me all I need in a video editor (or DVD authoring program), and is easy for me to use, then they have outdone what the competition has done. Instead of giving me a program where I need to waste time figuring it out, I can take a program like Final Cut, sit down, and be doing my job at full capacity in minutes, instead of hours. What's even better, from my point of view, is that my employees can do the same thing.

It might cost more to get a Mac, but it's a one time expense, compared to having to pay employees for the hours it can take when they learn programs without as intuitive an interface. I'm paying them to edit, not to have to learn a program that wasn't designed with enough elegance and simplicity that they could learn it while they worked.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[kalidasa]

The thing to do is to look for one of the deals Apple tends to have with $200 off Final Cut Express when you buy a Mac.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[swillden]

Any way to do this after you've already bought your Mac?

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

> I used to program in 6502 Assembler, back when the Apple //e was a big deal.

I used to write in m68k ASM when amiga was a big deal (and sometimes I still do, correcting flaws in my software that people still use).

I'm quite sure programming in assembler is hard, and I know just how hard it is to make a interface in assembler (although I had it a little easier in some ways thanks to the amiga ROM).

I'll appologise though for thinking you were one of the "Mac fanatics" that know pretty much nothing about computers except for how to use the interfaces. I've expirenced too many of these people in my lifetime.

> It might cost more to get a Mac, but it's a one time expense, compared to having to pay employees for the hours it can take when they learn programs without as intuitive an interface.

You'll be amazed at how printing out the first few pages of the helpfile, and giving it to the people who had access to the helpfile all the time (and you even suggested it and swore they read it and couldn't understand it.) suddenly understand how to use the program (aka: didn't bother reading the helpfile).

In my expierence, it takes about a thirty minutes to get familar with a piece of new software (for people I've observed), for them to start being able todo what they want todo with it. Of course, they'll learn quickly after that how to increase their work productivity as they continue.

One thing that I found interesting, is that people learn quickly how to use a interface the prettier it looks (In windows XP, I just enable the silver theme, and it makes the buttons, dropdowns, nobs pretty etc..) and people seem to learn faster.

Of course, expirenced users like yourself can use movie editing software yourself, but the users I've worked with, haven't had any previous expirence. I imagine that they'd still need a print of the beginning of the helpfiles for how to use the application.

Either way, I admit mac has a easier interface, and it allows sometimes users to get things done faster. But in this case, I still reccommend using a PC and PC software. There is nothing the PC can't do that a Mac can. The person in the article, wants to play his windows games so getting a mac, in my analysis, isn't a option.

If the article was about "ease of use" I'd say "Get a mac", but it isn't.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[TheWanderingHermit]

I used to write in m68k ASM when amiga

I wanted to learn 68k. I still have my Amiga 2000 in the attic. I never got used to all the new things like memory management and stuff so I never programmed my Amiga in anything other than Amiga Basic (I did write a scirpt on it, though, that got me in the door and pitching to Ron D. Moore when he was co-exec-producer for ST:TNG).

I'll appologise though for thinking you were one of the "Mac fanatics"

Thanks. It's hard to tell. I used to get fed up with people that knew little about computers, but now I'm in a different position. When I buy equipment, one major concern is how fast can I get it in production, and what kind of training will it require. There are many times I have to work with people that don't know anyting about computers, but are very competent in their field. I'm hiring them to do a job, so I want to make sure they have tools to do their job, instead of tools they have to figure out.

You'll be amazed at how printing out the first few pages of the helpfile,

No, I've seen it work. I've also worked with a number of clients and people working for me who are quite compentent (like lawyers or mortgage brokers), who will avoid a computer if they think they will have ANY trouble using it. (Yes, it's an ego problem, but to me I want the work done, or want to please the client rather than spend time trying to insist they learn an interface.)

You've got a great point, one that I'll remember, about making interfaces pretty. I never noticed that.

If I were working with people who were working from the ground up, I would like them to use whatever I have, but in a field like video editing, I might start by training someone, but eventually have to hire someone who is already trained. I've found it's much easier all around to use the simplest interfact.

Soon I'll probably be using a G5 on my desk. Yes, as you agree, it's an easy to use interface, but I'll be using it when I want to do the editing and I want to be able to reboot to Linux (I've heard Debian can work well on a G4/G5). I've gotten quite used to KDE and a lot of nice little features it has, and would rather not switch if I don't have to.

If the article was about "ease of use" I'd say "Get a mac", but it isn't.

I can agree. I have to admit that I'm speaking out of my prejudice, and giving much more weight to the video editing than anything else. Considering that, other than a few puzzles for distraction, the only game I tend to play is Myst (and its sequals), I always underestimate gaming.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[kalidasa]

There is none that I know of. Usually they are advertised pretty well on the order pages if you are buying from apple.com .

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

If the article was about "ease of use" I'd say "Get a mac", but it isn't.

The article's question is "How do I build a video editing box?" This implies that the questioner is most interested in video editing, and that tinkering in linux and playing Windows games are secondary.

This, however, is an assumption. Maybe the questioner never intends to actually use it, but just wants to build it.

If the assumption is correct, however, then what he really wants to do is work with digital video. If this is the case, then Wandering Hermit is correct. The best solution is to get a Mac, because this will cut down by magnitudes of order the troubleshooting that will be necessary. When Wandering Hermit wants to sit down and work, he wants to do the creative work, not endlessly troubleshoot why his hardware isn't cooperating.

Unless you have had previous experience with an NLE, FCP is going to take some training or self-educating. There is a learning curve, as there are with most powerful tools. On the other hand, with iMovie I've seen complete beginners get up and running in ten minutes.

So, I'd say that using a mac for Video isn't just about "ease of use", but about doing what you set out to do, not getting sidetracked with a bunch of bullshit.

If the questioner does have a major interest in the actually assembly of components, he should consider getting a G4 Powermac and upgrading it to get it just how he wants it. If he doesn't care about building it, but is on a budget, get a Mac Mini and an external Firewire drive. Add some RAM.

If he's got a larger budget, there's the iMac. Or the G5 Powermac.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

No, really. What real software is out there? Have you actually used any of these apps? Seen anyone use them?

Video Edit Magic Express -- Horrible, lame, and horribly lame iMovie copy. $30 + $10 "eCD" fee

muvee autoProducer 4 -- Same as VEME, but possibly worse. This product is great for creating muvees, but totally inadequate for movies. $70 + $12 CD fee

virtualdub (free) -- it's not a NLE. It's a small specific tool created by a student in his spare time. It might work great*, but it's not an NLE.

Home Movie Editor -- aka Fancy Movies Editor 4.0? Another really cheesy iMovie ripoff. $40. I couldn't tell if a CD was available or not. This will work on 400 Mhz intel hardware, however.

Colorful Movie Editor -- Another iMovie Dupe. There's more dupes here than Timothy has on a bad day. I'm not even certain it even supports DV footage; it's not on the list of supported formats. 29.90$ is the price on the website. Oh, and it's another 29.90$ if you want the DVD software. It's only 10$ to upgrade from the less popular Black & Whiteful Movie Editor.

Movie Tome Editor -- Now you're just making shit up, right? You're going to have to find the link for this one, as I'm nog going to comb through all those listings for a non-existent product.

Gazelle Movie Editor -- This isn't even a video editor! It's for creating small animations.

I'm sure that the actual NLEs above are actually quite useful for the proper purposes. For instance, if I wanted to completely frustrate someone and kill their desire to get into video as a hobby, I might recommend Video Edit Magic Express or Colorful Movie Editor. If they were on older hardware, Fancy Movie Editor would probably do the trick.

Anyway, it's pretty clear that either you know jack squat about editing, or that low cost editors on Windows really really suck. Or maybe both. I've heard that Movie Maker 2 is much improved, but I haven't heard of anyone using it for anything serious. iMovie, on the other hand, has been used for feature length movies, despite the fact that it is designed to be an amateur tool.

* a note on virtual dub. This actually looks like a cool little tool, and I imagine it does what it sets out to do, which is process video files.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

Video Edit Magic Express

forgot to close a tag

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

I've heard good things about Vegas, and I know people that prefer Avid Xpress over FCP, whether on Mac or PC.

If you want to recommend something to someone who wants to use a real NLE, but doesn't have the funds, have them try Avid Free DV. It requires either a 933 Mhz P3 or a 667 Mhz G4.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

This is one of those cases where a little social engineering might help. If you were to call Apple, and explain the problems you;re having with iMovie, and tell them you would have bought FCE for $99 at the same time as the Mac purchase, had you known. . .

It's worth a shot. Try Applecare first (product support) before you call the sales line.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

The original article mentioned wedding work. This is pro work (even if low end) and should be approached as such, especially if you're "just" doing it for a friend's wedding. I've worked feature production for 19 years, and I'd say that wedding videography is more exacting in it's way, because there are no second takes or reshoots. Or at least you hope not. =)

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ohreally_factor]

Just be aware that you're not gaining any additional data per frame, and that you might actually be losing data, depending on the camera.

But if you find it useful, go for it.

(Just as an aside, I wish I knew someone in my area using Kino. I'd like to see how far it's come.)

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

+1 theory.

Re:Get a Mac instead.

[Ash-Fox]

To be honest, I'm using some old movie editor called "movie editor" for windows. Never used the software above.

AMD 939

[mabu]

As I type this, I'm looking over at my new Athlon 64 3500+ system I've been building. Unfortunately, the darn thing was shipped without a CPU heatsink so while I've got the new system put together, I am waiting for the heatsink to be delivered before I can try it out. It seems 939 parts are pretty scarce around here.

I'll be very interested in responses here because I don't have a video capture card installed and am looking into it.

My system is an MSI K8N Neo2, 1GB DDR400, GEForce 6800GT 256MB, 2x300GB Seagate SATA Barricuda drives, 1 Sony DVD drive, 1 Sony dual-layer DVD+/- burner.

I too would like to run dual boot. The last time I set up a PC this way, I installed Windows second and it wiped out my partitioning that Unix set up.

If I want to do dual boot with XP and Linux (or better yet FreeBSD), what should I install first?

Re:AMD 939

[XeresRazor]

Without a doubt install Windows first followed by your *nix of choice. Either windows 2k or XP (can't recall which) started killing linux when it installs so your only choice is to install windows and then install linux and grub/lilo afterwards.

Re:AMD 939

[martin]

kind of off topic but...

install Windoze first then any alternative O/S as the windows installer will insist on overwriting you MBR containing the LILO/GRUB/whatever) boot loader.

Re:AMD 939

[Computerguy5]

Keep in mind that, unless you tell it to overwrite your linux partitions, the only thing that the Windows install will overwrite is your MBR. That means that you can install linux first, and then Windows, as long as you have a bootable linux CD or floppy that you can use as a rescue disc and get to a shell to run lilo again.

I dual boot Windows and Linux, and while I'm still using a linux install from way back, I've replaced Windows several times. Each time I just toss in a Debian Woody CD (Debian is my preferred distro), type 'rescbf24 root=/dev/hda1' at the LILO prompt, and then as soon as I get to a root shell, type 'lilo'. I recreates my MBR just as it used to be, and so I can just reboot, have a LILO menu of whether to boot Windows or one of my various kernel configs, and go on my merry way.

Re:AMD 939

[ZephyrXero]

I run a dool boot (WinXP/Gentoo) and have ran into the problem of Windows not recognizing my Linux partitions, and Linux not being completely stable writing to an NTFS partition. My solution was to divide my harddrive into 3 partitions. I have a 120GB SATA Seagate. I gave Windows 20GB, Linux 20GB, and then made the remaining 80GB a FAT32 partition because both OS can read and write to it easily. I use the Windows and Linux partitions strictly for programs and use my 80Gig for all of my files (ie..audio,video,art,personal files). So far it's working great :)

Re:AMD 939

[MaynardJanKeymeulen]

I have had same setup, but problem with FAT32 is that files cannot be larger than 2GB, which, if you're into video-editing and stuff, might be to small. So I've changed that partition to ext3, for which a windows driver exists (google for it)

Re:AMD 939

[big daddy kane]

if you need to you can also install winxp to a fat32 partition, you just have to partition and format it yourself, and then when you're installing windows select that partition to install to. the winxp installer wont format to fat32 but can install to it

some decent software

[supersuckers]

kino http://kino.schirmacher.de/
avidemux http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
cinelerra http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Capture hardware

[ip_vjl]

For capture hardware you can save yourself some hassle by looking at the analog firewire converters like the Canopus ADVC line.

This way, you never need to worry about drivers, just plug the thing into a firewire port and it makes any analog device look like a firewire camera.

I have the older ADVC100, and it makes capture easy. I can move the thing from computer to computer and platform to platform with no problems.

Re:Capture hardware

[log0n]

I've got mod points atm but rather than mod this up, I thought I'd just post instead.

I'm a video guy (I run a TV channel for a school system) and this is exactly the hardware you want. Don't get a TV capture card. If you want the ability to watch TV, use the TV tuner on the VCR to bring in TV through the DV bridge.

Again, don't get a capture card. Esp. one of the hauppauge 250/350 cards. They are great for making PVR/DVRs, but they don't bring is video that's useful for editing (mpeg2 - it's not a great editable format for nearly any platform, let alone linux).

Re:Capture hardware

[delus10n0]

I _love_ my ADVC-100. I've had it for about a year now, and it hasn't done me wrong yet.

Re:Capture hardware

[Andy_R]

You don't actually NEED a converter, you can just use a mini-DV camcorder with inputs to do the same job. Doing this does mean that you have to bounce your video to mini-DV in real time, then play it into the computer in real time, so it makes the process slower, but if you are not planning on doing it very often, it will probably make sense to save the money and spend it on more drive space.

Re:Capture hardware

[lilo_booter]

I totally agree with you on that one - the ADVC 100 is an excellent device and is very well supported under linux for both capture and export.

Being a developer on the kino project, I would unreservedly advise it.

Just in case anyone is interested, I am currently developing 'shotcut' - an Open Source video editor for an Indian TV broadcaster. This is a multitrack, realtime fx applying video editing environment based on the same library that we will use to build kino v2 (which will be a more fully featured, home user oriented product).

Other projects that under heavy development are of course cinelerra (the public fork being especially interesting), aluminium (pippin.gimp.org), pitivi (a new gstreamer based editor - early days, looks interesting), avidemux, LiVes and probably others I've forgotten.

I can also recommend the mainactor editor from Mainconcept (even the free version has particularly good unrestricted dv capture with a similar level of support as provided by kino and dvgrab).

Re:Capture hardware

[kbielefe]

Actually, most mini-DV cameras have a pass through mode where you just connect your video source to your camera and it passes digital video through to the computer in real time. No need to capture to mini-DV first. You usually have to activate it through one of the menus.

Re:Capture hardware

[MrResistor]

mpeg2 - it's not a great editable format for nearly any platform, let alone linux

That depends, it's practicly the default format for current Grass Valley equipment, and has been since Profile PDR 300s were introduced. But, they make it work by storing the vertical blanking seperately (uncompressed, which is one of the reasons the Profile requires an assload of storage bandwidth).

I'm not a TD, I just fixed the things, but I know the Profile with the M/E option is quite popular with sports folk, so it must work pretty well.

FYI, default for the PDR is mjpeg, with mpeg2 available for the 300, and DV available for the 400. Profile XP default is mpeg2, with DV available, and M-Series default is DV with mpeg2 available (IIRC, I mainly worked on PDRs).

Re:Capture hardware

[dghcasp]

[...] but they don't bring is video that's useful for editing (mpeg2 - it's not a great editable format for nearly any platform, let alone linux

Actually, MPEG-2 video works fine for editing, as long as you configure it to capture for editing: Set it to use I-frames only (no B or P frames.) It's much smaller than any reasonable editable AVI format (3 Gb/hr instead of ~ 40 Gb/hr) and most capture cards will let you configure that way (although it's usually really buried deep.)

Re:Capture hardware

[Ohreally_factor]

depends what you're going to do with it. you're probably going to further encode it at some point downstream, and then you'll be compounding the mpeg artifacts in your source material with even more artifacts. do you mean working with an mpeg proxy?

I always want to work with the highest resolution source that I can, because I never know if I'm going to want to upsample or downsample, and in either case, the less garbage in, the less garbage out. DV seems to be the best choice overall, and is within most of my projects' budgets.

Re:Capture hardware - addition

[ip_vjl]

I forgot the point that the video arrives as a DV stream regardless of the original format. So plug in your vcr or older legacy camera (like hi-8) and get DV captures directly into the computer.

Re:cinepaint

[Quarters]

No no no no no.

There are no editting capabilities in CinePaint. It has not been used to edit a movie.

CinePaint is a paint program with a time component, that's it. You can read in a sequence of frames and work on them in pixel coordinate space and time.

dvdrhelp

[TheGratefulNet]

if you bothered to even google it, you'd find this site.

/not even worthy of wasting /. time...

hw/sw

[farnsworth]

For software, Cinelerra is the best editing suite out there. I haven't used Final Cut Pro, but Cinelerra is much more useful than iMovie. I haven't used Premiere is years, and Cinelerra is on par with what I remember of Premiere. Cinelerra should be able to do everything that you need.

I've only done DV over firewire capture, and for that I would guess that any old firewire card would be fine. For analog capture, I'd look into using a Hauppauge 250 for capture. Just `cat /dev/video0 > /home/me/projects/bills-wedding/capture.mpeg`. You could also get the 350 which does hardware mpeg decoding (and you could hook a crt up to the tv out, too.)

The only thing that absolutely stinks about video on linux is the choice of mpeg codecs. I can do everything I need to create a decent looking movie, but once I mpegify it to burn it to dvd, the picture quality looks terrible (to my eyes, anyway. some people say it looks fine). I just got a Hauppauge 250 so I could do all my editing/compositing in DV, write that back to the camera via firewire, then capture the final cut with a dedicated hardware mpeg card over analog connections.

I actually looked into getting an old mac that I could stick in my garage and remotely mpegify my final cuts and burn them. At the time it was too much money for what I was doing (and I never did figure out how to script iMovie anyway), but it may be worth it to you.

Re:hw/sw

[kbielefe]

If you use the mpeg encoder internal to cinelerra, that may be the problem. That code is over 5 years old.

The cvs version contains vast improvements to the mpeg encoding by providing a yuv4mpeg output stream that can be fed to the latest ffmpeg or mpeg2enc version. When I started using it, my mpeg quality went up and my render times improved 4x. I don't know if that change made it into 1.2.2 or not.

Multimedia on Linux is very capable and progressing rapidly. I highly recommend using the cvs versions of video editing and encoding applications if you have the ability to manage the instability, because the features are implemented rapidly in cvs, but take a while to trickle out to the stable releases.

An added bonus is that you are better able to contribute meaningful feedback to the developers, which makes them more likely to listen when you have a feature request.

Re:hw/sw

[farnsworth]

Interesting... right now I don't use cinelerra's mpeg encoding, I do something like:

lav2yuv $INPUT_FILE | mpeg2enc --reduction-4x4 1 -2 1 -a 3 -b 3800 -q 1 -n n -f 8 -s -v 0 -2 1 -o $INTERIM_VIDEO_FILE

I know I don't know a whole lot about what all those options do, but they seem to be tuned to the best quality as far as I understand the documentation. I'm curious to learn more about better-quality mpeg encoding on linux. Any hints or urls are appreciated!

Re:hw/sw

[kbielefe]

I have been piping to

ffmpeg -f yuv4mpegpipe -i - -y -target dvd outputfile.mpeg

ffmpeg is a lot faster than mpeg2enc and the target dvd sets the quality to pretty much as good as the dvd spec will allow. Give it a try.

Re:hw/sw

[farnsworth]

Thanks for the info.

What version of ffmpeg are you using? I'm using 0.4.6 and I don't see a "-target" option at all. Reading the docs, I don't even see an explanation about what it does or how it does it, although it seems to rely on other codecs, so I wonder how much better the quality is vis-a-vis mpeg2enc.

Are you piping a QuickTime for linux files to this, or DV, or what? The docs don't say what input its expecting outside of the very vague "-formats" option.

Re:hw/sw

[lachlan76]

I haven't tried it, but I would assume that it looks for a "magic number" in the video input, not unlike file does.

Re:hw/sw

[tf23]

For software, Cinelerra is the best editing suite out there. I haven't used Final Cut Pro

Just curious - if you haven't used an application, how can you declare that another app is better then it?

Re:hw/sw

[Germany]

For software, Cinelerra is the best editing suite out there. I haven't used Final Cut Pro, but Cinelerra is much more useful than iMovie. I haven't used Premiere is years, and Cinelerra is on par with what I remember of Premiere. Cinelerra should be able to do everything that you need.

If you haven't used Final Cut Pro or touched Premiere in years, how can you say that Cinelerra is the best editing suite out there? If you want to get into the category of "best" or "arguably best" test out a Pinnacle or Avid editing system.

Re: Hidden feature of the ADVC-100

[Anonymous Coward]

A hidden feature of the ADVC-100 (not sure about the newer models) ... press and hold the button for 15 seconds - the unit now strips Macrovision.

Think of a Mac Mini as a pehipheral

[Andy_R]

The slower MacMini configured with the larger hard drive and the DVD writer costs $649, and includes iMove and iDVD.

Compare this to the price of:
a DVD writer
a firewire card
an 80Gb drive
movie editing software
DVD authoring software

Use your exisiting mouse, keyboard and screen (consider the belkin KVM switch if you'll be giving it heavy use).

Once you factor in the knowledge that you'll have a tried and tested set-up, good software, no driver issues, a shallow learning curve, and just 1 small desirable multi-purpose box on your desk rather than 3 or 4 specialist ones, then it makes a lot of sense to think of the MacMini as a video editing box in addition to your Linux machine, the fact that it has it's own CPU and OS rather than inhabiting the same beige shell isn't really that relevant.

Re:Think of a Mac Mini as a pehipheral

[Em Ellel]

Without much research, here are prices of hardware on newegg.com:

a DVD writer - $60

a firewire card - $15

an 80Gb drive $57

movie editing software - OSS

DVD authoring software - OSS

So, grand total of $132 (chances are, the guy already has all the hardware too, in which case $0)

-Em

Re:Think of a Mac Mini as a pehipheral

[tf23]

I know this is going to sound lame - but you're not factoring in the 'time' factor.

Order it all online, wait for it to get here, unpack, take home, install.

Not much time/effort there. And there won't be *IF* things work correctly as they should. Got the right driver? Free PCI slot? Extra slide-railes for the open bay in the case? Where's the screw driver set's heads (the kids took them again...). Hope that f/w card's chipset doesn't have issues with any other h/w I've got.... etc etc.

While I grant you that the $132 is far cheaper then a new Mac Mini, if thing's don't go too well with the homebrew system, one can easily spend enough hours tinkering with it to justify plunking ~$500 down and having it 'just work'.

Video Capture with LabVIEW drivers???

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Our lab could really use some integration of microscope still shots and closed circuit video into our LabVIEW front-ends.

Unfortunately, National Instruments wants like $1500 for their video capture cards, which is like ten or twenty times the cost of a comparable WinFast/Hauppauge/ATi solution, i.e. NI is charging you like $100 for the hardware and $1400 for the LabVIEW drivers [the so-called "NI-IMAQ" library].

I did a ton of Googling, and the best I could find was the ADLINK Technologies Angelo RTV-24:

http://www.adlinktech.com/PD/web/PD_detail.php?pid =247&seq=5&id=6&sid=37 [adlinktech.com]

at about $360:

http://shopping.yahoo.com/search?p=RTV24 [yahoo.com]

That's still about three to six times the price of the WinFast/Hauppauge/ATi solution, but it's not quite as stratospheric as the NI solution.

Anyway, does anyone have any experience with affordable LabVIEW still shot/closed circuit video capture, and do you have any recommendations on what to try [and, maybe even more importantly, what to avoid trying]?

THANKS!

If you're going to have Windows on there anyway...

[Sancho]

...you really might as well go Windows all the way. Periodically I look at the Linux tools for video capture/video editing. As far as I'm concerned, they're not there yet, which is a large part of the reason that I still have Windows on my desktop. There are some really advanced filtering tools on Windows so you can really make your final product shine. Check out AVISynth and its related documentation, as well as VirtualDUB (if you're going the mpeg-4 route) our QuENC (if you're going the mpeg-1 or mpeg-2 route).

Also, if you ever intend on doing analog captures, you should consider using a striped raid array for a scratch drive for capturing. This way you can capture losslessly compressed AVI (with HuffYUV) and have as much data to work with. Be wary though that you should try to capture in a multiple of your final resolution--the less pixel interpolation you do when resizing, the better.

TV through the DV bridge???

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Could you clarify? First of all, what's the "DV Bridge"? And how does this end up in a computer if there isn't a "capture card"?

On a somewhat related point, we've had a problem where some "cards" seem to be able to see Closed Circuit TV signals, and other cards can't see those signals. Unfortunately, I don't know what the name of the standard is [other than generic "NTSC"] that one card can see and the other card can't.

Thanks!

Re:TV through the DV bridge???

[BRTB]

Probably the most cost-effective way to get editable video into a computer right now is through FireWire in DV video format, either from a MiniDV camera or this device called a DV bridge. A DV bridge is a converter box... analog video in one end and FireWire digital signal out the other. Usually it converts in the other direction as well, for a preview monitor and the final video export to tape. The only hardware the computer needs with one of these is a FireWire/IEEE1394 port. And preferably the largest hard drive (striped arrays are nice performance-wise , just remember you get no redundancy) CPU, memory, etc you can afford. PVR cards are okay if you're building a PVR machine, but MPEG2 isn't the best format to have your source video in.

As a data point for performance, several years ago I was doing reasonably decent quality DV editing on an Athlon 750 with 384MB of RAM and a 40gb drive running Win98SE+Premiere6 beta and a cheap $35 IEEE1394 card. Faster processors will help you in previewing and effects rendering, but a machine of that caliber can at least keep up with the datastream. Source was a Sony Digital8 cam for most concept work and a Canon XL1 for production shooting.

Re:TV through the DV bridge???

[log0n]

Not a prob..

A DV bridge is like a capture card in that it bring video into a computer, except that (usually) it's an external box and does the dedicated de/endcoding in hardware rather than software. It also works only in the DV format (or sometimes DVCAM) which is exactly what you need for editing or TV/DVD production.

Usually it's firewire, and while USB2 is fast enough, don't get a USB dv bridge - firewire does works out of the box w/o drivers (even under linux).

Basically, a DV bridge translates whatever you send to it. If you have an external VCR or Dish! receiver, or anything with a compatible video source (RCA, SVHS, etc) it'll capture/play it. If you have a mini DV camera or tape deck, it'll losslessly transfer it to the editing computer. In essence, you choose the channel on the VCR, or the tuner, or the sat receiver - and that gets piped into the DV bridge.

Check out www.canopus.com

The ADVC 100 or 110 is probably what you need. Unless you're working with film, or maybe high def (HDV, HDcam, etc) cameras, it'll be all you need.

The most common other standard besides NTSC is PAL (also SECAM, but don't worry about that). Most DV bridges work in both NTSC and PAL.

Re:TV through the DV bridge???

[Hangman Jim 99]

The DV bridge is the device which reads in analog video and outputs a DV stream.

So you plug any analoge video signal into one end, and a firewire connection into your computer.

The device then streams a DV stream into your computer, exactly like a digicam does.

All modern video editing software is going to be able to read this.

By contrast, a capture card it going to use hardware to encode some sort of MPEG stream. Getting drivers for these cards is impossible for linux sometimes.

Plus, the quality of the video from a capture card is sometimes not aas good.

BTW The other standard you are thinking of is probably PAL.

Re:TV through the DV bridge???

[UberLame]

Just to be clear that a device called a DV bridge should be just DV, there are companies that make uncompressed firewire capture boxes. For instance see the AJA IO line. Alas, I believe most of these speak a proprietary protocol. However, at least one company makes an uncompressed firewire capture box that speaks IIDC (commonly used for web cams).

Also, while a DV bridge could be nice for a lot of things, it's probably best just to use DV directly with cameras/vcrs that support it.

The quick answer is, "no."

[RandomCoil]

Linux is not up to the task. There are a number of perfectly competent consumer-level Windows applications in the $100 range that will satisfy your needs. Adobe Premiere Elements, Sony Vegas Studio, and Ulead's video application come to mind*.

As for hardware, the easiest approach is to simply make sure you have firewire. I'm assuming that if you're editting videos, you're also shooting them, probably on a digital video camera. Most such cameras have an analog video input. Digitizing an analog source using a DV camera is probably the easiest way to import the analog video into a computer. It avoids the cost of the capture card, the hassle of installing it, and any possible driver issues, and it completely negates problems with your computer dropping frames because, say, the anti-virus software fired up mid-capture. The only downside is the additional time required to dub and then import the analog video, but since neither process requires baby sitting, it may not be a big deal.

*Pinnacle Studio is another possibility, but I had a video project that, after spending many hours working on, decided it would not render until I had removed and re-inserted the various video transitions. Quite obnoxious.

Re:The quick answer is, "no."

[jsupreston]

I use XP running Premiere elements for the little bit of editing I need to do. As the parent alluded, Pinnacle Studio is horrible. I was running it with all the latest patches and it never was stable. When I uninstalled it to install Premiere, it trashed by tv tuner/capture card drivers. Spent weeks trying to fix it. My point is: Never install Pinnacle Studio!

Re:The quick answer is, "no."

[kbielefe]

Yeah, those guys at Disney, Dreamworks, and ILM are real idiots for using Linux for their blockbuster films when it's not up to the task.

The truth is that Linux is a very capable video production platform, but also requires a more significant investment of time in lieu of an investment of money.

Kino is a good entry level one-track editor and has excellent video capture capabilities.

Cinelerra is an excellent advanced editor and compositor, supporting a multitude of professional features on an unlimited number of video and audio tracks.

DvdAuthor together with the gimp is a great solution for authoring DVDs. Its home page lists a number of gui front ends that have come a long way in the last year.

The best part of these applications is the excellent support offered by the developers. Scott at dvdauthor has responded to my email questions in under an hour before and averages less than 8 hours for a response. I witnessed a conversation on the cinelerra IRC channel in which a user mentioned wanting professional timecode support, and within an hour the requirements were clarified and preliminary work had already begun. Try getting that kind of response from Adobe, Sony, or Ulead. I myself will welcome emails anytime with questions about how everything fits together.

As an example of what is possible using only GPL software on Linux, let me tell you about my last wedding video. It was done all in 16:9 widescreen using two synchronized miniDV cameras captured via firewire. The full motion and sound menus on the DVD provide a choice of stereo or 5.1 surround, long or short versions of the video, full scene selection, and viewing of all the still photos taken at the wedding using the menu buttons. Effects include smooth transitions from black and white to color, animated picture-in-picture, slow motion, deinterlacing, color correction, and scrolling credits in my choice of true-type font.

I can't comment on ease of use compared to Windows or Mac because I haven't edited video on Windows since before XP came out and have never tried a Mac for video editing, but you can see from my example that it is possible to produce professional quality results with only GPL software and some investment of time to learn how to use it. My offer to help you get started via email always stands.

Re:The quick answer is, "no."

[sakusha]

Yeah, those guys at Disney, Dreamworks, and ILM are real idiots for using Linux for their blockbuster films when it's not up to the task.

Yeah, the quoted commenter is a real idiot who doesn't know the difference between film and video.

The question is about video editing. Pros at Disney, Dreamworks, and ILM do not use linux for video editing. Their famous linux systems are primarily render farms, single purpose systems. Video editing at the pro level is primarily done on Avid or Final Cut Pro systems.
Even if we were talking about film and not video, Linux is not the OS of choice. Products like Motion, Combustion, flame, and other high end production software does not run on linux.

Re:The quick answer is, "no."

[Germany]

Christ, I hate Pinnacle Studio. Studio 9 is supposed to be vastly improved over Studio 7 and 8, both of which were very bad at needlessly re-rending scenes. Unfortunately for Pinnacle, it's too late. Most people who own Studio 9, got it because it came packaged with Pinnacle hardware. Those of us who used to use Pinnacle software know to stay far far away.

I believe this original poster will need support for analog sources as well. FireWire based capture devices obviously prefer clean digital sources, and many vendors design the products with that intent in mind. This can have disasterous effects for those converting say, VHS to DVD. Example, Pinnacle's first MovieBox DV routinely crashed when working with VHS sources. I'm sure subsequent versions have been improved in design, but I have stayed with my MovieBox USB :)

what about a laptop? usb HD?

[rjnagle]

I'm also thinking of buying a machine for videoediting. I'm committed to doing it on linux with open source tools.

The question is: could an HP/IBM laptop handle the load for nonlinear editing and input/output?

Also, is it silly to think that the bus speed for USB2 would exclude the possibility of using USB2 hard drives?

If I'm editing straight video (next to no graphics/animation, etc), is there a point at which extra RAM adds little value?

rj

Re:what about a laptop? usb HD?

[mbstone]

Laptop? No. Linux? No.

Forget dual boot: VMWARE

[hoggoth]

It looks like you spent some money on that system. Go get VMWARE and forget about dual booting. With VMWARE you can run both operating systems AT THE SAME TIME in different windows. It's much better than rebooting when you want to switch environments.

Re:Forget dual boot: VMWARE

[RevAaron]

Having used VMWare a lot, under both Linux (running Windows) and Windows (running Linux), I can't say there's any chance in hell I'd want to use it for either gaming within XP, or video editing on Linux.

Re:what about a laptop? usb HD?

[daviddennis]

People who are answering this question with Linux knowledge are talking about things like checking out the software using CVS. This means they're telling you to get out on the bleeding edge. This may not be good advice if you have work to do and need to be pragmatic. If you're comfortable with that, more power to you, but it would make me a little queasy.

Check your disk space. It gets used up very fast. When I've tried using laptops with external firewire drives, even fancy ones like La Cie, they have not worked well at all; they are too slow. Make sure this is not the case on your laptop before buying it. The best solution I've found is to have your main projects on the laptop and send them off to external hard drives for archiving.

Make sure your laptop of choice has FireWire. I've been in the Apple world for so long that I don't know if this is common in PC laptops. Make sure it is before buying.

All of this being said, I'd seriously consider a PowerBook. You still get Unix tools, and you can get Final Cut Express for $99 with purchase. The PowerBook is similarly priced to high-end IBM laptops. If you don't want to spend that much, the iBook G4 would work fine but the higher screen resolution of the PowerBook's worth the money.

I really think that unless the freedom of open source is a huge advantage to you, you're better off with Apple's proprietary but first-rate solution. That being said, don't rely on external hard drives during production.

Hope that helps.

D

Re:what about a laptop? usb HD?

[rjnagle]

I really appreciate this input.

I'm going to be shooting in another city and it would really help to run things from a laptop.

I'm somewhat anti-Mac (mainly for price reasons), but the discussion here has given me a lot to ponder. People change. Thanks.

Yes, Linux can

[Chilltowner]

I'm not sure what all the "no" answers are based on, but, my rather simple Gateway PC with RedHat 9 dropped on it has been doing great things for me for years in the video-editing department. The combination of Cinelerra and Blender is absolutely killer. I can render a bunch of animation frames in Blender with an alpha channel, and then easily composite them on DV footage from my firewire-enabled camera in Cinelerra.

I've made actual movies with this and have received some small acclaim for my efforts. It's cheap, it uses stock hardware, and it works. I wouldn't keep using it if it didn't.

Sorry if I sound a little annoyed. Power to you if you're editing movies on a Mac--they're great machines and lots of folks in the industry swear by them. But I'm sick to death of people saying, "Nope! Get a Mac!" It just ain't so.

Re:Yes, Linux can

[voidstin]

sure, it can. I don't think that's the point. (That's not my point anyway). I could ride my bike to argentina, but i'd rather take a plane, because speed and comfort are important to me.

I bet blender can animate really nicely. Nicer than AE? or Toon boom? or Motion? or Combustion? or even FCP?

I'm sure cinelerra has nice editing tools. Does it have slip? trim? insert/overwrite/fit-to-fill? can it do batch digitizing? quick masking? support for AE filters? programmable shortcuts?

to me, these are all things that anyone who's editing for more than a week is going to want. FCP is extremely powerful and stable and is (relatively) cheap. That's why i would recommend it...

Re:Yes, Linux can

[Germany]

Sorry if I sound a little annoyed. Power to you if you're editing movies on a Mac--they're great machines and lots of folks in the industry swear by them. But I'm sick to death of people saying, "Nope! Get a Mac!" It just ain't so.

Wanna start a "Get an Amiga" thread just to piss them off!?! Cinelerra and Blender I understand to be pretty cool. I can't wait to find out as I migrate my video editing work over. Video capture though is a whole other story. It's a little harder to recommend capture equipment for Linux when the best products are on Windows, and that's no FUD!

That's what pisses me off more. UNIX has some great audio and video processing tools. Linux has a couple of great filesystems perfect for video work. The entire platform screams for videographers to migrate, and I can't be the only geek here who was a member of the AV Club, but the fact that DirectShow and WDM make it so easy to develop video apps and hardware for Windows is just too seductive!

Re:what about a laptop? usb HD?

[daviddennis]

I'm happy to be of help. If you have more questions, let me know.

If you're in a remote place in temporary surroundings while you're editing video, your stress level is going to be high enough without trying to make bleeding-edge stuff work.

I strongly recommend the Apple/Final Cut platform. Final Cut has served me well as a loyal user since version 1.1 eons ago, and Apple's served me even longer.

I know Apple's pricing can seem painful, but for Windows you'd need Adobe Premiere Pro or similar software. Per dealtime.com, the lowest "trusted store" price is $464.19. If you buy Final Cut Express with a new Mac, it's $99. So you have $363.20 to play with as a price difference for your PowerBook.

My recommended system would be the 15" PowerBook with SuperDrive so you can burn DVDs on the road. If you don't need to do that, the cheaper 15" would do. If you don't mind lugging it around, the 17" is truly spectacular.

I did a price check and had to admit that ThinkPads are a lot cheaper than PowerBooks. You are paying for MacOS X and for the video software, both of which took enormous amounts of time and effort to build. So did Windows, of course, but Bill's spreading the cost over a lot more units than Steve, so his costs are lower. That being said, I think the difference is only about 20-25% when equivalent features are compared, which in my view is not a bad premium for the extra utility you're getting.

So yes, Apple's expensive, but in my view, you get a lot for your money.

Here's some video I shot in an especially stressful situation. Shot on a Canon XL1, edited with Final Cut Pro. Admittedly on a desktop. Glad I didn't risk my laptop over there :-).

D

Re:Multiple drives!

[daviddennis]

My post was from personal, hard experience on a PowerBook G4. The external drive failed in capture, probably because it shared the firewire bus with the camera :-(.

That was a pretty old PowerBook, though. The new ones might be better, especially with FireWire 800. However, I'd be cautious because I had a LaCie FireWire 800 drive on my G5 and it ground to a halt (you couldn't even see it) when my camera was on the 400 interface. I had to buy a FireWire 400 card and stick the camera on it for things to work properly. Since you can't do that on a laptop that might be a major problem. Not sure if that's Apple or LaCie's fault. Oddly enough the older FireWire 400 LaCie worked perfectly with the camera, so I don't know what's up there.

It is important to know, however, that you should NEVER use external drives without the Oxford 911 bridge or equivalent. Most cheap FireWire drives I've seen don't work at all with video. After some totally miserable, unsolvable experiences with off-brand drives, I'd stick with LaCie.

Most importantly, I have never had trouble capturing to an internal hard drive until it's almost full (say 90%+). So the best advice to our friend, based on my hard-won experience, is in fact to use the internal drive.

You're right in theory but in practice, with laptops, there are serious problems I've run into :-(.

D

video box

[krizu]

get a mac??? hell no. only if youd need the design and got lots of money to spend. check out http://www.linuxartist.org/video-anim.html to get a small overview of mostly uptodate gpled apps and tools needed for video editing/animation. e.g. cinerellea - already mentioned. kino - already mentioned mainactor - nle video editing app - free for noncommercial i think blender - 3d modelling/animation/compositing tool http://www.jahshaka.com/ - realtime editing - looks VERY promising but still way to go... ...just found another cool link I forgot in the past with the most used free and professional(expensive) tools used for film generation: http://linuxmovies.sourceforge.net/software/ nonfree: toonz - highend 2d animation/compositing app maya - highend 3d animation/modelling app softimage XSI - highend 3d animation/modelling app shake - highend compositing app hope this helps cheers

Analog capture not needed

[jeffkjo1]

I am building a new AMD64/939 box and would like to build into the system: capabilities to capture video from analog and digital sources; edit; add text and overlays; and maybe do the occasional DVE.

I currently have an analog+digital capture board, and am in the market for a new capture board. I still need to capture analog, but I will simply be purchasing a firewire card.
Analog capture boards are overpriced, and you can acheive the same results with a digital video camera and a firewire (or usb) card.
It's called Analog Passthrough, and most digital video cameras made today support it. Basically, you plug your VCR into the IN jacks on your video camera (with sony's, that analog dongle cable goes both ways), and then you plug your firewire cable into your camera at one end, and the other into your computer.
Make sure there isn't a tape in your camcorder, or this wont work. When you play your VHS tape, it should simply pass through your digital video camera (make sure the camera is on), and into the computer through the firewire cable. I captured 4 hours worth of material in this method two weeks ago, and it works great.

How about a bootable media studio? for free?

[mowa]

"You don't need to install anything, you don't even need an harddisk to run a whole free software operating system running out of the box on your PC! Download the ISO-image, burn your own CD, reboot your machine and you'll get back true love ;^)

dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives as a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, having automatically recognized most device and peripherals: audio, video, TV, network cards, firewire, usb and more; all using only free software!
...
Some interesting features:

* user friendly, intuitive and funky desktop interface
* full of creative tools for audio/video multimedia production
* no need to install, partition or change data on harddisk
* it will work even if you have Micro$oft Winblows
* automatic hardware recognition and configuration: network cards, sound cards, BTTV video cards, firewire, USB devices and more...
* all harddisks are mounted and fully accessible
* works on old pentium1 as well on XBOX game console
* can save your data and settings in one encrypted file on your harddisk or usb storage device (nesting)
* does automatic clustering with other dyne:bolic on the net, to join the CPU power of multiple computers
* handcrafted by experienced software artisans making their own applications since years: dyne:bolic is not based on any other distribution, is unique!

Applications included

The graphical environment is XFree86 with WindowMaker which offers a fresh level of interaction which distincts dyne:bolic from other common graphical environments.

Dyne:bolic includes lots of software, result of the great work being done by the GNU/Linux free software community thru the past 15 years. To mention just a few of them:

Mp4Live, lets you stream mpeg4 audio and video on darwin server | FreeJ, to perform on video livesets as a freejay | MuSE, to mix and stream your voice and sound files live on the net HasciiCam, to have a cool (h)ascii webcam, also on low bandwidth | TerminatorX, GDam, SoundTracker and PD, to perform with live audio | Kino, Cinelerra and LiVES, to edit video and publish clips | Audacity and ReZound, to edit audio and add effects on it | Gimp, the GNU image manipulation software to edit your pictures | Blender, one of the most powerful 3d modeling and rendering tools | AbiWord and Ted, to read edit and save any kind of word files | Bluefish, to generate and edit your html webpages | Sylpheed and Gpa, to send and receive mails, with full encryption | Lopster, which lets you do filesharing over winmx and gnutella | Samba, to easily exchange data over shared directories in LANs | XChat, linphone and other messaging softwares for fast comunication | VNC and RDesktop to remotely access any Win or Unix desktop | Lots of network tools, for analysis and poweruser access to the net | Xfe, an intuitive local file browser recognizing all file types | GCombust, to easily burn data on CDs on machines with a cd-burner | XRmap, to easily browse the world geography and the CIA factbook | And, last but not least, lots of great games also to be played in multiplayer mode, online with your friends running dyne:bolic!"

source

Re:Analog capture not needed-Pinnacle.

[jeffkjo1]

My analog+digital capture board is an older Pinnacle product. I still have Premiere drivers for my board, although they only work up to version 6.0. You might try Scenealyzer... it's not a free application, but it will allow you to capture video without using Pinnacle's half-assed implementation of Macintosh 'easyness.'

...or maybe just a sound studio?

[mowa]

"Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. Produce your own CD's. Mix video soundtracks. Experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Generate sound installations for 12 speaker gallery shows. Have Fun.

Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-linear, non-destructive region based editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a mixer whose capabilities rival high end hardware consoles, lots of plugins to warp, shift and shape your music, and controllable from hardware control surfaces at the same time as it syncs to timecode. If you've been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Cubase SX or Sequoia, you might have found it."

source

How about an Amiga?

[tonsofpcs]

How about an Amiga?

Many network stations in non-major [not NYC/LA/etc] markets still use NewTek's Amiga-based Video Toaster and Toaster/Flyer systems (The Toaster is a 4-input digital switcher/SEG, the Flyer is the NLE addition) for editing and effects. The Toaster comes with Lightwave (it is a bit slow on the Amiga systems, but it is still a great 3D package). You can pick up full Toaster/Flyer systems on ebay for cheap, and they do wonders. Then, you can transfer flyclips (the Flyer's video clip format) to your PC or Mac and do compositing/rotoscoping/insertion work on it using Mirage and/or Lightwave 3D if you need to.

--
The Amiga may well outlive us all.

Some thoughts on windows as a choice...

[mowa]

I spent a couple of years as the support for our (small) video dept.

We were running dual proc raided white boxes with a Pinnacle dc 1000/2000 capture card & NT4/2000 Premeire (v.5>6) stack. They were *incredibly* fragile in all combinations.

We ended up hiring a local local VAR Pinnacle support rep. (he was hired for video production not support). He and I had developed a close relationship before he came on board trying to keep these boxes stable, and our close relationship only continued :)

If you go with a windows solution, *read all you can* about the chipset/capture card/editing software combination you are considering. There are some combinations that will work fairly relibly, and others that will make your life hell/ simply not work.

We followed independent Pinnacle (there product support is ABYSMAL) sites, Premier sites, pretty much any site that was devoted to technical issues
related to low end video editing on Win.

Bluescreening 6 hours into a 12 hour render does not creat happiness.

My recommendation in order:

1)check out Linux/the links above that I have posted. (I wish the current Linux offerings were avaiable back then)

2)Check out Apple (you will pay more). you can run X-windows & Linux apps on PPC.

3)Thouroghly investigate any windows solution stack you are considering.

Keep in mind that with all the CG and related work increasingly done on Linux at all the major CG houses, Linux will probably improve as a media creation platform faster than Apple or Windows (my 2 cents), and the fact that there is an increasingly mature suite of FOSS tools is added gravy.

good luck.

Re:Some thoughts on windows as a choice...

[Ohreally_factor]

Check out Apple (you will pay more)

As of two days ago, this is no longer true.

But thank you and all the other linux video geeks that posted all this excellent information. Cinelerra looks particularly promising. I don't think video on linux is quite there yet, but it's come a long way very quickly and will no doubt be ready for prime time before I know it.

Keep in mind that with all the CG and related work increasingly done on Linux at all the major CG houses, Linux will probably improve as a media creation platform faster than Apple or Windows (my 2 cents)

Most of the in-house development work on Linux based CG apps isn't being released. They're keeping it in-house and not distributing it under any license. It's a cut throat business, and the suits are not going to give up any competitive advantage (real or perceived). I'm sure the developers are happily examining open source, though.

Video and more recently film has been a cash cow for Apple. They've made good progress against Avid, but Avid still dominates the professional market. So I don't think Apple is going to let development in this area stall; if anything, they will increase their efforts. So I don't see Vid on Linux surpassing Apple any time soon, despite its continuing rapid progress.

Suggestions...

[dghcasp]

1. If you haven't already bought the board and can afford it, get an Intel system instead. They're faster for doing video encoding.
2. Unless you're overly political about software, I'd say forget doing it under Linux and do it under Windows. Windows editing software works out of the box, saving you having to do lots of tweakage.
3. Software-wise, if you have a few beans, Sony Vegas is a really good balance between phenominally easy to use and high power. Buy the DVD-Architect bundle, because then you get an AC-3 encoder basically for free.

Just one comment

[Andy Dodd]

FAT32 + Firewire = HORRIBLE performance

Overall I've been pretty unhappy with Linux support for external drives. Througput and performance are nowhere close to the performance of the same drive under Windows, especially if the drive is FAT32. (In general, the Linux FAT32 drivers suck performance-wise. Combine them with 1394 and it gets REALLY bad.)

linux in post production

[voidstin]

there is a lot of heavyweight film (and video) software that runs on linux (shake comes to mind), a bunch of internal projects for specific projects (massive, for example). There's also some bad ass software for irix (inferno, flame, smoke) by discreet. but all of this is in the 50K - 1M dollar range.

not what we're talking about here. for professional editing it's an avid world, with FCP making slight inroads. everything else pales in comparison (and most of it, unusable, IMHO). And given that you can get a DV version of FCP for 299 (or 99 if you buy it w/ a machine), why would anyone use anything else?

As for post production, motion and combustion are nice, but not really industry standard. Most internal or lower end stuff is done in After Effects (often mixed with lightwave/maya/c4d/etc) while high end stuff goes to a flame/inferno suite (flame doesn't run on mac btw), or a Avid|DS or some such.

-a

Kino!

[Uncle Jimmy]

I haven't seen it mentioned, but Kino is a great DV editing program for Linux.

It does capture/export back to the camera, has export options for converting to DVD/(S)VCD with the click of a button, has a lot of filters built in (especially good are the EffecTV filters).

I've been using it on my Duron 800 with a generic Firewire card for capture and it goes ok, although rendering effects is a bit slow. It also can't quite keep up exporting back to the camera when jumping around lots of scenes in different files. You won't have any trouble with a newer machine.

No association with the above projects, just a satisfied user.

Re:Video capture for AMD 939

[Ohreally_factor]

Look into the hardware requirements for the video editing software you want to use first. This will save you a lot of time and headaches later.

I've seen people pulling their hair out trying to configure/troubleshoot a PC box for video. This is one of those overlooked steps that might make it a little easier.

Linux for the capture, Windows for the editing

[WestonP]

Sounds like I'll have to try the latest version of Kino... it was a pain to use the last time I tried it, but that was over a year ago. Most of the video that I edit is in-car or on-car footage from my race car, so I just need a simple solution that can do basic editing and doesn't take a lot of my time, but quality is important. Had the MacMini come out a couple of years ago, I would have bought one.

What I've been doing is to do the firewire video capture in Linux using dvgrab and ffmpeg to encode it, then reboot to Windows XP (I know, I know) and use Windows Movie Maker 2, which is surprisingly nice for simple video editing. I have also tried the ULead video editing software, but it's slow and is a pain to use.

I do the capture in Linux because 1) it works better and more reliably, 2) ffmpeg makes deinterlacing easy, and 3) it's higher quality so I can keep the original unedited footage without saving the tapes.

no way in hell

[michaelbuddy]

There is no way in hell I'm going to use a Mac until they allow in the interface to resize windows from all directions. The interface is pretty, I'm sure it's strong, but I've never seen something so lame as to constrict a user from only resizing a window from the small stainless steel right side corner.

Even if final cut pro is the best software for it. It's not even a money issue, it's only this windowing problem.

For starters...

[Germany]

Is Linux up to the task? It depends on how much video work you do. I do video processing work nearly everyday. Regarding Macs, they are great, but there isn't as broad a range of tuners and capture cards available for the Mac as there are for Windows. For the Mac I recommend the Elgato products, namely the upcoming EyeTV Wonder (done in partnership with ATI). Generally speaking, you will pay a premium for going with Mac video equipment. Of course you will also minimize many of the problems videographers face providing you are working with clean video. Despite how many people feel about Windows, Windows makes a great video processing platform. Some of the best video processing software out there such as AviSynth, DScaler, VirtualDub, and VirtualDub MPEG exists as open-source Windows apps. TMPGEnc and Womble are world-class applications for working with MPEG. MPEG2 can be a real expensive pain to edit properly. Linux really adds to the power of PC-based video work.

Moving on, video capturing on Linux itself isn't very mature. There are a lot of older Brooktree BT8x8 chipset based tuners supported, but most of the newer (and better quality tuners) chipsets, namely the Philips SAA* based tuners are supported only under Windows using WDM drivers. Linux support is growing though. There are a couple of projects in Linux to bring video capturing over (thank God), but the greatest successes to date have been in getting digital tuners to work.

In any case, don't just accept any product recommendation. As someone who has a garage full of video equipment, I suggest you consider your needs and interests before settling on any specific product. There is a list of things I always ask people to consider:

What broadcast standards will you be working with, PAL, SECAM, NTSC? Will you be capturing TV feeds using your computer? Do you need to be able to schedule recordings using your computer as a PVR? Will you be mastering DVDs for commercial use? Do you have the time (and the desire) to post-edit your capture files before converting them, or would you rather get it all done in one shot? Do you prefer hardware-based MPEG encoding, or do you have a need to capture at full resolution uncompressed AVI format (AVI is not really a format)? Will you need to be mobile with your gear?

There are some caveats you will need to consider. There are many video capture devices out there that are designed specifically for video conversion. They lack tuners so you cannot use these devices to turn your TV into an effective timeshifting PVR. USB tuners are very attractive, but if you buy one, you will generally be limited to using the vendor-supplied capture software. DV capture devices using FireWire are few and far between in the Windows world, and those that exist, such as Pinnacle's MovieBox DV sometimes have problems with analog sources, making them ill-suited to all-around capturing. Hardware MPEG encoders free up your CPU cycles and memory by doing much of the work for you. Capturing raw AVI can really strain your system, but MPEG2 is a poor editing format that often requires you to purchase pricey MPEG tools. Also, the MPEG2 encoders in most consumer grade capture devices are not the same quality of those used in mastering commercially sold DVD, so it's best to get an MPEG2 encoder that can handle at least 12 Mbps bitrates.

In your case, I'd recommend a PCI based tuner, preferably with a Philips chipset, but a newer Brooktree-based tuner will give you a stronger guarantee of cross-platform support. I'd recommend using a tuner that doesn't use hardware MPEG encoding since you'll likely be editing your captures anyway whether it is to remove commercials or to add special effects or titles. You'll probably want to stay away from USB-based tuners for the time being until we see more support in Linux for Philips-based products. Depending on your location, you'll want a tuner that can capture at full frame, 720x420 NTSC or 720x576 PAL/SECAM.

In any case, there are two real good communities

Re:what about a laptop? usb HD?

[Germany]

I use an HP zd7010 series notebook for my video editing. It has a nice widescreen, and the drive has handled video capturing very well for what must be a few thousand hours of straight capturing I've done so far.

the problem with these stock computers is that the components are pretty underpowered. This is as true of the so-called gaming system desktop makers like Dell churn out. You probably don't want to capture raw AVI on your laptop (space issues notwithstanding), but a hardware-based tuner will certainly ease the strain a lot. My personal USB based preference is Pinnacle System's PCTV USB2. It is the only one I've seen with quality DV capture, optional MPEG 1 & 2 capture (no cap on MPEG1 resolution), and quality audio. Unfortunately, the audio downmixes stereo to mono, but it still sounds great.

If you go with a laptop, you need to be aware that most USB tuners pass audio through a separate stereo jack requiring a soundcard line-in. It's a bit idiot considering the primarily market for USB tuners, but there are few (Pinnacle and Hauppauge included that send audio over USB).

I tried capturing from USB2 tuners to USB2 hard drives. I wasn't dissatisfied. Providing you minimize all disk reads and writes on your main drive, you'll be okay. Be aware of antivirus software, and the usual apps that like to make sudden drastic reads.

If I'm editing straight video (next to no graphics/animation, etc), is there a point at which extra RAM adds little value?
RAM isn't really the issue in video capturing. Video capturing is a function of encoder speed, available bandwidth, and hard drive speed. Of course memory and CPU have an effect as well. You'll definitely want to have the appropriate amount of memory and CPU for your system, but you will want to have your system tuned for video capturing. That gets back to the first three options. Certain codecs are pretty heavyweight (DivX comes to mind), so they aren't the best for on-the-fly capturing. If you have 128MB available, I'd go with HuffYUV or a MJPEG codec if you can't do MPEG1 above 320x240. I'd stay away from WMV, MPEG2, or MPEG-4 unless you can do it in your capture hardware. For video editing, you'll need a lot of memory to smoothly shuttle through uncompressed AVI or HuffYUV encoded video. A lot of it though will depend on how well your video editing software is designed. I use Womble MPEG-VCR for cutting MPEG2s when I don't plan to convert the format. I use Virtual Dub for linear editing and Premiere Pro for nonlinear editing. Virtual Dub is sleek and fast. You can do a lot with a little, and it's got a plugin filter system, making it infinitely extendable (like Photoshop or GIMP). Premiere is still a beast. I don't know about Cinelerra. I'm still in the process of turning my laptop video toaster into a Linux box. I will be keeping updates on my success though in my journal.