video editing on linux
Friday, 15 August 2008
We bought a video camera little while back. I have been dragging my feet about getting a video editing ‘setup’—it is a dv camera so I need firewire to transfer plus the software to capture and edit. I’ve done some editing, but it has been a few years now. I woud expect everything to be very different than it was then. I tried out a few different software packages before, I settled down with Vegas (which was version 4.0, i believe back then, they are now on version 8.0 apparently).
This time around I’m a lot more entrenched into the open-source linux as my operating system world. Before, my laptop’s wifi couldn’t work in linux so that pretty much made it useless to me–so I never explored it very deeply. From my understanding Apple’s Final Cut is the way to go for professional editing & also their Final Cut Express is a good option for the average user. Instead of simply exploiting m$ and other exploitative software corporations, I have moved towards a more liberating legal way of computing. Sadly it seems that Linux is somewhat behind on development of viable open source video editing options, although there are a few options out there.
I know Jake has recently talked about trying out Ubuntu Studio. That seems like an easy way to go. I just wonder how much extra stuff it will install which I will never use. It will be running a desktop with plenty of hard drive, so the size isn’t the issue, but it just seems excessive for what I’ll be needing. But by reading their aim, it definitely helps me to see the benefits of it, from their wiki site:
Our aim is to make it more accessible for new users to get into the tools that GNU/Linux has to offer for multimedia creation and production. We also want to spotlight what’s out there, and show users tools they might not know to exist.
It seems like a good attempt for them to try to break into that design mac-centered world, with open-source. I know all those adobe hating adobe using folks out there would like to see the light.
In my initial searching, which I am still in, two names keep popping up: Kino & Cinerella. I just got my firewire pci adapter in today, since for some reason manufactures hate putting firewire ports on their boards except for the select models. I haven’t put it in yet, supposedly it should be pretty much plug n play with ubuntu 8.04. But after that task I will definitely be trying out at Kino & Cinerella, maybe Ubuntu Studio—I wonder if I could just apt-get install ubuntu-studio, without to do a compete reinstall.
A few additional resources: