Stream #0

Having recently installed Xubuntu Hardy Heron on a laptop, I also needed to install FFmpeg. This post is really just a couple of notes for myself, updating my earlier How-To post regarding installation of FFmpeg on Ubuntu Gutsy.

New apt-get install line:

sudo apt-get install liblame-dev libfaad2-dev libfaac-dev libxvidcore4-dev liba52-0.7.4 liba52-0.7.4-dev libx264-dev libdts-dev libswscale-dev checkinstall build-essential subversion

Here I've added the swscale development libraries. Swscale is used for scaling videos.

If you are ever stuck behind a firewall or proxy, especially one that you have no control over and which does not understand certain SVN commands, there is a nightly Subversion snapshot available for download from the FFmpeg website. This alleviates the need to checkout the source with SVN.

New configure line:

./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-liba52 --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid --enable-pthreads --enable-libx264 --enable-shared --enable-swscale --enable-avfilter --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter-lavf

Here I've removed --enable-pp as it is no longer recognised. And I've added --enable-swscale, --enable-avfilter, --enable-avfilter-lavf and --enable-postproc

Avfilter is the new FFmpeg library that replaces the deprecated vhook functionality.

One last note to self is to investigate the possibilities of AVIsynth scripting and FFmpeg.

It's worth noting that recently there has been a small flurry of activity around the LiVES Video Editing System

On March 5th, the LiVES News page notes that development has begun again, the old Yahoo News Group has been discontinued and a new discussion forum launched. There's not a whole lot of new discussion happening there at the moment.

The LiVES download page also shows a new version rolled out on March 10th - 0.9.8.9. Essentially this release fixes a bug in version 0.9.8.8 which prevented clips from being encoded - a fairly fundamental problem one would have thought.

It's good to see some new work happening on the LiVES project.

An interesting article surfaced today talking about Linux based systems used in Hollywood, specifically on a new Paramount feature production, The Spiderwick Chronicles directed by Mark Waters.

The article has lots of good screen shots showing software in use, but I guess a little unfortunately many of the applications are proprietary and Blender doesn't get a look in. Still, it's encouraging to know how the Linux OS has penetrated this sphere.

Here's the article.

Yesterday a new version of popular Linux video editing tool, Kino, was released. The new version is 1.3.0 and contains the following changes:

• Updated export scripts for FFmpeg changes (x264, mp3)
• Improved speed on SMP systems by enabling FFmpeg multi-threaded codecs
• Improved import (DV conversion) progress dialog
• Added gstreamer-based Ogg Theora to the blip.tv publishing script
• Added quality level option to the blip.tv publishing script
• Updated Hungarian translation
• Added Ukranian translation by Yuri Chornoivan

Congratulations to Dan Kennedy and the team.

The new source files can be downloaded directly from here.

The Open Movie Editor project has just released a new version of this Linux based non-linear video editing tool.

Amongst the highlights of this new version are the following items:

• Inclusion of a new colour scheme called Shark
• Colour scheme preferences are now restored at restart
  

Full release notes are available on Sourceforge.

While only a minor update to Open Movie Editor, coming just one week after the previous release on February 3rd, this source does include my first codebase contribution to an Open Source project - the Shark colour scheme.

Download the new version of Open Movie Editor.