Ubuntu 8.10 64 Bit

I wonder if anybody can shed some light on running Ubuntu 8.10 (or 8.04) in 64 Bit. My plan is to run Cinelerra and Kino. I don't know if it's going to be too much of a pain (though I can almost feel it already, I could have bought a Dell or a Mac, but I am such a masochist). My excuse for a possible new system is so hardware won't be holding me back to be the greatest one man movie maker ever. My preferred or compromised video format is the going to be HDV, I think. I have researched online for a day or so, and I couldn't find a lot of timely information. If anyone has experience, please drop me a few lines. Much appreciated.

Byrant Park And Other Random Bull Shit From Me

Bryant Park is soon to be overrun by office drones. Let's bring back the drug dealers and crack whores. And Times Square too.

Apple is up more than 3 dollars at 188. The stock is freaking awesome. You got to believe in the Apple brand. People are going to pay a premium just to look like Justin Long. You know even movie mogul Drew Barrymore is attracted to this Mac guy. Apple's propaganda machine is working in full throttle. What can I tell you? The new 3G iPhone's debut is imminent and Jobs can't do no harm. I expect the stock to reach $200 later this year. But if you lose your shirt and underwear don't blame it on me. In the interest of full disclosure, like I even have my pictures somewhere here, I personally own a few shares of Apple stock because I believe people are generally gullible (no, because I like the idea of living dangerously as in owning stocks).

I finally was able to install Cinelerra. This is some piece of software. Looks to me it's some hardcore video editor designed by engineers for engineers. If you have some room temperature IQ that's really not for you. My very first impression is fuck, this shit is overwhelming. Anyway, my initial founding is this is unlike other Linux video editors which are like too easily broken toys, I wasn't able to crash it by randomly selecting a feature. My major problem though was when I load a dv (from my previous capture from Kino), the video and audio aren't playing in synchronization. The video to my aging eyes looked slower. So I have this huge problem right off the bat. I am not even talking about editing, cutting and pasting, or making Star War IX. I mean this shit doesn't play my dv right. I am an humble person, I tend to blame anything on my own shortcomings. And I don't know if I have to configure something to make it right. As in Kino, I didn't have to do shit to capture and play the dv with audio and video in sync. I don't know if there is anything to do with the fact that the dv was captured in Kino but not in Cinelerra, my hunch is it shouldn't matter. But what do I know?

Enough BS, let me grab something to eat first. My dear ghost readers, you just have to wait for me, just don't hold your breath now.

Video Editor

So far I am not too happy with Kino in Ubuntu. For sometimes peculiar reason, some the dv clips in the project would just speed up. I remember the last time I used it in Ubuntu 7.10 the same thing happened. And the sound mix doesn't work well at all.

I wonder if I did anything wrong. No, I didn't. Wonder what's out there. The last time I tried another editor, it was so bad, every time I opened a clip and the program just closed, it's as if I quit the program, so basically it's unusable.

Look like I have to download another program other than kino. Hope the learning curve won't be steep. Well, if anything, the slow motion with pan and zoom works pretty well.

I may have to try Cinelerra?

UPDATE 6/3/08
Oh yes. So after all AMD is not Intel, it's better. I just needed to pick the right binary for my AMD processor which is cinelerra-k7gl and now I can run the application OK. Before that I tried some other Linux video apps, except for Kino which isn't all that bad, the rest are just simply unusable, the program just closes by itself. Now comes the hard part, actually using the program to edit video. Gosh, I want to edit some HD, but then I need to buy a HD camcorder, a new workstation and oh well, you got the picture.

Taekwondo

note: with repeat slow motion and zoom in.

(52 second video with audio, if you use Firefox 3 or even 2 under Ubuntu 8.04, it may crash your browser. Notice that it takes two guys to hold the board when Harry strikes, he generates so much force with his pint sized body.)

This is done by Kino. Unfortunately the interface and functionalities leave something to be desired. I was trying to mix a sound track, but alas, it wasn't doing it right. The video was slowing down even I didn't check the speed and the sound became garbled. And when I went back to edit mode, the speed of the whole project went up. So that was weird. I closed the entire project and re-opened and it at least then played normal. So forget about mixing a sound track and do the opening and closing credit, I just rendered the the dv to MPEG. I did the first run IN MPEG1, which gave me a smaller file 8MB but longer rendering. And this MPEG2 took shorter to render but got a much bigger file, 23MB. Enjoy.

Taekwondo

Mom, this is especially for you.

(The video is about 1:27 minute long, the audio is kind of loud I think, maybe because I am using a pair of earphones to edit ....)

Just whipped up this short video using Windows Movie Maker. The original was shot using a Canon G3. I can't suck the video out using Vista as there is no driver for my old G3. Ubuntu is my friend, so it sucked out the AVI video OKAY. But unfortunately kino can't edit the AVI. So I just have to move the AVI back to my VISTA notebook over my wifi by dancing some samba and did some quick and dirty video editing on my notebook. The Windows Media Maker wasn't all that bad for what I tried to do, until I tried to render or what Windows call publish the video. I just clicked publish and the notebook started thinking ... then I went to take a shower. When I was done showering like 10 minutes later, it was still thinking and then I noticed the title bar says not responding. Good thing I saved the project first before publishing. The second time I tried to publish, it went okay but the only format I can publish to was WMV. I was like where is my mpeg? Anyway, Google is okay with wmv. So wmv it is. Enjoy.

Happy New Year Mom Part II

51 seconds long.

This is fresh off the camcorder, my 8-year-old JVC GR-DVM70. Video captured and rendered using Kino. We will probably hit Chinatown tomorrow. The weather is unseasonably warm.

Yes, that's me in the beginning of the clip. Oh, goodness, I pimped out my kids and myself too just to be fair, for an audience of like 5 or something.

Crazy

This is not Cloverfield. This is better. Original footage shot using a JVC GR-DVM70 U. Video captured via FireWire in Ubuntu 7.10. The FireWire combo card is listed a few posts below. I downloaded Kino and barely understand how things work. I rendered this video in mpeg2. And uploaded to blogger. The original mpeg2 is 720x480 30 frames per second, 42.6MB in size.

There is this good post detailing how to get FireWire, Kino, and essentially video capture going in Ubuntu 7.10. The poster uses a different or better FireWire card while your truly uses a cheapo combo card as told in my post below. Let me get the permalink ....