| David,
Thank
you for your assistance. I was pretty sure that some
people were using Cinelerra to do real production work.
I decided to give it "another whirl" today. I removed
the version I had installed and started following the
tutorial "Cinelerra Basics in 10 steps",
http://www.g-raffa.eu/Cinelerra/HOWTO/basics.html and
the version that seems to get installed is
1.2.2-0.3~ppa1~oneiric1 according to Synaptic; I don't
see how to tell which it is any other way.
I then
created the .bcast folder by doing:
and extracting the stuff to my home folder.
I decided that I would try to work on a video I am
preparing from a concert I recorded using three cameras
and two audio recorders. I started with an interim HD
.mp4 1920X1080 file which, according to ffmpeg has the
following metadata:
Metadata:
major_brand : mp42
minor_version : 1
compatible_brands: mp42isom
creation_time : 2012-01-04 13:17:17
Duration: 01:02:09.12, start: 0.000000, bitrate:
12197 kb/s
Stream #0.0(eng): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p,
1920x1080 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 11999 kb/s, 29.97 fps,
29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 30k tbc
Metadata:
creation_time : 2012-01-04 13:17:17
Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo,
s16, 191 kb/s
Metadata:
creation_time : 2012-01-04 13:17:17
Stream #0.2(eng): Data: mp4s / 0x7334706D, 4320
kb/s
Stream #0.3(eng): Data: mp4s / 0x7334706D, 3840
kb/s
Playing
it in VLC, it says essentially the same thing: codecs:
Video - MPEG-4 Video (mp4v); Audio -- MPEG AAC Audio
(mp4a).
Anyway,
if I try to load that file into Cinelerra, it dies
instantly with no error or warning messages.
It obviously does
not like the format! I don't know to what I should
convert it or how.
Are
there other settings that I should change from
whatever gets set up by the .bcast I used from
the tutorial?
I
decided to just play around with a regular .mpg file,
which I can at least load. I am not sure what to do
next, especially when I go to Render it after some
extremely simple edits. I am pretty sure that the
suggestion "OGG Theora/Vorbis" is NOT what I want. I
tried Windows .AVI, simply because that seemed to be
the easiest to render both the video and audio, but I
don't think that would be what I want if I were trying
to create HD video with audio at either 1080p or even
720p.
The
resulting video was HUGE, and would not play in VLC
Player. In Gnome Player, it says the codec is yuv2. I
will have to wait to see if it can be opened with
anything in Windows.
I
am not sure what to try next. Any hints?
Thanks,
Murray
--- On Wed, 1/11/12, David Armstrong <[email protected]> wrote:
From: David Armstrong <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [CinCV] Easy to understand work flows
with Cinelerra
To: [email protected]
Received: Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 1:50 AM
Murray,
Here is a brief reply from my experiences as a
user of Cinelerra.
First up, I have been using it solidly for about 4
years. I produce mainly short videos for the web
of athletics, but also concerts, events and a bit
of corporate. Some concerts run to over two
hours, but most pieces are 4 to 8 minutes for the
web. I started out with SD (PAL 25fps), but now
work mainly with with 720p HD. I chose 720p as it
is significant step up in output quality from SD,
progressive being suitable for sports, and not
over-taxing my current PC config (I struggle a bit
with 1080p in current set up).
I picked up Cinelerra because of cost. What I
saved on hardware and software (for a Mac and
FCP), I bought video equipment. Everytime I think
about switching to mac, I have a good lie down
then spend the money on video equipment. Adobe
Premier (or Production suite), be it on PC or mac,
is also expensive. Latest FCP X is down in price,
and mac hardware appears to be getting cheaper,
but there is still a gap between buying and me
building my own PC and installing linux.
As a an IT worker, I am familiar with linux and
command line interfacing. As such, the technical
aspects of it don't faze me much, and a few times
that has saved my bacon. For anyone with a phobia
about computer technicalities, Cinelerra might be
somewhat frustrating. But having said that, the
recent CV version has become much more stable to
an extent that maybe the issues of a few years
back have subsided.
As my requirements border on the professional
(deadlines, quality, timeliness etc.), I have
found Cinelerra to satisfies my requirements.
There are many things I take for granted that I
might not appreciate. I use multi video and audio
tracks all the time, have multi-camera situations,
graphic overlays, colour correction, timer
overlays, audio mixing etc etc. There may be
things I do that I can't do on the big two (FCP
and Premiere), but as I don't know those products
intimately, I can't compare. Even after 4 years,
I keep finding new things about Cinelerra.
I have dabbled a bit with Kino, Kdenlive and Open
Shot, but there are key elements that do not meet
my demands - either missing or I don't know how to
extract from those programs. I do use dvgrab
(part of Kino) to capture from tape and Kdenlive
sometimes for transcoding into a codec best suited
for Cinelerra. But now with DTE, dvgrab not used
as much. FFMPEG is a good companion to shape
things for inputs, as well if some peculiar output
is required.
Good references are "Cinelerra for Grandma" and
"Newbies Front" (by Rafaella @ http://www.g-raffa.eu/Cinelerra/),
plus some really good tutorials on youTube. It
took me some time to get into the groove with
Cinelerra, but I stay with it as it still does the
job, is powerful (which can get you into trouble),
I am familiar with it, and I would rather invest
in video equipment with any spare coin. It is
easy for a newbie to stuff things up , but being a
craft there are no guarantees with anything in
life.
If money was no object, I would have dived into
mac and FCP years ago. I don't know if I would
have been better or worse off (can't run a
parallel universe test on myself), but I don't
complain too much as I keep getting my videos out
as needed.
Must finish up, as I have a large puddle of videos
to edit!
cheers
David
On 11/01/12 13:04, Murray Strome wrote:
For
several years now, I have been following
the Cinelerra project, and have tried
doing some video editing with it.
However, I have not really been able to
make use of it. The first problem is
the confusion surrounding all the
formats/codecs. Then there is the
problem of how to use the apparently
necessary external programs (e.g.
ffmpeg, etc.). Finally, I find the whole
paradigm to be difficult to understand
and to use.
I believe that some really good videos
have been made using Cinelerra, but I
have not seen any good tutorials on a
complete workflowused to create them. I
have seen some that use or create web
videos (like .FLV).
From what little I have seen of Adobe's
video editing software, the general
appearance of Cinelerra seems to mimic
that a bit. I find Adobe's product to be
very unintuitive.
I have been using various versions of
Pinnacle Studio (for Windows,
unfortunately) for many years now. It is
one of the very few pieces of software
that keep me hanging on to Windows
(income tax software is the other),
which I would really like to "ditch",
especially before Windows 8 takes over
the world! I find it to be VERY
intuitive and easy to use (when it
works), however, when it does not work,
support is abysmal. They try, but their
technical support people are too
isolated from their engineering/software
development people to be able to provide
a solution.
While I would really like to do some HD
work with Cinelerra, I would like to
start with see aworkflow for something
relatively simple.
I would normally start with a video clip
in .AVI, .MOV or .MPG (720X480 NTSC
either 4:3 or 16:9) with sound. I would
like a very simple workflow that would
allow me to import such clips, edit them
by doing such simple things as colour
correction, sharpening, pan-zoom,
cutting out segments, then exporting a
file in one of those formats with the
original sound intact. I have looked at
many of the tutorials (as well as for
ffmpeg), but I have not really found
anything that I could follow and that
would work. I realize that it is at
least partly because it is difficult for
me to switch paradigms from Pinnacle to
what I suspect is the Cinelerra
approach: modelled on the Adobe. I have
played with lots of other software in
both Windows (e.g. Cyberlink and Nero)
and LINUX (avidemux, kdenlive, etc.) but
I have not found anything nearly as
intuitive as Pinnacle Studio.
I have also tried Avid Studio (now that
Avid has purchased Pinnacle), which is a
bit more like Adobe or Cinelerra. While
it shares a much better colour
correction capability with Cinelerra, it
is useless for me as it crashes all the
time and after nearly a year, the
technical support people have been
unable to figure out why (diagnostics
appear to somewhere between non-existent
to useless).
After all that long-winded preamble, is
there a good turorial that will tell me
how to import NTSC 720X480 4:3 or 16:9
with sound (.MPG, .AVI, .MOV or
.VOB=MPG), do that relatively simple
editing outlined above, then export to
any of those same formats with sound?
I will worry about High Definition
(1920X1080p) later, and also dealing
with multiple tracks can wait till I
figure out how to do something simpler.
Thanks for any pointers.
Murray
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