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:wget
http://www.g-raffa.eu/Cinelerra/HOWTO/Cinelerra_rc-NTSC.tar.gz && tar xvf
Cinelerra_rc-NTSC.tar.gz && mv NTSCCinelerraSettings/Cinelerra_rc
.bcast/Cinelerra_rc && rm Cinelerra_rc-NTSC.tar.gz
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 <bod...@netspace.net.au> wrote:
From: David Armstrong <bod...@netspace.net.au>
Subject: Re: [CinCV] Easy to understand work flows with Cinelerra
To: cinelerra@skolelinux.no
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
