Video on Linux
I nearly lost it trying to get video editing to work on Linux this afternoon. It worked fine from Windows, but that doesn't do me any good on Ubuntu.
First of all, the Fire-Wire card used to connect the camera to the computer just plane worked. I plugged in the card and then plugged in the camera. That all went without trouble. Thank goodness..
The first program that I tried to use is called Kino.  They claim it works like a champ and allows for both capture and editing without fuss. Technically, that is true. It is built in to the apt-get package manager for Debian. Great. I install it and give it a try. Well, it locks up when I click on "capture". It will also not open anything but DV files. Once you export you cannot go back and edit. I'm getting ahead of myself. Well, I poke around and try a program called dvgrab. It is a command line utility that just plane "grabs" the data from the DV camera. Well, it doesn't work either. However, it gives an error. It tells me something about an access violation. You have got to be kidding me. Guess what, you have to run the programs under root user in order to access the camera. That is insane. This killed half a day. All to find out that I have to "sudo kino" to get it to work. This is like saying you have to be a cop to unlock your own front door.
So, I'm able to capture some video from the camera and save it in the DV file format. That's great. Those files are big and basically useless except for editing so, now, I save it out of Kino into an MPEG format only to find that once you do this, they will not go back into the editor. Kino only does DV format. No wonder this guy recommends a different editor.
So, I pop over to the Cinelerra site to take a look. It looks fantastic on the site. It reminds me of Adobe Premier as stated in the link above. Cool features and everything. Well, it only comes in an RPM (Red-hat Package Manager) file. This means that only Linux distributions that support RPM files can install it straight from the download. <despair> <curses> <mumbled ravings> Then I start poking around on Google to find that there are indeed ways to install RPM files on a Debian distribution. The package that allows this is called alien. I'm using Ubuntu that is built off the Debian distribution.
Wow, I have a functioning video editor. It only took all frigging day. Well, we did go to lunch with some friends. I had to help get Elle to bed this afternoon. She is not feeling well.
I worry that I may not be up to the task at this new job. If I can get a video editor and a DV capture program to work in Linux I can do most anything.
Now, to get Windows Media files to play in Linux you have to add some specific files to your Xine program. The only way to get the libraries to become part of the program is to recompile the Xine program with the libraries in place. I have never gotten anything to work in Linux when I tried to compile it. Maybe I'll have to give that a shot later this week.
Then, I went here. Now it works. Never mind. =]