Video Editing

I have a video camera and several tapes with movies on them. I have always intended to take the movies off the tapes as they were recorded, and transfer them to my PC. Once on the PC, I want to edit the movies (delete scenes, add transitions, etc.) I also want to use the PC for either permanent archival (since disk is relatively cheap), or transfer the movies to CD / DVD for permanent storage. Actually, this is the biggest goal of all: turning my home movies into something on CD or DVD that I can easily watch and share. Starting the New Year off right, I decided I would take the plunge and finally do it. Here then is my tale.

Let's face it, watching home movies using your video camera and a collection of tapes is not too easy, nor too fun. It should be a lot easier, like popping in a CD or DVD into the DVD player, then sitting back on the sofa with the remote control.

The equipment:

• Panasonic MiniDV camcorder with 1394 (firewire) port
• IEEE 1394 (firewire) card for PC
• IEEE 1394 cable
• PC with over 68 GB of free space and 756MB of RAM (On my Debian system running the KDE desktop, I can get this information through the KDE Info Center)

Debian packages added

1. coriander (version 1.0.0-pre3-2)
2. dvgrab (version 1.6deb-1)
3. ftplib3 (version 3.1-1-5)
4. gscanbus (version 0.7.1-5)
5. libdc1394-10 (version 0.9.5-1)

Coriander control IEEE1394 digital camera

Coriander is a GUI that lets you control all the features of an IEEE-1394 Digital Camera complying with the DC Specifications v1.04 or later (see [1]).

dvgrab Grab digital video data via IEEE1394 links

dvgrab receives audio and video data from a digital camcorder via an IEEE1394 (widely known as FireWire) link and stores them into one of several file formats. It features autosplit of long video sequences, and supports saving the data as raw frames, AVI type 1, AVI type 2, Quicktime DV, or a series of JPEG stills.

gscanbus scan IEEE1394 (firewire/i.link) bus

gscanbus is a little bus scanning, testing and topology visualizing tool for the Linux IEEE1394 subsystem, with some AV/C support, especially for controlling Camcorders and VCRs. It is intended as a debugging tool for IEEE1394 development, but can also be used to simply check your IEEE1394 setup on Linux. (see [2])

libdc1394 high level programming interface for IEEE1394 digital camera

libdc1394 is a library that is intended to provide a high level programming interface for application developers who wish to control IEEE 1394 based cameras that conform to the 1394-based Digital Camera Specification (found at [3]). This package contains shared libraries.

libraw1394 library for direct access to IEEE 1394 bus (aka FireWire)

libraw1394 is the only supported interface to the kernel side raw1394 of the Linux IEEE-1394 subsystem, which provides direct access to the connected 1394 buses to user space. Through libraw1394/raw1394, applications can directly send to and receive from other nodes without requiring a kernel driver for the protocol in question.

libavc1394 control IEEE1394 audio/video devices

libavc1394 is a programming interface for the 1394 Trade Association AV/C (Audio/Video Control) Digital Interface Command Set. It allows you to remote control camcorders and similar devices connected to your computer via an IEEE1394 (aka Firewire) link. This package includes the libraries needed to run executables using libavc1394.

A worker machine in a Kubernetes cluster.