[KLUG Members] Digital Video for Linux release

[Marr]

On Wednesday 14 April 2004 03:32pm, Rusty Yonkers wrote:
> Well here is some information from Rusty's "for what its worth
> department".
>
> I am currently working on starting a business making training
> (primarily computer training) videos.  I initially looked at the
> offerings on Linux.  What I found was very sparce and the stuff that
> was out there was VERY raw.

Rusty,

Thanks for your assessment of video editing. Just a couple of comments....

First off, it's "non-linear" editing, not "non-liner" editing, as you 
consistently wrote. With that nit picked, I think what you wrote is very 
informative. Based only on what I've heard (not ever having owned a Mac), 
your conclusion to use a Mac for video editing sounds wise. 

> I also looked at Kino.  It deserves the 0. numbers because 
> it is really rough!!!

I think this is a bit misleading and probably an overly-harsh assessment of 
Kino.

For those of us who are otherwise happy with our Linux boxes, and especially 
for those of us (like me) who've never used a professional video editor, Kino 
is very adequate as a basic video editor. I've used it many times to do basic 
cutting/splicing of scenes from DV-format video imported and exported through 
my FireWire-capable camcorder and I've found Kino to be a very usable and 
capable editor. Admittedly, I've not tried to use Kino's 'FX' capabilities at 
all (yet) to do things like wipes and other special effects, but the 
capability is there and I know that others have used it successfully. Kino 
also supports dedicated (external) hardware for jog/shuttle/etc control, but 
I've grown accustomed to the hotkeys and find it completely usable that way. 
Furthermore, I've successfully used Kino to export to a VCD/SVCD/
DVD-compatible formats for burning to optical media.

In short, I think anyone who's interested in video editing under Linux should 
give Kino a try. There's also a set of active user forums (fora?) for Kino 
and 'dvgrab' (the useful companion application that "grabs" DV video from 
FireWire, although that capability is also built-in to Kino) at:

   http://kino.schirmacher.de/dcforum?az=show_topics&forum=100

Thanks again for your assessment of video editing -- I found it interesting. 
Who knows, maybe one day I'll even break down and buy a Mac! Until then 
however, I'm going to keep happily using Kino under Linux.

Bill Marr