Video

I started video editing a few years ago on a Windows platform using Adobe Premiere Pro. Since then, I have been doing more and more work on a Linux platform. So, I'd like to see what skills I can transfer over to an editor on Linux. Here are a few notes on my progress through evaluating a number of video editors on Linux.

I started with pitivi v0.98. It can handle a large movie file, but seems to have a very basic editor layout. The timeline is hour:minute.second based, no frame counters. It has very few if any right click menus. Seems to have a decent sized effect library. Probably good for very simple editing tasks when re-arranging and cuttinga few source inputs. It was my first introduction to that fact that I could cut segments, but couldn't seem to record them as individual clips. Single stepping can be slow.

I next installed openshot v1.4.3. To make it work, I needed to install the ladspa-sdk package, and also needed to ensure that I have the locale variable LC_ALL set (fixed by adding something appropriate as an export in ~/.bashrc). It too uses a h:mm.sec time line. For the transitions, it has a visual selection list. Effects also have a visual flavour. It seems to have an even simpler interface than does Pitivi. 2017/11/14 - It seems that the Stretch package library has a very old version. Yesterday, from the openshot web site, release4 2.4.1 is available. Debian package manager says OpenShot is orphaned. So... will may be I should download the appImage directly from the web site and give it a try.

Reading some review articles, many ranked kdenlive highly. The packages version is v16.12.2. This interface is more featureful and has a better resemblance to Adobe Premiere Pro. And it does show a time line with hour:minute:frame_count. I can't seem to put clips in the project bin either, but that seems to be par for the course. Of the three editors evaluated, this would be my working editor.

I next took a look at shotcut v17.11.07. It uses a different interface from the first three I evaluated. Forward and back stepping is quite responsive. But when placing a large movie in to the timeline, the interface bogs down. Once it 'looked at it', responsiveness seemed to be restored. The traditional zoom and pan mouse operations don't seem to work. I went to the time slot I wanted, performed a right click and tried a cut. I now don't have anything in the main view, or on the timeline. Not quite intuitively obvious what it is doing. It seems to have a playlist, but to get to that point may require too many other battles. Ok, this one isn't for me.

2018/02/12 I came across a link to Cinelerra 7.0 - I've seen the name around, and is on my todo list to have a look.

2019/06/15 - a Hacker News article referring to Introducing Olive, new non-linear video editor

2018/02/12 Another opened page on my browser: Flowblade is a multitrack non-linear video editor for Linux, "designed to provide a fast, precise and robust editing experience. Flowblade employs a film-style insert editing model as workflow. In insert editing clips are generally placed tightly after other clips when they are inserted on the timeline. Edits are fine tuned by trimming in and out points of clips or by cutting and deleting parts of clips." -- looks to be Python based so not sure how fast it is for certain types of functions.

2018/03/12 BOB Konferenz’18 in Berlin, a summary article, talks about:

The conference started with a keynote on a very interesting topic, A language for making movies. Using Non Linear Video Editor for making movies was time consuming, ofcourse. The speaker talked about the struggle of merging presentation, video and high quality sound for conferences. Clearly, Automation was needed here which could be achieved by 1. Making a plugin for non linear VE, 2. Writing a UI automation tool like an operating system macro 3. Using shell scripting. However, dealing shell script for this purpose could be time consuming no matter how great shell scripts are. While the goal to achieve here was to edit videos using a language only and let the language get in the way of solving this. In other words a DSL Domain-Specific Language was required along with Syntax Parse. Video (https://lang.video/)is a language for making movies which integrated with Racket ecosystem. It combines the power of a traditional video editor with the capabilities of a full programming language.

The meat can be found at The Video Language Guide. Which is something derived from:

Racket is a general-purpose programming language as well as the world’s first ecosystem for developing and deploying new languages. Make your dream language, or use one of the dozens already available, ...

Over the last few weeks, I've been delving into the world of Interactive Digital Media. This has included investigation into interactive environments, programming tools, modelling suites, supporting hardware, algorithms, plus a host of related and unrelated alley-ways. Continue reading "Interactive Digital Media" »

Ever wonder how people create vibrant looking pictures and scenes? The mixing of pleasing colour combinations is one aspect of good artistry. In digitally reproduced images, there is another aspect.

Our eyes can perceive scenes in a human form of high definition. But when our eyes look at digitally rendered scenes, non colour corrected scenes can appear flat and un-appealing.

To overcome the limitations of low resolution devices, techniques have been developed to trick the eye (and associated visual interpretations) to perceiving scene pleasantness. Much science has gone into understanding the why's and wherefore's of this. One starting site with links to a wealth of information is Cinematic Color.

The lead off paper on that site, Cinematic Color: From Your Monitor to the Big Screen provides a good over view. Buried in the middle of that paper is a innocuous chart with a single curve on it. The curve is commonly referred to as the S-curve of colour grading.

In essence, you want to make sure that there are lots of details in the darker areas, and lots of detail in the bright areas. (blowing out the high-lights is a no-no, but even this rule is can be broken in artistically pleasing ways) Anyway, this curve sacrifices the mid-tones. But the sacrifice seems to make all things right.

In 2009, Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society presented 24 Hours to Curtain: six writers start at 8pm Friday night, are given an opening line, a closing line, and a prop. Their job is to write a 10 minute play, and have it finished by 8am Saturday morning, when the directors and actors come in to learn their lines, block the stage, rehearse, and are ready to put the production on at 8pm Saturday night. This is Severance Pay, one of the plays written over night and presented the next day. And I had just received a Panasonic HVX200A. This is one of my first attempts at video. The first couple of minutes scroll some dialog as I missed the opening.

During an upgrade cycle of my desktop computer, when I was prompted to reboot, the computer would not reboot. It seems something corrupted the booting portion of the drive.

Yes, I know I'm supposed to back stuff up before performing changes, but in this case I didn't. So... I needed to find a way to recover information off of a raid 10 drive array. I had two sets of two mirrored drives in a striped configuration: Raid 10.

As they were controlled by an Adaptec controllor card, I thought Adaptec might help. They were unable to offer direct assistance, but they did suggest that the sofware offered by Runtime Software would be of use.

I used Runtime Software's tools to examine my drives, and used their paid service to determine the drive configuration. The response back from their paid service indicated that my drives were beyond recovery. Perhaps the settings I used were incorrect for the data capture their software provided to their 'human examiners'. But I would have thought they'd have an idea of what would be correct.

After receiving that bit of bad news, I decided to try data recovery myself. I licensed their tools and gave it a try. Long story short, I was able to recover everything I needed.

The following video shows the steps I used to recover data from a drive array controlled with an Adaptec AH2910SA Drive controller controlling four drives in a Raid 10 configuration.