Stewart's Blog

Since my post Video editing on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid vs Windows Vista, I’ve now had a chance to play a bit more with the Video Editing options on Ubuntu Linux.

I have still be unable to get the community version of Cinelerra to install, but I have been able to install the one provided by Heroine Warrier.
Here’s my update to the post on the Ubuntu Forums:

Re: Unable to install Cinelerra
I have now installed Cinelerra, but I’ve had to use the Heroine Warrior version rather than the community developed version.

Having tried a few different tools I think that kdenlive is going to be the best solution for my current requirements. I installed using the builder rather than the one in the Ubuntu repositories, which was fairly straight forward. See: installing kdenlive on Ubuntu 8.10.

I’m still keeping an open mind and will be monitoring the progress of all the video editors on Linux. This is an exciting time for Video editing for Linux and I look forward to what the future brings.
__________________
–
Penguin Tutor
www.penguintutor.com - Linux Tutorials and unofficial LPIC practice exams

See: Post on Ubuntu Forums

Although the ffmpeg is now showing as available on kdenlive it does not read my camcorder files directly. I’ve therefore used WinFF as a front-end to ffmpeg to convert the files to DV quality AVI before importing them.

I have not been able to make any progress with getting Quicktime working on Windows Vista.

I’m hoping to edit some content soon and will post details of my creation when it’s ready.

Happy New Year to all my family, friends and visitors to my websites.

My first New Year resolution is to use the Wii Fit more!

My second is to look for more “Free” (open source) solutions to my computing needs to reduce my dependence on proprietary software even more. Let me explain …

Linux is finally ready to take over my life

I can’t remember exactly when I first tried Linux. I’ll try and figure it out some time. I can probably work it out from release dates of distros with a bit of research. It was about 10 years ago (or perhaps a bit longer), so it’s an appropriate time to take a look back. More significantly this has become the year that my usage of Linux has significantly shifted over to Linux and Windows has become the “I sometimes use” operating system. I now have a Linux only machine (Server / Firewall / Web Access) in my study, a Linux only machine in my bedroom (Media Player / wireless music to the lounge) and my main laptop is dual boot Linux and Windows Vista, but spends most of it’s time in Linux. In addition to this my websites are all hosted off Linux based servers.

Actually I also use Windows for “Work”, but that doesn’t count as that’s what we are forced to use there! This is about my home, hobby and website use.

Windows has changed a lot since the 90’s as well, so where appropriate I’ll also give reference to the “other” operating systems.

Installation

Back in the 90’s Linux was considered a geek operating system. One of the reasons for that is that it was so difficult to install. This actually applies to most other operating systems as well, although they get over that by pre-installing with all the appropriate drivers pre-loaded. I know there are lots of Windows Users that would not be able to install Windows from an original install CD and getting the appropriate drivers installed and sorting out their network / printers and other peripherals.

This has completely changed today. Firstly it’s now possible to get Linux pre-installed by some suppliers. As well as the Eee-PC that has brought Linux to the masses some of the traditional Wintel supplies such as Dell are now offering PCs with Linux.

In fact Linux is no becoming so prevalent that many people may have a Linux machine and not even realise it. There are some routers / firewalls / home networking devices that use Linux or other Open Source software as the basis for their operation. We are also now seeing PCs with an “instant on” feature allowing basic computer operations such as media player, web browser and email in an instant boot state powered by Linux, with the option to boot into Windows when they want to do something not covered by the instant on software.

For those that want to try Linux on a computer with Linux installed then there is the option to use a CD in a live mode, and to install on the hard disk along side windows the installers are only slightly more complicated than wizards used by some other software. As far as install of the operating system is concerned Linux is now ahead of other operating systems due to the Live CD (try before you install) option and in how simple install has become. It’s also ahead in the unique ability to install onto a USB flash disk (USB memory stick) so that you can take your entire operating system with you wherever you go.

This is a huge step forward compared with the text based installer than would ask complicated questions like “how much memory does your video card have” and it just keeps getting better.

Hardware Support / Device Drivers

The hardware support just keeps on getting better. In the past getting hardware to work was hit and miss, now almost all common hardware devices will install under Linux, often without needing to download any additional drivers or software. In fact it’s now reached the state where all my hardware works under Linux, but I have hardware that doesn’t work under Vista (old webcam, bluetooth adapter etc.)

Performance

Linux has always been ahead of Windows when installing on a low performance PC. One of the reasons for this was due to the less attractive user interface. This is still available for low performance machines, but with a high spec machine the graphical desktop special effects on Linux are in many ways better and work far faster.

One of the reasons I prefer to boot into Linux is that Windows Vista is so painfully slow. I have a fairly recent computer with a reasonable specification (1.8Ghz Dual-Core 64bit processor, 2GB RAM and NVidia graphics card) but Windows Vista is so slow as to be almost unusable. Linux just flies (Ubuntu 64bit with Gnome desktop with Compiz and many effects enabled), spinning cube desktop preview task switching don’t even get the processor to switch to high-speed mode, and even 3D Windows has a small impact on performance.

Based on my experience performance on Linux is much, much better than Windows Vista.

Desktop Software Available

Back in the 90s the software that was available for the desktop was very limited and what was there was very buggy (early versions of KOffice was almost impossible to use). This has seen a dramatic change. OpenOffice.org is now an easy rival to Microsoft Office (including some features only available in the top-end version of MS Office).

Photo editing is provided by The Gimp with a few alternatives that are less feature rich, but more user friendly. The Gimp is difficult to learn, but once mastered it rivals most of the Windows Software. I still occasionally boot into Windows Vista to run Photoshop Elements, but that is only when there is somewhere that Photoshop is a lot easier to use (e.g. fancy borders when I created a photo book recently), but that is getting very rare.

One thing that has until now had me running back to Windows is video editing. This may well change soon - See my recent post on editing HD video in Windows Vista (Adobe Premiere Elements) compared with the tools available in Linux.

Furthermore much of the software that I have bought for Windows no longer works since installing Windows Vista.

I have also now got some of the Windows Software programs that I still use working on Linux using Crossover Office (e.g. Adobe / Macromedia Flash Professional).

Server Software

Linux has always been strong with server software. In particular the Apache web servers runs the majority of Internet sites (Web Server Installation with Linux).

Server software has got better and Samba is doing a great job of providing connectivity with Windows machines. In fact I installed Samba when I was using Windows a lot and now use Samba mainly for Linux to Linux connectivity.

If it wasn’t for Linux providing a means to run a web server without paying for a license then I wouldn’t have had a website when I did and the cost would still be far higher today.

Cost of operating system

Linux has always been, and will always be free. In the past 10 years there have been numerous different versions of Windows and I’ve “bought” a new version at least 3 times since then. If you think you got Windows for free (legally) then read: Windows is Not Free - as part of my Upgrading Ubuntu post.

Looking at the operating system and software I’ve bought I could have saved myself quite a lot of money.

Of course back in the 90’s we were still on download. But it was possible to get a disk from magazine cover disks, either general PC magazines or from 2000 onwards Linux Format Magazine. Now if you don’t want to spend a fiver on a magazine you can download it for free, or even get a free CD in the post from Ubuntu.

Upgrading

In the past upgrading Linux could be as painful as a Windows upgrade. With the latest versions of Ubuntu this is very straight forward. Computer upgrade Utopia - Linux Ubuntu upgrade to 8.10

Summary - how good is Linux?

It sounds like that second resolution shouldn’t be too hard to keep. Linux is extremely good at the moment and just keeps getting better. I don’t think I will be quite ready to completely get rid of Windows by then end of 2009 (after all I do very occasionally play the odd game), but I should be getting closer.

This is being posted on my following blogs:

• Watkissonline - personal blog
• PenguinTutor - Linux Blog
• First Aid Quiz - First Aid Blog

One of the main reasons I still Windows Vista is for video editing. Just about everything else I’ve been able to do do in Linux which is by far my preferred operating system.

Now I have a HD flash based camcorder I tried to edit the video in Windows Vista using Adobe Premiere Elements. Despite posting a question to the Adobe forums, I have still not been able to get this working (although I’m still working on it).

Editing HD Video in Adobe Premiere Elements 3 on Windows Vista - Quicktime playing camcorder files - Error opening video files - mp4 h.264 - Error -50: an unknown error

As a result of the problems with Widnows Vista I thought I’ve give it another go in Linux. Although most of the Linux software is still at an early stage there seams to have been considerable progress since I last looked at it.

Playback of HD video files under Windows Vista (Quicktime) and Ubuntu Linux (ffplay)

The first thing I tried is basic playback of the files. Although I didn’t get Quicktime working on my computer I tried with a friends (very recent laptop) and that struggled with playing the files. I tried using ffplay on Ubuntu and performance was far better. It still struggles slightly with the HD video files, but is more watch-able than under Windows Vista.

Video editing on Ubuntu Linux - kdenlive

There are two programs for editing that I’ve tried so far. The first is kdenlive.
The version of kdenlive supplied in Ubuntu 8.10 is a very old version. There is however an excellent guide to installing the latest version on the Ubuntu community documentation - KdenliveSVN, which I followed.

The software installed without any major difficulties, although it does not appear to have detected the ffmpeg software which I something I still need to take a look at. As a result I had to load my camcorder files as Quicktime MOV files rather than H.264 mp4 files.

I have had a short “play” with it and it seams a very good piece of software. I’ll try and do a bit more with it and see if that meets my requirements.

It certainly seams good software available for free. It looks like it will be great when it finally reaches version 1 as it is still at 0.7.

Trying to install Cinelerra movie editor under Ubuntu Linux 8.10

Unfortunately I’ve not had quite as much success installing Cinelerra on Unbuntu Linux. Although there is an unofficial Ubuntu repository it doesn’t install due to some dependency problems. This appears to be due to a change in the packages.

I have posted a question to the Ubuntu Forums to see if anyone else can help:

Unable to install Cinelerra
I am trying to install Cinelerra on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, but not having much success.

I followed the instructions at: http://cvs.cinelerra.org/getting_cinelerra.php, but I get an error when trying to update, and Cinelerra is not available for install.

Synaptic sources lists as:

Type: Binary
URI: http://akirad.cinelerra.org/
Distribution: akirad-intrepid
Components: main
Comment: Akirad Repository - Mirror1

Cinelerra does not appear in Synaptic. When trying to install using apt-get - I get the error:

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
cinelerra: Depends: liblame0 (>= 3.96.1) but it is not installable
Depends: libopenexr2c2a (>= 1.2.2) but it is not installable
Depends: libquicktimehv (>= 1:2.1.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libquicktimehv (= 1:2.1.0-2svn20071122ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages


I tried installing liblame0 seperately, but I get the error:

Package liblame0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
libmp3lame0
E: Package liblame0 has no installation candidate


Is it safe to perform a force install? Or better still is there a fixed package available anywhere?

Thanks
__________________
–
Penguin Tutor
www.penguintutor.com - Linux Tutorials and unofficial LPIC practice exams

View the post at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6461224#post6461224

Summary

I seam to be having more success with editing the camcorder files on Linux than I had on Windows Vista. I’ve only spent a couple of hours looking at it so far, which is far less than I spent trying to get Quicktime to work on Windows, but I’ve made more progress.

I’m still trying to find a solution for both operating systems, and I’ll update on my success in a future post.

View this post on PenguinTutor.com - Editing HD Video on Ubuntu Linux (kdenlive / Cinelerra) - is this better than Windows Vista Adobe Premiere Elements 3 with Quicktime ?

Santa has bought me a nice new camcorder. It’s a Samsung VP-HMX10 HD Flash (SDHC) camcorder. The camcorder is fine, but I’m still working on a few problems with my video editing software Adobe Premiere Elements 3 (which I have purchased before, not the software supplied with the camcorder). There are problems with the supplied Cyberlink software as well.

This brings me onto my first point. If you are looking to buy a camcorder then the decision between buying a standard camcorder and a HD camcorder may not be as straight forward as it first seams.

Standard Definition vs. High Definition Camcorders

Firstly from a future proofing point of view it does make some sense to go for HD. In a few years time I guess that almost all camcorders will be capable of HD recording. My last camcorder is over 5 years old and is still usable. So I’m looking for a similar life out of my new camcorder.

Second consideration is the cost. A HD camcorder currently costs about 1.5 to 2 times the cost of a standard resolution camcorder. This means that if you buy a standard camcorder today, then in a few year times the HD camcorders will be down to the same price as standard camcorders today. As a result you can end up with a standard and high definition camcorder for little extra than buying a HD camcorder today.

The final consideration, which you may not be aware of is the computing power required if you intend to edit the HD video on a computer. I have a fairly recent laptop, which when purchased about a year ago was considered a pretty good specification. My laptop is borderline on being able to edit HD video. Even a brand new, reasonable specification, laptop is only just above the minimum requirement. If you plan to upgrade your computer in the future (I expect I’ll be upgrading before the end of the life of the camcorder) then a HD camcorder can be used in standard resolution and then future footage recorded in HD. Alternatively the video could be recorded at HD and then down-sampled when edited today, but keeping the original in HD for future editing.

I went for the Samsung camcorder as it fitted into a mid point between full HD and standard resolution, but only a little more expensive than a standard camcorder. The resolution is 1280 x 720 pixels for the Samsung VP-HMX10, which compares to 1920 x 1080 for full HD and 720 x 576 for normal PAL TV. The camcorder seams to use 16:9 widescreen when using the HD settings, but 4:3 non-widescreen when using standard definition, so I’m looking at recording HD, but only outputting as standard definition 16:9 at the moment.

Loading H.246 (mp4) video files in Adobe Premiere Elements 3

The camcorder files are saved as H246 / MP4 files.

Adobe Premiere Elements does not have a native import for H.246, but it can do so by using Quicktime as long as it is installed on the computer. There appears to be a problem with Quicktime and so as a result I am unable to important to Adobe Premiere Elements.

A search on the Internet shows that many other people appear to be having the same problem, but they don’t appear to offer a solution. I’ve therefore posted the following on the Quicktime support forum.

Whenever I try and load a movie in Quicktime then I get the message:

“Error -50: an unknown error occurred” and then it fails to load. Quicktime appears to be left running in the background, but there is no GUI.

The player can be launched without a file, but once loading a file it gives the same error.

I am specifically trying to load camcorder MP4 (H264) files, but this appears to happen with other file formats as well.

I have tried uninstalling from control-panel and then downloading and installing the latest version, but this still doesn’t work.

A search shows that lots of other people are having the same problem, but the only solution appears to be to install an older version of Quicktime. Is that a real solution? Is there somewhere that the older versions can be downloaded from?

More relevant is there some fix that allows this to work in the latest version?

I am running Windows Vista

View the support request on the Quicktime forum

Workarounds to enable editing of the video

At the moment I have a couple of workarounds, but unfortunately they involve reducing the quality. This can be done using tools such as ffmpeg, and SUPER.
ffmpeg is available on Linux and Windows. It is a powerful tool for transcoding between different video formats. SUPER is a Windows gui front end, that uses ffmpeg behind the scenes. The SUPER website is one of the worst websites I’ve ever seen and the software is not much better, but it is a bit easier than trying to work out the correct options for ffmpeg by hand.

I’m still working on getting Quicktime working, but maybe it’s time to give video editing on Linux another go.

If anyone knows how to fix the Quicktime problem please add a comment to this post.

It’s certainly been an eventful 2008, dominated by the birth of our son Oliver in February. It doesn’t seam as though 10 months has past, this year has really flown by.

I thought that it was hard work with one child before, but having a baby and a toddler at the same time is hard work, especially when I’ve got them on my own whilst Sarah is at work! I wouldn’t given them up for the world and I consider myself very lucky to have two beautiful children.

The last month has been very busy with Oliver’s Christening, our Christmas holiday to Center Parcs and on top of that I’ve been busy helping Amelia make Christmas decorations and I’ve been working on a home made Christmas present for some of our family. As a result I have neglected sending out a number of Christmas cards, so to everyone I missed this year - I am sorry and will try harder next year

One thing I try and do each Christmas is given an additional present in the form of a cash donation to a deserving course:

This year my donation is to The Child Bereavement Charity. I consider myself very fortunate to have two healthy young children and cannot imagine what it would be like for anyone who loses a child. I hope that my small donation will go some-way towards helping a caring family that has suffered the loss of a loved one.
Why not give an additional gift to a worthwhile cause this Christmas?

It just remains for me to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

• View this post (including Christmas picture) at watkissonline.co.uk

It’s Christmas Eve, we’ve run out of Christmas gift tags and the shops are out-of-stock.

So I’ve created my own print-your-self gift tags. These are easy enough to create using a bit of clipart and a vector drawing package such as Draw in OpenOffice.org. To save you the hassle you can just download and print off the attached.

Download Christmas Gift Tag Sheets (pdf)

• View Print-Your-Own Christmas Gift Tags at Watkissonline.co.uk
• Crafts with Kids: Large Christmas snow scene
• Book Review: The Christmas Book - Traditional, Environmentally Friendly Christmas with a touch of irony

Here’s an idea for a Christmas craft to do with a child. Simple to make and looks great. The materials should be available from any local craft store. In my case most of the items came from HobbyCraft.

The paper was bought on a roll, looking a bit like wallpaper. These cost over £4 each colour, but that includes plenty for future projects. The blue sky colour was cut to length and fastened to the wall using drawing pins. The same was done with the white for the snow, but the snow was cut in a wavy pattern as though it is drifted snow.
An alternative is to glue smaller pieces of paper together although that does not look as good.

Next the ribbon was glued around the paper as a frame. The ribbon was cut to size and glued on using a hot-melt glue gun [adult help required].

The snowmen and Christmas tree are made from foam. This is available in A5 sheets; it is often cheaper to buy a bundle of different colors. The snowmen were bought pre-cut as the basic shape, but the Christmas tree was measured using a template cut out of paper and cut out of a single sheet of foam.

The coal was created by cutting thin strips of black foam, cutting them to size and then trimming the corners in irregular patterns. These were stuck onto the main shapes before glueing the whole thing onto the paper on the wall.

To create the snow effect on the Christmas tree it was sprayed lightly with snow effect spray. The spray does not dry so care has to be taken when handling and sticking it to the wall.

Finally the snowflakes were added. These had been made the day before to allow the glitter to dry before handling. The shape of the snowflakes was punched out of plain card using a craft punch. The punch was quite expensive at about £8, but can be used for many years to come, you can also get smaller ones for about £3 - £4, but these were out of stock coming up to Christmas. A cheaper alternative is to use a snowflake stamp and white paint, although I was unable to find an appropriate snowflake stamps when I went looking. If using a stamp straight on the wall then be sure to use a small amount of a thick paint to reduce the risk of drips.

That’s it. The snowflakes had been made the day before (only a few minutes to make), but the rest was all done in less than a couple of hours and looks great!

• See this review on Watkissonline.co.uk
• Arts and Crafts for Children

The full title of the book is: The Christmas book - Discover a simpler, greener Christmas. Hand-crafted gifts and cards, Natural decorations, Traditional Recipes. Editor-in-chief Sheherazade Goldsmith.

The Christmas Book is about creating a more traditional, less commercialized, more handmade and eco-friendly Christmas. It includes Christmas Decorations, greeting cards, gifts and cooking. With items suitable for both adults and children.

There is a hint of irony in the book, which has a distinct theme of trying to be more environmentally friendly, with two pages just on sourcing your food locally, and avoiding buying Christmas trees that are from outside Britain. The irony is that this is a book created for the UK market, but printed and bound in China. Not only does this have a significant environmental impact in shipping half-way across the world (far more impact than buying carrots from the other end of England) but the book does not appear to have been made out of even partially recycled paper. They do say that they check their suppliers are not using child labour, but if this was published in a western country then that would be taken for granted.

I am mainly interested in the book for the recipes, of which we are planing to try a few out this year. Some of the home-made gifts do look very good, both professional and a bit more special that some commercial items. There are some items that can be made by children, but they will probably need quite a bit of adult help.

All-in-all a very good book. I’ve currently borrowed it from the local library, but I’ll be looking at getting my own copy before next Christmas. The only real complaint is that the publishers appear to have completely missed the spirit of the book in their manufacturer of the book.

• See this review on Watkissonline.co.uk
• Arts and Crafts for Children

I wouldn’t normally review something as boring as a vacuum cleaner, but I just thought I’d put out a word of warning to stop anyone else wasting money on this particular item.

I recently purchased a Russell Hobbs Hepa Cyclonic 1800 vacuum cleaner. We were in need of a new vacuum and this one was on a special offer price making it appear to be a very good price.

When first plugged it and turned on the vacuum sucked well, but then after a short period of time it just well “sucked”! The suction just wasn’t there meaning that it had to be emptied extremely frequently.

Secondly there was a large handle on the vacuum cleaner, but it wasn’t to pick it up by. Using the large handle lifted the storage cylinder out of the cleaner. There was a smaller less obvious handle to pick up the vaccum cleaner but the wrong handle was grabbed about 80% of the time.

The real problem was that it broke not long after we had bought the cleaner. The plastic clip used to empty the bag was very delicate and broke very easily. We had already binned the box and receipt so we threw the cleaner out.

On the plus side, the reason we had bought a new vacuum cleaner was because the brush on our old vacuum was broken and we needed to replace it. Ordering a replacement brush would cost almost as much as buying a new vacum. Fortunately the brush from the Hepa Cyclonic 1800 fitted perfectly, so we kept the brush and threw away the rest of the cleaner.

We are now back to using our old vacuum cleaner which is a Panasonic E-380. It is years old, but still going strong. It requires bags, but the suction is so much better and it does not need emptying anywhere nearly as often.

I have successfully upgraded the engine used for this blog on www.watkissonline.co.uk. This is powered by wordpress 2.7 running on Linux.

I was told about the update being available through dashboard rather than having to check for updates manually. Upgrading was fairly painless following the simple instructions.

During the last few major upgrades to Wordpress there have been some quite radical changes to the administration interface. I have not had much opportunity to try it out yet, but my first impression is that it looks very and more convenient. One thing that I do like over the last major upgrade is that the categories have moved back to the right in the new post panel - rather than being a collapsed section underneath the editing pane.

The only thing left now is that I use a collection of perl and php scripts to automatically copy my posts over to my other two sites www.firstaidquiz.com and www.penguintutor.com. Previous upgrades have made significant changes to the database structure and I’ve had to make changes to my scripts to keep in synch. Hopefully that won’t be the case this time, but I will find out soon. This post is being posted across all my sites to test this functionality is still working.