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Television Media

Ask Slashdot: Video Production on Linux? 75

Posted by Cliff from the produce-your-own-home-movies dept.
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?
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Video Production on Linux? More

Video Production on Linux?

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  • This is August first 1999?



    {}Rick

  • this strikes me as an Ask Slashdot piece... but it's not listed under the Ask Slashdot category.

    poopie.

  • 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.
  • > 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,
  • 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
  • Ummmm... Twenty first.

    {Hell.. there goes all the impact that sentence might have had if it were only done properly.}

    {}Rick

  • I'm not exactly knocking anything... simply acknowledging that linux has a ways to go.



    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

    ----
  • 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 ...
  • Again...
  • 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
  • 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........

  • I am looking forward to the coming things for Linux in the next year and later this year. This is one of them.
  • Does anyone out there know of a UNIX (linux, irix, tru64, solaris, freebsd...) alternitive to CakeWalk [cakewalk.com]? Video is nice, but audio alone would be something more interesting to me.

    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....
  • 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 [brandeis.edu].
  • 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
  • cakewalk is an mid composer/synth right ? there are a few mid/mod editors for linux..i believe freetracker is one. try freshmeat.
  • is supposed to have some. sgi is beginning to port some stuff.
  • I have checked freshmeat and linuxapps.com, I didn't find anything that was near the level of something like cakewalk. I can't find anything called Freetracker, if you could give me a URL that would be great.

    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 [uwa.edu.au] and Studio [leeds.ac.uk] 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...

  • Actually... if you head over here...

    http://linuxartist.org/

    Maya's been released for linux as well as some really nice, really hardcore stuff...

    {}Rick
  • Multimedia on a Linux PC? Buy WINDOWS 98 and an ATI all-in-wonder card.

    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 ... but
    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 [allusion.net] on the main site. I know that's not video production at large, but it is a sizable segment of video editing.
  • CakeWalk is not a MIDI composer/synthesizer, it is an audio mixing environment that handles multitrack analog, digital, and MIDI mixdown and production. It is what the pro's use in their milion dollar recording studios and in commercial/movie studios. The cool thin is that the full "pro" version only costs $300 retail, and lets you have an unlimited number of tracks (well, as many as you have hard disk space to store and RAM capacity to process)

  • GNU Free Film Project (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There ought to be a GNU Free film Project http://www.gnu.org/software/ffp/ffp.html
  • Read your faq, and agreed with most of it.

    Some more input on the Sony Digital8 format; I use it in an amateur setup--it may suit the querent's needs, depending on how 'amateur' he wants to be.

    The cheapest Digital8 Sony camera runs about $700, w/o LCD, and about $760 with. It's the standard Sony camera, with autofeatures and nightshoot, auto-stabilization, etc. It's one of the more expensive cameras, with analogue cameras reaching into the $300 range-but it's still cheaper than the other digital cameras I saw, still for about $1,100.

    I can use it's s-video and RCA inputs to read data from many non-digital sources, and also to output back from digital masters.

    The tapes are much cheaper and easier to find, though I can't compare qualities.

    I'd advocate Mac as well, but am using a PC system quite successfully. It's an NT setup, with a Pinnacle Micro DV200 firewire board-it's selling point is that it guarantees 100% frame capture, by taking multiple passes if necessary. Most of the time it only takes one pass, but it's really nice in preventing the odd frame skip.

    Setup:
    Firewire Card ~$300
    Sony Camera ~$750
    PC w/scsi ~$1200
    WinNT ~$100(educational discount!)
    Adobe Premiere ~$400
    Adobe Aftereffects ~$300

    Total ~$3500

    There may be better solutions/choices/combinations, but I use this one satisfactorily.


    -AS
  • 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.
  • I'd buy it too....

    hmmm.or better yet..Cubase....which is already available on two platforms (Mac & Windows)...though thier emphasis is on Mac...
    ...though maybe in a year or two Linux will be popular enough that they'll port it......who knows....

    there is actually work being done on a Cakewalk / Cubase style app...it's a KDE app called KooBase...though i cant think of the url off hand...

    from what i have seen of it...it's still got a fair way to go...but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on....

  • 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...
  • 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.
  • You can find kooBase here.

    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.

  • 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?

    The hardware requirements for multitrack recording can't be all that big. A year or so ago, Pro Tools released a new version of their multitrack software, and as a promotion gave away free copies of the older version, which runs under 68K emulation on Power Macs. So I got a copy, and have been very impressed (although I would also prefer a free software solution)

    On my power mac with a 200 MHz powerpc 604, emulating the 68K and with the built in sound, I have had no problem mixing and playing four tracks of audio while recording in sync a fourth. I think I have also had it running hi/lo pass filters on some of the tracks while doing this. The cpu power needed isn't that great, since most of the time is spent reading from the hard disk. Hope this helps.

  • You're lucky you got all those educational discounts - I believe Premiere is something like $695 and After Effects is $ 1,000. So a non-student would have to pay about $ 5,000 for your system. The cheapest G3 nowadays is somewhere in the $1,600 range including a FireWire card as compared to your $1,200 for the system plus $300 for the FireWire card, so Apple's definitely competitive even with the bare bones system you mention. If you're not wedded to Wintel for other reasons (bearing in mind, of course, that you can always get PPC Linux), I'd definitely recommend that system. Then you can get EditDV Unplugged for $ 99 and be good to go.

    But I think you forgot disks - you need at least one additional disk besides your system drive, and it should be an enormous one - 20GB would not be excessive. I have an 11GB disk and it mysteriously keeps filling up :-(.

    Isn't the capture card you're referring to the DV300? I don't remember hearing about a DV200. From trolling the newsgroups, I've heard a lot of bad stories about the DV300 and Pinnacle support in general. Your system probably is the best low-cost PC-based solution, but I'd be wary of recommending it to others. How difficult was it for you to set up?

    My FAQ is definitely biased strongly against low-end equipment like Sony Digital8, simply because I don't like the quality and ergonomic design of the cameras themselves. I would certainly recommend Digital8 over a standard analogue camcorder - raw picture quality out of the camera is no better, but quality of the recordings is likely to be far superior.

    Glad you liked the FAQ.

    D

    ----
  • 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

    ----
  • So what happened to the Buz?

    I'd heard it was a pretty neat low-end solution.

    Was it discontinued due to Iomega's other problems?

    D

    ----
  • I think he was concerned with hardware support for linux, and pc's in general. The later is a definit problem, only because firewire isnt that common yet. But cards do exist, Im sure. Drivers for linux? I dont know.

    Is there a good software package for doing profesional quaility stuff? I realy dont think so. But someone made the point that if your going to be spending somewhere in the $10K range on cameras and decks you may as well shell out for some software.

  • Windows 95...is an excellent platform for multimedia... along with lightwave... you've got several different video programs, Director, just about anything you'd need. My ATI card does excellent captures, the Broadway card I use for work is even better. There's Firewire, DV, etc, etc...

    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.}

  • Unfortunately, so far all the sequencing things I've run across for linux have been toys compared to what Cakewalk and Cubase can do for Windows.

    BeOS is looking extremely interesting though, with companies like Event and Steinberg pledging support.
  • I was under the impression that the new kernel had firewire support.



    {}Rick

  • 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.

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