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Ask Slashdot: Video Production on Linux?
Izaak asks: "I would like to build an amateur video production
studio around a Linux system, but need some
advice. I need recommendations for a
professional quality video camera, digital VCR,
video capture card, sound equipment, software...
does non-linear video editing software even
exist for Linux? If not, I'm not adverse to
writing it. Any pointers will be appreciated. " Well, I don't
know about the other categories, but MainConcept has a product
called MainActor which is a video editor for Linux. According to their home page, they are
bundling it with the new Linux LML33 Video Capture Card. So it looks like a few pieces of the Video Production Puzzle are coming to gether but what about the other pieces? Any thoughts?
{}Rick
this strikes me as an Ask Slashdot piece... but it's not listed under the Ask Slashdot category.
poopie.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Okay, this whole thread is a little offtopic. . .but I have to admit I am surprised Be hasn't been mentioned. Its multimedia capabilities *seem* to kick multimedia *ss compared to anything this side of SGI. ..comments???
I think this system would be quite a bit cheaper than you think. Something like this (prices from memory)
Cheapest blue and white G3: $ 1,600
Free upgrade to 128mb RAM
Radius EditDV without hardware 400
17" Monitor 500
Total 2,500
Canon XL1 MiniDV Camcorder 4,000
Total $ 6,500
If you need to save a few bucks, get a GL1 or TRV900 instead of the XL1 - you should be able to find one for about $2,000-$2,500, thus reducing the price to around $4,500-5,000.
Not bad, especially since I paid about $ 9,000 for my equivalent setup (with the XL1).
One thing you do need that's not on that list is a small TV or video monitor - you'll want it to play back the video while you're editing. Video playback on the computer is hopeless; video playback through the firewire using your camera is great. That adds between $200 and $500 to the price.
If you haven't seen it already, my DV FAQ is at http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html .
D
----
If a BT829 is your idea of quality multimedia then you simply have no business knocking Linux support in this area.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The original Amiga version ROCKS. I understand that the OS2 version rocks harder. Both use rexx as the scripting language... (OK, Rexx & ARexx) That was the programs 'Main" strength... It could dissasemble/reassemble/do effects/ resize/etc... on the fly on a 25MHZ 68020... all completely customizable to use whatever packages you have--- On Linux, Gimp and Imagemagik come to mind... I wonder what they're using under Linux?
> Broadcast 2000 ended up being just a timed demo
.
Well, not exactly. According to the Heroine web page, they were funded to get it to beta, and ran out of money, at least temporarily. I downloaded it, but I haven't have time to make it run yet -- but I do gather it's functional. And it certainly looked pretty.
For those who missed it, B2000 is a full non-linear video editing suite for Linux, using the Quicktime for Linux libraries available at
Cheers,
NewTek started out making videotoasters for the Amiga, which proved that one killer app could make people buy an unknown computer. They could do the same thing on linux and don't even having to bother about supporting more than their own capture-cards... Rendering lightwave in the background on Linux would be a reason enough not to use windows anymore ....
It sounds like what you really want to do is make art. Why should you put up with half-ass support on the linux platform, when everything you need is available under windows?
:)
Don't get me wrong! I always recommend Linux to clients who want a great server. But when I'm writing music, I don't want anything to bog down my creativity, so I use windows. OK, I *should* be using a Mac, but I can't afford another machine.
You should ask yourself: what's more important, my artistic soul or my loyalty to an OS?
-Loopy
It sounds like what you really want to do is make art. Why should you put up with half-ass support on the linux platform, when everything you need is available under windows?
:)
Don't get me wrong! I always recommend Linux to clients who want a great server. But when I'm writing music, I don't want anything to bog down my creativity, so I use windows. OK, I *should* be using a Mac, but I can't afford another machine.
You should ask yourself: what's more important, my artistic soul or my loyalty to an OS?
-Loopy
{Hell.. there goes all the impact that sentence might have had if it were only done properly.}
{}Rick
The card does well enough... It imports video... nicely and cleanly and clearly... which is all I want it to do. It's what I do with it that makes it quality.
It's not DV but I think it does a pretty good job... certainly good enough for most folks uses. For that matter... my ATI is fine. The footage is going to get edited to death anyway.
What reasonable solution are you thinking is better?
{}Rick
The answer to the question of what hardware and software you need for video production depends largely on your needs. A high-end prosumer setup, such as what I have, dedicates a computer to video editing, uses a fancy three-chip camera, and costs about $ 10,000. In the process of putting this together, I wrote the DV FAQ, which you can find at http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html .
If you want the highest quality video possible, you need to use FireWire, which is the direct digital to digital system. Unfortunately, Linux support for FireWire still does not exist. The capture card mentioned in the article is an analogue unit and won't give you the level of quality possible via FireWire.
Remember that video production takes up enormous amounts of system resources. When I put together my production system, I decided to dedicate a machine to the function. Because of that, I decided on a Macintosh G3, which is probably still the best machine for low-end video editing. (High-end is an Avid; you're talking mid-five figures before their salespeople will even talk to you).
I definitely don't recommend using a Windows machine for video editing. That is the way to madness. I'd like to recommend BeOS, since it's a great operating system and its multi-threaded nature is going to give you superior performance; unfortunately, they don't have FireWire support yet either.
So the Mac is the only platform left standing in the end. I really wish I could recommend a Be-based solution, because I love the BeOS, but the time isn't ripe yet. (If you are doing one, though, send it to me and I'll incorporate it in my FAQ -- I really want to see one).
In terms of cameras, get a three-chip model if you can possibly afford it. Colours are much richer and more vivid. I have the $4,000 Canon XL1 and swear by it; fortunately, the Sony TRV900 and upcoming Canon GL1 provide three-chip functionality for about $2,000.
More details are in the DV FAQ - see the URL above.
D
----
Not even close. Linus is such a myopic idiot that in his keynote at Linux World he assured everyone that there will be no Firewire support in the 2.4 kernel.
And don't forget Final Cut Pro!
...only available on the Mac.
If you're serious about building an inexpensive but high quality studio around a PC, NewTek are the folks to talk to. Unfortunately, there's been no indication from them about their Linux plans. Those in a purchasing position, let NewTek know there's a market!
Friends of mine who do a lot of Lightwave work get wet over the idea of farming their rendering out to a cheap cluster. What NewTek need to realize is for every NT licence that's not needed, their client can buy an extra copy of LW.
Wait until this fall when the new linux based Amiga OS gets out. You have the best of both worlds with multimedia capabilities and linux. Standard linux really reeks and is probably the slowest platform available for multimedia today. Just run quake and quake2 and sin to find out. The frps is quite unacceptable on my slow p150 yet q3 runs fin under windows. Linus just wont include anything beyond a simple frame buffer in the kernel and wont even bother supporting a graphics daemon like the ones in Irix to make things faster. Amiga is the only Os for multimedi if you want linux. Otherwise try Be OS or mac OS. Be is alot cheaper and more techie then the mac OS and it has stronger multithreaded capabilities.
Really? I've read differently. Tho' I can't seem to find the article.
I suppose there's always this...
http://eclipt.uni-klu.ac.at/ieee1394/
{}Rick
Firewire's been available on the PC for, what, a year... two years?
{}Rick
BeOS offers great fundation but somebody has to create products - without them, it will be very hard to sell anything ...
Then I would have no reasons to use windows...
Again...
Multimedia on a Linux PC? Buy WINDOWS 98 and an ATI all-in-wonder card. Reformat hard drive and install Windows 98 Total cost: $250 In this domain, Linux loses. Feel free to flame.
This is EXACTLY my question. I HATE "editing" movies by using the pause button on my VCR and camcorder.
But MainActor doesn't seem to be the solution. I downloaded the thing, but there didn't seem to be anything there. Yeah, it'll show the individual frames of the movie I selected, but I can't do diddly with them. My basic question was "where's the rest of it?"
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I will be starting a project next week to write linux drivers to record movies on laser disks. When things get started there will be some information on the programming/pascal section of my web page. (No I'm NOT writing this in pascal!!)
ugh.....if you must use windows...then a dual processor machine with NT would make more sense
even sound work is painful on a single processor win 9x machine....
multimedia is an area where you choose the machine and OS to suit the job.....so a Mac is probably even the better option..
but that's not the point...the question was about what was avaliabe FOR LINUX....not whether you could do it on win 98....or any other OS for that matter..
hmmm....good hard disk recording and sequencing software is the last thing i need for Linux before i can throw away windows forever........
Advanced users are users too!
I am looking forward to the coming things for Linux in the next year and later this year. This is one of them.
Only 'flamers' flame!
If there isn't a project to produce something like CakeWalk, would anyone be interested in trying to get CakeWalk itself ported to Linux? I for one would buy it ;-)
indeed.. and life without windows would be heaven indeed....
Insert mind here.
Owners of the Matrox G-series video tools will soon have support for video capture on Linux. The driver is nearing "alpha" quality and is available here.
The all-in-wonder is rapidly getting better support. I'm cursed with one of those things, but I've been able to watch TV on it for a few months now. I believe all of it's inputs and outputs are useable, and video capture is being worked on.
If there is firewire support somewhere (most likely LinuxPPC because they wrote usb stuff for the new mac HW, and firewire shipped on those boxes too) then there are lots of options. Panasonic makes some good DVCpro decks that can take both DVCpro tapes (like in professional DV cams) or MiniDV (prosumer and consumer level DV). These are firewire decks, and you can transfer the video to your RAID as files over a network (400Mbps) with no loss of quality or dropped frames. Lots of DV cams support FireWire too.
I don't know about support for controlling the decks in firewire, but I know they can be triggered via rs-232 with the grass valley protocols very reliably (I work at a cable station, and that arrangement has never failed me for playback)
Also, you can play analog video from an analog source into the video ins on the DVCpro decks, and it'll do the digitizing for you, without the need for a card or anything.
dan
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Multimedia on a Windows 98 PC? Pshah. Get real. Nobody cares about cheez 200x200 8 bit graphics. Get an SGI trashcan and do it the way the professionals do. Or for a cheaper alternative, get a Mac.
is supposed to have some. sgi is beginning to port some stuff.
I was wondering about the possability of building a "Digital Recording Studio" that was capable of making some reasonable quality recordings. Something that would take seperate tracks at seperate times, so you could lay down a drum beat, then come back and add in the instruments, then the vocals, etc.. I would prefer to do it in Linux or FreeBSD, and with open source software (for financial reasons), but unfortunately I think I will end up with something commercial. (I am not going to pop for a $10,000+ system and software).
I was checking out GreenBox and Studio but don't really know anything about them yet, it's just all I found for Linux, and would like to hear from some people that can speak from experiance about thier functionality, ease of use, etc... And, I wouldn't mind hearing about some hardware requirements, would it take gobs and gobs of RAM and SCSI drives and massive CPU power to do playback of a track while recording another track to sync to it?
I would really appreciate learning more about how possable this is, and how expnsive it might be... Maybe an old 4-track unit that allows you to do this with normal cassette tapes would be something to consider for me to play around with, but it would really be a lot more fun if I could get digital quality, and have a little more precise control, and be able to do it on a computer, create MP3's etc...
Multimedia on a Linux PC? Buy WINDOWS 98 and an ATI all-in-wonder card.
... but
that's silly.
first, as others have noticed, the question is
not "what's the best os for video editing?" but
"what kind of video editing can you do on linux?"
second, although I came close to getting an all-
in-wonder card, when I did research and asked
AIW owners about the card, they said the video
codec is kinda weird and winds up not looking as
good as other vidcap cards. of course, I didn't
get any specific examples of what was "weird"
about it, and they could have just been referring
to the original AIW and not the pro/128
the consensus seemed to be that the AIW was not
a good capture card for *windows*.
third, I had problems on a win98 system w/ the
iomega buz. the buz is probably the best option
for low-end multimedia under windows, but I ran
into numerous problems which I traced back to
internet explorer and activemovie. conclusion:
win98 is *not* a good choice for multimedia.
I'm currently developing subtitling software for Linux and other Unix-alikes called BakaSub. You can find more info here on the main site. I know that's not video production at large, but it is a sizable segment of video editing.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Personal Studio. http://www.adamation.com/Products/personalStudio/a bout.htm Video Wave http://www.benews.com/story/?ID=1857 http://www.videowave.com/ Some other video news. http://www.benews.com/story/?ID=1624 http://www.benews.com/story/?ID=1562
I don't know if this is exactly considered Low Budget, I have not seen much in prices, but interestingly enough their software tracks moving objects to manipulate a mask, for editing video, well color correcting video, or altering the color of specific objects. I saw it at SIGGraph and its said to be available for Linux... http://www.afassoc.com/
There ought to be a GNU Free film Project http://www.gnu.org/software/ffp/ffp.html
Matrox themselves have not bothered to support OpenSource.
The original Matrox capture cards (as supported by the FreeBSD authors at UWM) are no longer being made.
Like FreeBSD had support for USB before the Mac, the interest in FreeBSD by Apple, combined with the hard work of some Japanese coders, BSD has Firewire support.
No real software for it, but hey, there IS a driver.
Maya is coming out for linux but its the renderer. You'll still need an NT or SGI box to do the modelling, animating, etc. Its a very cool solution though.. you can have a sgi or nt box for a animation setup.. and have a renderfarm composed of linux boxes. I expect to see a full version of maya for linux when opengl/sgi support with their redhat initative matures later next year. All I can say is kudos Alias. Not for bringing maya to linux.. but for giving me the option besides this overpriced hoover of a desktop Octane and the ever crash prone NT boxes.
I suspect you are going to kick yourself if you don't consider DV/Firewire very seriously. This is going to make its way into the consumer world over time, and from a purely technical point of view, it is far superior solution to doing things half-analog and half-digital. So, think digital camera (DV) and scrap the A/D component in the editing station. If you web-publish any of the output, you now have a fully digital setup. Remember that if you need to use occasional pre-recorded analog sources, you can let the DV camera handle the digitizing. You don't say anything about budget, but this kind of setup is not as expensive as you would think. $7500-$10,000 could probably get you started, with a system that is starting to approximate something between the lines of purely consumer-end, and the professional end. The 'bad' news is of course, that this isn't Linux, but this just isn't one of those areas where Linux is a good solution right now. The 'good' news is that the hardware most suited for this: the G3 B&W from Apple will run Linux (for things other than video-editing if the video-editing is only part-time). You might want to keep in mind that if current budget is a contstraint, the UltraDMA IDE drives on G3s seem to be fast enough for video, even though SCSI is often recommended.
If you want to put together a video studio with professional digital equipment, a Linux box would be a mistake. Your best bet would be an AVID system, which is often found in professional shops (most of the cartoons on Cartoon Network, for example, are done on an AVID), but if you don't want to spend the $12,000 or so on that, you should get a Mac G3 system, or an older one with a Firewire card if you really feel you need the extra PCI slot. Since practically all digital devices (VCRs, cameras, etc.) have Firewire ports you wouldn't even need a capture card. While you probably could cobble together a Linux based system, video production has never really been one of its strengths. But if it ever improves substantially, hey, there's always PPCLinux. In any event, if you're willing to pay the upwards of $3,500 for a professional digital camera, and God knows what for the rest of that setup, you don't want to choke on a nonlinear system that isn't up to the quality of the rest of your equipment.
I haven't seen everything available for linux
multimedia yet, but it seems to be that the
weak point is video capture, since that depends
on proprietary hardware.
video editing is also lacking, but it seems to me
a good future project would be a GIMP plug-in
that would convert between MPEG and multiple JPEGs. the GIMP already does some simple animation
editing...
add another plug-in that allowed rendering multiple video layers and you have the beginnings
of an adobe premiere clone.
if we had *this*, then we could set up a video
production network with a windows machine or mac
doing the video capture and production, and the
linux machine doing the editing and rendering.
this would rock.
Bla bla 200x200 8 bit bla bla...
That was 5 years ago, AC... (Although no one doing video work would come up with the fictional 200x200 resolution)
If you want to flame Wintel then do it when apropriate.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Linux for video production. If you have the money, Avid is a no-brainer... in many ways.
If, on the other hand, the end product is on tape, then so long as you are able to produce the desired result without introducing visible degradation to the source, and can ultimately produce the tape, then any tool that works is just fine.
The LML card is M-JPEG, and the chip is the same one on the new $6000 Matrox card. Nothing wrong there. What's missing? Genlock, last I knew, but if you only need to play to tape, that's not a problem.
Avid is easy, if expensive, but there ARE alternatives, and some of them WILL be on Linux. With 25 years of experience in the video industry, I am completely confident of that.
--- Bill
Broadcast 200 is another package you might want to look into. I haven't used it personally but I remember hearing about it a while back.
Broadcast2000 Web Site
I am currently writing a Non-Linear Editor called CROW. It is nearly ready for it's first release. I am also looking for people interested in developing this project with me.
The address is
http://www.crow.atu.com.au
Eric
MainConcept announced their flip book program would be ported to Linux by March 1999. By May they were still waiting for a non existant market for Linux video software before gambling their WinNT revenue on it. The appearance of Broadcast 2000 on May 10th finally got MainConcept to do a release the next day.
Well MainActor VE is a good program. It converts movies to Cinepak, which was the internet standard up to 1997. It doesn't compare to what you can get for Win NT but as a simple, small toy it's right up the Linux hacker's alley.
Unfortunately by July school had ended, the Linux community was home working full time, Broadcast 2000 ended up being just a timed demo, MainConcept had sacrificed a large part of their WinNT revenue because of a timed demo, and the last entry in LML's diary is from May. Probably when school starts in September we might get back on track, but video software is naturally large, bloated, and too expensive to write as a hobby. That alone turns off Linux hackers but the lack of interest Linux video editing of any kind is a final nail in the coffin until video software becomes cheaper to write.
you can also do FireWire (IEEE1394) on Wintel, too...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~gz/buz
The only problem is that creating video software takes _awful_ amounts of time, and the existing standard Video4Linux is not sufficient for the capabilities of most of the hardware that could be used for video editing (The Iomega Buz, e.g., can do Motion JPEG capturing/playback, which isn't supported by the current V4L API).
But I'm heading towards another direction: Why not using the GIMP as video editing tool ? gap, the GIMP animation plug-in, can already handle up to 9999 frames, and perform all its functions on multiple frames .... so, video editing by itself is not a problem, sound can be handled through other solutions ...
I would be glad to be pointed to appropiate mailing lists to discuss the topic, video4linux and gimp-developer are not ... :-/ ..
It is very hard to recommend some video hardware for video editing in the moment - one (obviously biased :-) ) recommendation is to buy an Iomega Buz (whilst it is still available in the shops - production of new units has ceased).
The Windows support is openly said lousy, but hey: You want to use it in Linux, right ? ;)
One remark: The Linux Media Labs Board is based on the same chipset as the Buz is based on ! The only difference is better screen overlay (the Buz can't achieve full TV-resolution in the preview window)
I sincerely hope that video editing under Linux takes off as soon as possible, and I am willing to contribute to it :-) !
/Gernot
You should check out some of the Cakewalk newsgroups for some good pointers on hardware. I'm currently using a Celeron 450 w/ 128M of RAM, an IDE drive for the software and an uwSCSI drive for the audio. Using Win/Cakewalk for this, because the audio card I use only works under Windows (it takes 16 tracks of audio in through 2 optical ports simultaneously). If I were building a new system, I'd definitely go for a card w/ onboard processors and an AMD Athlon. The processing power required is phenomenal, and no CPU can really keep up without those fancy soundcards (which sadly will probably only work under Windows for a long time). But, my system is definitely "good enough" for studio use...just finished recording a full-length album, actually.
It's called Firewire. It makes analog to digital video capture obsolete. Linus doesn't like it.
You can find kooBase here. Unfortunately it is still a work in progress. For example, they still haven't implemented hard disk recording.
http://lienhard.desy.de/mackag/homepages/jan/kooBa se/home.html
Unfortunately it is still a work in progress. For example, they still haven't implemented hard disk recording.
As I said in another post on this topic, I'd love to recommend Be, but there's no FireWire support. I believe Adamation has a video editing program for Be, but their "professional" software is delayed until we see Be FireWire support.
I'm going to take a look at it, but I don't expect to use it seriously until I see FireWire.
D
----
Here is the correct URL...
NT's got Maya and Softimage... it's marginally better. {tho' dual processors do kick ass.}
Linux has possibilities... It's got Trinity which is started anyway, Main Actor which works anyway... Imagemagick, etc, etc... It's also got support from SGI, several good 3D programs and Xwindows.
From what I know... support for firewire is here, work has begun on a lot of the necessary drivers and seeing as just about everything that's already implemented in this system is better implemented than it's Win counterpart... I don't see why multimedia production will be any different.
Imagine how fast a half dozen old computers set up with Beowulf will do your rendering...
I don't think the system's absolutely practical yet... {and I don't have any intention of dumping to tape {we have CD's, tapes are outmoded.}} I do think it might be a good time to start working at setting things up. As far as I'm concerned... this is for a lifetime, or thereabouts... I sure as hell don't want to be stuck with Windows forever. I don't like commercial schlock... not as a system and not in my art. I want an environment to work in that's as personalized as the work I create. Personally, I'm sick of the Windows logo and I'm sick of Microsoft bullshit...
But, I'm, not killing the DOS partition yet either.
{}Rick {:} End silly rant.}
How about trying a dual celeron system. I have two 333's overclocked to 500 and it FLIES. Any serious software like Cakewalk of Photoshop should be multithreaded and take advantage of a second cpu.
F I R E W I R E
...and it's only available NOW on the mac.
Or just plop in a Voodoo3/TNT2/G400 and a BT848 video capture board and mebbe have an SBLive on the side.
Your FUD is outdated.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.