Re: [tlug] Video Editing Soft & Formats

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 09/07/07, Dave Gutteridge <ebisudave@example.com> wrote:

> I'm obviously not against Linux in any way,

I know this, which is why I had to double-check the name attached to
your first post.

> 1. Video editing software on Linux is still in very early stages of
> development. They are buggy, crash often, and don't support a lot of
> features, formats and codecs. Not to mention the interfaces are by and large
> clunky and obscure.

I cannot speak to this at all, since I have not used any video editing
tools on Linux.

> 2. Command line interface may be fine for Pietro, and you, and others.

Yup.

> 3. That there is documentation for something, command line or otherwise,
> doesn't automatically mean it is any good. It is just as likely as not to be
> pages and pages of terminology that makes sense to the person who coded it,
> but not to the people who may want to use it. The existence of documentation
> is not evidence of its usefulness.

I have been using mencoder (and occasionally, ffmpeg) for converting,
re-sampling, re-mastering, and re-fooing for Many Moons, so I can
speak to this.

Frankly, if you cannot understand mencoder's man page, you probably do
not know much about video.

I do not know much about video myself, at least in the nitty-gritty
details of format implementation, but I still find the mencoder /
mplayer man page extremely useful. I just search the man page for what
I am trying to do, e.g. /subtitle or /kbps, and then read just the
little section that is applicable to that.

As for documentation, it is often as easy as:

mencoder movie.wmv -o movie.avi -ovc lavc -oac lavc

And that is described many places on the Web, not least here:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mencoder_Introduction_Guide#The_Basics

> As for my comment that if I really needed to do video editing, I would use
> Mac and recommend others do so is because Mac is still far more reliable and
> easier to use than Linux for that task. You will spend far less time
> searching for software and setting it up and more time actually editing
> video on Mac. For a price, of course, but nonetheless a lot easier.

This is a valuable statement. Trading money for time is a reasonable
thing to do, and many of us are happy to do it. Some of us are not.
But it is important to point out what is going on.

> However, that doesn't mean I'm advocating Mac. I believe that within three
> to five years time, hopefully sooner, there will be open source video
> editing software available for Linux that is just as good or better than
> anything proprietary.

Yeah, but where do you get your numbers, and how do you define "as
good or better"? I consider the video playback and conversion tools on
Linux to be far superior to anything available on the Mac or Windows.
Granted, I don't know shite about Mac or Linux, but trying to use
Quicktime or Windows Media Player just to play my movies was like
pulling teeth. Whereas on Linux I just type "mplayer -fs foo.avi" and
away I go.

> But in the meantime, I don't think it is at all "FUD" or unreasonable to
> point out when Linux has not yet achieved functionality that is equal to
> other well established software packages and platforms.

It was not what you said, exactly, it was how you said it. Or what you
omitted. I would have liked to see a lot more about your usage
patterns and your reasons for not liking the video editing experience
on Linux, and less blanket statements like this one: "I did want you
to be aware, though, that video editing on Linux is an area that you
should keep your expectations to be very low. If I really needed to do
video editing, I would buy a Mac."

> If you disagree that Linux can do anything as well as any other OS and
> software in the area of video editing, please show me some actual video
> content, such as a documentary or fictional work, created entirely in a
> Linux environment, and (this is important) with no step done by the original
> developers of the software used. I would love to see that.

Every single bit of digital content produced by Weta Digital (i.e. in
the "Lord of the Rings" films and "King Kong") was rendered on Linux.
I am not sure what software Peter Jackson used for the editing
process.

The important thing to note is that what is good for a professional
film maker is not necessarily the same as what is good for a LUG
member, and that is what I feel you did not understand in your
original post.

--
Cheers,
Josh