Recommended Apps and Distros

[Dieselbeer]

This field isn't easy for testing, because it's huge.
One does need to have some experiance in video editing. Just also to separate toy-effects from needed filters. Also the handling of the video-editors I know are quite different in it's use. I can't give you some good advices, because I don't know your basics. I would like to, but - for example - I'm having some specialists (PRGs) too, doing just one thing really good, but can't do others.
Example: One PRG of mine creats a DVD from nearly all codecs I found until today. It's pretty fast, and deinterlacing ist done error free. But: it can't correct any colors, contrast and the DVD-Scene-Menue of it is a sh**. So I need a second stepp and doing this with an other PRG, only can read MPEG, MPEG2 from a ready sized file (-4GB).

[Dieselbeer]

Originally Posted by timmyw3ar

Dieselbear!!!

I have found the "best" Video Editor for Linux.

KdenLive.

I will do a review on it as I become more familiar with it.
I'm actually excited about finding this app since I have some of my own videos I have been wanting to edit and need to record more.

Thank you Timmy. It will take some time to become familiar with such a Prg., if one records analog stuff.
Firstly have a look to the video standards NTSC or PAL in case of size and Framerate to prevent the first trouble (Example: 720x576, 25fps is a PAL DVD, 4:3; 704x480, 29,97fps for a NTSC DVD 4:3). You can find all info at wikipedia for example, also lower resulutions such as SVCD, VCD or 16:9.
For publising mostly the max SVCD 640x480 res. is used (Filesize!), and codecs like Xvid or DivX to compress the files.
With last codecs the video stream is important, if one compresses to hard, the pics become unsharp, if there are movings.
Send me a PM, if your having some problems.

[Dieselbeer]

I had a look at the homepage of KdenLive today.

Cut and edition looks comfortable. But I missed some important corrections:
- Brightness and Contrast
+ Gamma Correction it still has
- Color Correction
- Noise Filter
+ Deinterlace
- Pictur crop

Brighness and contrast is elementary, if one edits a tape.
For an old tape:
Color correction and a noise filter is neccesary
Old tapes are loosing their magnetical information over the years. So (at my experiance) they turning into red. Without a color correction your captured movie will be full of "Indians".
Noises will appear too. One can see a little snowy picture. The noises filter compares the pixels in the area beside and tries to adapt abnormal pixel. This filter needs a lot of CPU power.
Deinterlace is implemented. Test it! If you DL a PAL video try to transfer it into NTSC. If the Pics are sharp and having not stripes it's usefull. Also needing a lot of CPU-Power, adapting the half pics.

Pic.-crop: Usually the video-grabber don't use the full screen; I don't know why. One has to delete the black frames (right and left, top and bottom) of the pic and render the vid. new.

[videodrone]

Just tried firefox 3.6 (beta)
Good news is that it seems stable and works fine as a firefox for linux should.
Bad news is that it seems to have broken any extension or addon that may work for 3.5 ( again linux ).They're talking about a new way of writing these ( somewhat vaguely ) But I see nothing solid yet,so don't be in a hurry to play with bleeding edge at this time.

[videodrone]

Originally Posted by Dieselbeer

Thank you Timmy. It will take some time to become familiar with such a Prg., if one records analog stuff.
Firstly have a look to the video standards NTSC or PAL in case of size and Framerate to prevent the first trouble (Example: 720x576, 25fps is a PAL DVD, 4:3; 704x480, 29,97fps for a NTSC DVD 4:3). You can find all info at wikipedia for example, also lower resulutions such as SVCD, VCD or 16:9.
For publising mostly the max SVCD 640x480 res. is used (Filesize!), and codecs like Xvid or DivX to compress the files.
With last codecs the video stream is important, if one compresses to hard, the pics become unsharp, if there are movings.
Send me a PM, if your having some problems.

Dieselbeer, Timmywar3, You have interested me with this topic, I have found a forum (linux) on to do as you do , and a site with commercial interests that talks of several tools and their uses (many are for linux AND windows) .Are you interested in them? I have no commercial interest in this, just curiosity ( just not sure if I can post them here out-right)

[Dieselbeer]

Originally Posted by videodrone

Dieselbeer, Timmywar3, You have interested me with this topic, I have found a forum (linux) on to do as you do , and a site with commercial interests that talks of several tools and their uses (many are for linux AND windows) .Are you interested in them? I have no commercial interest in this, just curiosity ( just not sure if I can post them here out-right)

I don't know too, but you can PM this. If it is a non commercial forum you can name it (no links!) and we search ourself. If it is commercial -> only PM it.

[videodrone]

Originally Posted by Dieselbeer

I don't know too, but you can PM this. If it is a non commercial forum you can name it (no links!) and we search ourself. If it is commercial -> only PM it.

On deeper look ,was 3rd party ads on self help site ( VIDEOHelp.com ) look for " Linux video tools" . It covers tools/software and more than I thought I knew . It is now sooooo Bookmarked.

Thank you for the information on site protocol ,sir

[videodrone]

Originally Posted by Dieselbeer

Three players for looking vids (porns ) so far.

I'm a bit impatient, what's about some "serious"- applications. I heard of Open Office as an example, but honestly having no clue what it is (behind it- an office solution, known). Could give someone in here a few information (personal experiances) with it? The main information can be found in the net, I'm sure (didn't search so far) but more important - for me - would be some personal experiances like "Timmy" gave with the players. (see last passage)

I would also be interessted in video editing; I found about 15 PRGs in a list, but couldn't find out what's behind it.

But step by step, I'm not going to make any revolution on my PC - as long I can run my older WIN applications in an emulator window, it could run as an evolution.
For this evolution it's important, that an exchange of data is guaranteed.

I have been reluctant to interrupt the SENIORS here but it seems a bit quiet......
Personal experiances : Open Office , I keep it around for the ease of generating PDF's and when I need to work with M$ docs .In other forums it is granted to work with the 80% of WORD that normal ppl use.
As far as the rest I can not say having no need to play with those parts . But since I tend to use minimal 'puters it is a bit greedy for my resources, so I use ABIWORD mostly as it has fair compatibility with M$.

Video Players : Xine - configurable as hell ALL codecs are plugins and so is my main player for that reason but a little quirky some times.Several front-ends for it.

VLC - a solid app stable as all get out , plus can be configured ( in linux mind ) to pick up shoutcast radio /tv 'net broadcasts ,podcasts and other things.

Mplayer -I use this playing in graphical console (in pure console you get vid clips in ascii) . Can play in standard gui mode with or without gui front-ends ( smplayer, kmplayer , gnome-player ).

Kaffeine , not my favorite but it also serves as a front-end for gstreamer system and sometimes lets me play a troublesome vid clip and so worth keeping.

xine, vlc, and I think mplayer are available for windows as well (why anyone would...)

May I suggest that if anyone wishes to look/play with linux , that they download a "live cd " distro?Generally you would be using your cd/dvd player as a temp hard drive and are not likely to cause harm to your files.

One is "KNOPPIX" ,oldest of the "live cd" types and contains many of the normal apps a person can use ( and more that he won't ).It is so good that many IT/TECH types use it to diagnose ,repair , protect systems (and yes I am thinking of windows here ).
Another is "DYNE:BOLIC " a live cd designed for artists, musicians , and ppl who mangle video
I have used both and will do so again at need.
Feel free to rattle my chain if I get too geeky...( a hazard I tell you ) ^_^

[fon77]

I'm not sure what you expect from a video editing tool, but for all stuff like dvd ripping, cutting, encoding etc I found AVIDEMUX to work perfectly. It comes with a bunch of plugins that add deinterlacing and other important stuff. Comes both with a QT and a GTK interface (QT in the screenshot featuring Vanessa Jordin having good fun ).



Lately I've found a great app for making nice screenshots of video clips. It's called VIDEOCUT. Nicely configurable (number of pics, columns, size reduction). Unfortunately it has some problems with certain wmv-files. For these cases there's a small script called 'Video Contact Sheet' (website: http://p.outlyer.net/vcs/). It can be configured to use either ffmpeg or mplayer as backends - and with mplayer the screenshots with these wmv-files end up looking good.



Concerning video players - I'm mostly using VLC. For me the coolest feature of it is the ability to play dvd images (*.iso) directly without having to mount them. Great for my music dvd image collection. Kaffeine 0.8 was great - unfortunately the KDE4 version sucks IMO.

[videodrone]

Originally Posted by fon77

I'm not sure what you expect from a video editing tool, but for all stuff like dvd ripping, cutting, encoding etc I found AVIDEMUX to work perfectly. It comes with a bunch of plugins that add deinterlacing and other important stuff. Comes both with a QT and a GTK interface (QT in the screenshot featuring Vanessa Jordin having good fun ).



Lately I've found a great app for making nice screenshots of video clips. It's called VIDEOCUT. Nicely configurable (number of pics, columns, size reduction). Unfortunately it has some problems with certain wmv-files. For these cases there's a small script called 'Video Contact Sheet' (website: http://p.outlyer.net/vcs/). It can be configured to use either ffmpeg or mplayer as backends - and with mplayer the screenshots with these wmv-files end up looking good.



Concerning video players - I'm mostly using VLC. For me the coolest feature of it is the ability to play dvd images (*.iso) directly without having to mount them. Great for my music dvd image collection. Kaffeine 0.8 was great - unfortunately the KDE4 version sucks IMO.

Yea , a lot of rippers out there in the wild.Thanks for the tips on AVIDEMUX and VIDEOCUT,hard to keep up on this stuff sometimes..What disto you using fon ?