OK I've been doing video on Windows for several years now running the gambit from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere 5,6,Pro to Pinnacle Studio.

I need to be able to do videos on linux integrating several different formats .mov .avi .jpeg .bmp, etc.

I tried cinelerra and was very disappointed with it, it looked nice on the web site and it seems to have a lot of power, but the interface is wacked and there is absolutly no real time performance on it. I realize that my Suse 10 machine on my Athlon XP 1600 isn't the fastest kid on the block, but I should atlest be able to squeeze 1 stream of video off of it. Also there's no audio output off of my Seasound Solo box so that junks the program right there

I really want to like this program and to do video on linux, but that doesn't seem to be happening it

Am I wrong, or is video on linux not quite ready yet?

Had any one else experienced this?

Cinelerra seems to be stable on some distros, regarding what i've read. Unfortunatly, it suxx on Slackware (i tried many install ways). And it seems to suxx on Suse too. Any other opinions?

It gives an error on Mandriva and I coldn't make it work.

You can also try LiVES:
http://lives.sourceforge.net/

Do you read the minimum requirements in order to run Cinelerra?

I think that the problem is not Cinelerra. You need a monster to run it well.

Cinelerra is a non-lineair video editor (NLE) that should be able to read many sorts of input files (MPEG2, divX, etc etc.). Elas, it is the only free NLE that does that. Kino only reads DV (from DV camera's). And then there is Main Actor, which costs money, crashes on my system and looks oldfashioned. I might as well go back to Windowze.

The problem with Cinelerra, IMHO, is not it's system requirements or that it crashes. Firstly, the system specs are (intentionally I think) VERY much overrated. It runs just fine on an Athlon 1800, 512 MB. I think they were fed up with questions from beginning NLE users with poor PC's, so the went really over the top with the sys. req. Secondly, when it crashes, its automatic backup saving works surprisingly good (use "File/Load Backup")!

No, the real problem with Cinelerra is that some features just don't work! With me, this seems to be Distro specific. For instance on Suse 10.0 the function "match output size" does not resize your movie to get rid of black borders around it, like it should.
And when U try to save as MPEG2, DV or ANY FORMAT AT ALL ("File > Render > choose codec...") the resulting file is UNREADABLE after rendering by any multimedia player or editor (Totem / Avidemux2 etc.). In Debian 3.1 Sarge I could compile Cinelerra from source (does not work for Suse 10) and save as DV (and then re-encode to MPEG2 / DVD-video w/ Avidemux2).

A video-editor that spits out unreadable video/audio files is completely worthless of course.

Did any of you succeed in procucing a viewable file with Cinelerra? I would like to use the program because I like the new "look" of Cinelerra 2.

Do you have any expierience with Main Actor Linux?




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The 'no-audio in preview' problem:
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To not let Cinelerra hang when on playback do:

Setttings > Preferences > Playback > Audio driver: ESound, Server (none!), Port 0.

Restart Cinelerra and you should have avi playback and sound.

Thank you for the suggestion. But have you tried to use that program? It seems a bit weird to me... From a tutorial site (http://www.reimeika.ca/lives/lives_guide.html) on Lives: "Currently LiVES supports either JPG or PNG editing". That's not what I call video editing. I tried Lives once. I have absolutely no idea what the idea behind it is. For the life of me, I couldn't make it to read, edit or save a video file....

Anyone here any experience with it?

Personnally, Cinelerra is working fine for me, on a ~1.5GHz system. The only problem I'm having is how to convert the Quicktime files it exports into somthing more useful, such as AVI or MPG. Cinelerra's AVI and MPG export won't work for me... But other than that, I think it's great!

Any ideas?

TIA,
- QS Computing.

I make it work too.But when I try to load file (avi) nothing happens,(mpg) only sound.

I tried LiVES and it sucks.

Sorry, It corrupts my display, forcing me to have to restart X.

That's my problem too. And apart from that, re-encoding video material results in quality loss. Especially so, I think, with quicktime. Quiktime was meant (by Apple?) to be used for streaming video over the web in considerable less quality than we're used to nowadays (DVD).

P.S. Did you try Cinelerra version 2? That should be able to save as Mpeg or Avi. It doesn't for me, but it SHOULD, if you believe the website.

I'm using the latest version of Cinelerra, 2.0. Cinelerra's Quicktime is actually Quicktime DV, it uses an uncompressed codec so there shouldn't be any quality loss.

Apparantly Kino can deal with Quicktime DV, but it doesn't seem to do anything for me. Does anyone know of a Quicktime DV -> AVI standalone convertor?

Thank you very much for the Quictime DV tip!!! But, what a nightmare: Quicktime DV cannot be converted by Kino, nor Avidemux2. They both use mpeg2enc.

Use mencoder/ffmpeg for this. Commands:

1. mencoder QuicktimeDV.dv -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:aspect=1.3333 -o cinelerra-temp.mpg


2. Use avidemux2 to convert the PCM audio to MP2. Click on: (audio codec buttons) FFm MP2 > configure 224 kbps > A process [F6]
Do not process the video of course.
Output format: Mpeg A + V (PS).

3. Author and burn your DVD!


This can be done much easier, and in one step, I'm sure. But then we'll have to read all the man pages of: mencoder, ffmepeg, mp2enc, mpeg2enc, a multiplexer, etc., etc.

Thanks for the tip. Could you tell me exactly what software I need for this and where to get it?

1. Mplayer:
Mencoder is part of the mplayer package (commandline).

2. Ffmpeg (commandline) may be standard installed on your system. If I'm not mistaken it's part of the mplayer package.

3. Mjpegtools:
Mpeg2enc (commandline) is part of the mjpegtools package. Avidemux (GUI) uses mpeg2enc from the mjpegtools.


It depends on the distribution you are using where to get good multimedia packages. Most are already on you distro's DVD. Debian: http://debian.video.free.fr
Suse: http://packman.links2linux.org/
Less interesting for multimedia for RPM packages (Red Hat/Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, etc., etc.): http://rpm.pbone.net/

Check using the Terminal Window (commandline) if the follwing programs are on your system after each package install: avidemux2, mencoder, mp2enc, mpeg2enc, ffmpeg,

Beware that mencoder has the largest man page ever made by man (about 5.000 lines!). The online version of the mplayer/mencoder man page is at: http://tivo-mplayer.sourceforge.net/...layer-man.html

If you want to capture TV/VHS material with your TV Card, all these codecs support input via the v4l2 driver I think (mencoder at least, it's the one I use).