So you think this might be about a speech based search interface? Or the ability to search through recordings of phone calls? I'm sure there are some government agencies that would be very interested in such a technology.
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.
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.
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.
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. =)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a friend who is a web developer who started using cvs when he was required by clients to collaborate with other web developers. He's just an html monkey, no back end stuff. After the first clusterfuck (where the other guy lost a weeks worth of bot their work), he was given advice from another programmer friend to look into this version control thingie.
From what I can tell, FEE is not Republican funded, though it certainly is pushing a free market capitalist agenda. It's a libertarian think tank that is basing itself around the ideas of an obscure Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. They sound somewhat similar to the Ayn Rand worshipping Objectivists, but perhaps milder. Perhaps.
While there's a definite kook factor involved (they're against public education), I think they're sincere, unlike your typical Ken Brown type stink tank which spreads it's collective legs for the highest bidder.
What's even worse is that this will get reposted sometime this next week. It'll go right inbetween the third repostings of "Sony Admits Error" and "Deep Inside the Cell Architecture".
Someone start a goddamn poll on which editors need to be fired.
What, so we can complain about the lack of a Cowboy Neil option?
Your objections to my point about chartering planes is valid from an operational point of view. I should have been more clear that I was discussing a more theoretical and semantic angle, i.e., the distinction between terrorist and guerrilla or insurgent.
And I don't argue with you in that the Taliban can be seen as sponosrs by their harboring. But this is sponsorship after the fact, and doesn't lend a nationalistic foundation to Al Kaida. Not anything like the Saudi sponsorship does, at any rate (but that's a whole other kettle of fish). Also, I have no proof of this, but I suspect that money flowed from Al Kaida to the Taliban, in exchange for refuge.
I would say that this is bad, because... less business for open source projects/programmers.
Yeah, it's too bad when you have to compete on a level playing field, especially in the Communist Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You would think that for ideological reasons they'd give unearned benefit to fellow travelers.
Slashdot Mirror
I could become a murderer - should I be put in jail now even though I haven't killed anyone?
That should be up to Pre-Crime, not the President.
No doubt the terrorists would stop speaking in text, if they got word of this.
The advertising will strictly be for political campaigns and it will all be subliminable.
So you think this might be about a speech based search interface? Or the ability to search through recordings of phone calls? I'm sure there are some government agencies that would be very interested in such a technology.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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. =)
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.
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.
Video Edit Magic Express
forgot to close a tag
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.
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.
I have a friend who is a web developer who started using cvs when he was required by clients to collaborate with other web developers. He's just an html monkey, no back end stuff. After the first clusterfuck (where the other guy lost a weeks worth of bot their work), he was given advice from another programmer friend to look into this version control thingie.
Before you flush. . . .Imagine a Beowulf Clusterr of those.
From what I can tell, FEE is not Republican funded, though it certainly is pushing a free market capitalist agenda. It's a libertarian think tank that is basing itself around the ideas of an obscure Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. They sound somewhat similar to the Ayn Rand worshipping Objectivists, but perhaps milder. Perhaps.
While there's a definite kook factor involved (they're against public education), I think they're sincere, unlike your typical Ken Brown type stink tank which spreads it's collective legs for the highest bidder.
won't be long before they release a M$ Photoshop (a booty version of M$Paint)
When you're writing these posts, do you ever say aloud, "I stab at thee, Bill Gates"
What's even worse is that this will get reposted sometime this next week. It'll go right inbetween the third repostings of "Sony Admits Error" and "Deep Inside the Cell Architecture".
Someone start a goddamn poll on which editors need to be fired.
What, so we can complain about the lack of a Cowboy Neil option?
Sometimes, when the discussion is way over your head, you can best contribute by keeping quiet.
Your objections to my point about chartering planes is valid from an operational point of view. I should have been more clear that I was discussing a more theoretical and semantic angle, i.e., the distinction between terrorist and guerrilla or insurgent.
And I don't argue with you in that the Taliban can be seen as sponosrs by their harboring. But this is sponsorship after the fact, and doesn't lend a nationalistic foundation to Al Kaida. Not anything like the Saudi sponsorship does, at any rate (but that's a whole other kettle of fish). Also, I have no proof of this, but I suspect that money flowed from Al Kaida to the Taliban, in exchange for refuge.
I would say that this is bad, because... less business for open source projects/programmers.
Yeah, it's too bad when you have to compete on a level playing field, especially in the Communist Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You would think that for ideological reasons they'd give unearned benefit to fellow travelers.
Not only that, but Timothy also duped the Cell processor story. The man is a dupe monster!
Oh yeah? Just wait until you see the XBox 2!
I heard the game controller will be bigger than an American Football, and approximately the same shape.
No, BSD is the kernel. The NeXt/OSX connection is in the application architecture.
Wrong. BSD is the subsystem/userland. The kernel is Mach based.