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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.== Applications ==
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)
==Stuff I installed or was already installed==
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.
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 http://www.1394ta.org).
scan IEEE1394 (firewire=== Players ===; [http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/iinfo.link) bushtml MPlayer] [[wp:MPlayer]] gscanbus : is a little bus scanning, testing and topology visualizingtool for one of the most essential players in the Linux IEEE1394 subsystem, Free Software world. The project works in tandem with some AV/C support,FFmpeg. MPlayer software includes the '''Mencoder''' commandline tool; VLC especially for controlling Camcorders : vlc is cross-platform and VCRswonderful. It is intended as adebugging tool for IEEE1394 development, but can also be used tosimply check even works on your IEEE1394 setup on Linuxphone.
http://gscanbus.berlios.de/
high level programming interface for IEEE1394 digital camera=== Transcoding ===libdc1394 is a library that is intended to provide a high levelprogramming interface for application developers who wish to controlIEEE 1394 based cameras that conform to the 1394-based Digital CameraSpecification (found at http://www.1394taprogrammer-art.org/).projects/arista-transcoder
This package contains shared libraries.== Mencoder and ffmpeg examples ==
library for direct access to IEEE 1394 bus (aka FireWire)libraw1394 is the If you only supported interface to the kernel side raw1394of the Linux IEEEwant a 5-1394 subsystemminute clip, which provides direct access the first thing to thedo would probablyconnected 1394 buses be to user spacethrow away the other 55 minutes of video. Through libraw1394/raw1394,That should make allapplications can directly send to and receive from other nodes withoutrequiring a kernel driver for the protocol in questionyour files load much faster.:)
control IEEE1394 audioYou can extract the part you want with mplayer like this:<source lang="bash">$ mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy infile -ss 00:10:09.5 -endpos 00:05:00 -o outfile</source>"-ovc" means "output video devicescodec", "-oac" means "output audio codec",libavc1394 is a programming interface for the 1394 Trade Association AV/C"-ss" argument skips ahead to 10 minutes 9.5 seconds into the(Audio/Video Control) Digital Interface Command Setvideo, and "-endpos" tells mencoder to transcode exactly 5 minutes. It allows you "copy" is a special codec name that tells mplayer tojust streamcopyremote control camcorders the audio and similar devices connected video streams to your computeroutput... essentially cutting out thevia an IEEE1394 (aka Firewire) link5-minute segment that you want.
formatting
There are several fully professional "Non-Linear Video Editing" applications in the free software realm. I've only briefly toyed with them so I can't tell you from personal experience how easy it might be to do a quick project. But Blender, OpenShot and KDENLiVE are amazing free software applications.
=== Editing ===
These are some of the free editing tools. More can be found at https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Category/Video
; [https://www.blender.org/ Blender]
: {{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznQweUD9x0|300|right|Basic Video Editing in Blender|frame}}
: is simply an awesome program.
: It is used mostly for 3-d design and modelling, but it also is quite capable at video editing.
: Blender works on both Windows and Linux. Lots of tutorials on YouTube (see right for example)
; [http://www.openshot.org/features/ OpenShot]
: {{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0nEHxtTjk4|300|right|OpenShot 2.0 reaches beta|frame}}
: is another Linux only NLVE, and might be more 'beginner friendly'
; [http://ffmpeg.org/ FFmpeg] [[wp:FFmpeg]]
: One of, if not ''the'' most useful tool in the land of multimedia is FFMPEG.
; [http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode Transcode] [[wp:Transcode_(software)]]
: tool is built using the libavcodec library of FFmpeg.
; [http://www.avidemux.org/ Avidemux] [[wp:Avidemux]] ([http://www.avidemux.org/admWiki/index.php?title=Main_Page wiki])
: Available in three user interfaces (GTK+, QT4 and cli) for all major operating systems.
: Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It's graphical user interface looks pretty similar to VirtualDub and most features known from VirtualDub are available too.
: Avidemux natively supports a great number of file types, such as AVI, MPEG, VOB, TS, MP4, ASF, OGM, MKV and FLV. At the same time Avidemux natively supports a wide range of Video/Audio formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, H.264/AVC, DV, HuffYUV, MP3, AAC, AC-3 and Vorbis. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities. Video-DVD or (S)VCD compliant streams can be created with easy-to-use "Auto" wizards. Multi-threading is supported! See also: [http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=126164 FAQ] at doom9
; [http://www.pitivi.org/ PiTiVi]
: is a video editor designed to be user-friendly and powerful
; [http://www.gopchop.org GOPchop]
: is a "Graphical MPEG Clipper" - a Linux-based GUI program for removing sections from a video file with the minimum amount of disturbance to the stream. It does this by writing specific "Group of Pictures" (GOP) sections to a new video file. The GOPs will decode correctly and the gaps won't be noticed.
; [http://handbrake.fr/ HandBrake] [[mw:HandBrake]]
: is a software application that can convert MPEG video (including DVD-Video) into a MPEG-4 video file in .mp4, .avi, .ogm, or .mkv containers.
; [http://kinodv.org/ kino] [[wp:Kino_(software)]]
: Kino is great for working with the DV format and IEEE 1394 (firewire) interfaces
; [http://kdenlive.org/ kdenlive] [[wp:Kdenlive]]
: A nice "pro-sumer" (hobbyist, close to professional needs) tool. Kdenlive has instructions on how to make and add a tutorial to their site, including how to create and upload desktop recordings onto vimeo.com http://kdenlive.org/contribution-manual/how-make-video-tutorial {{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kkaUd7nBKo|300|right|KDENLiVE|frame}} Currently only runs on Linux (but there are efforts to port it to Mac and Windows).
; [http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php cinelerra] [[wp:Cinelerra]] https://cinelerra-cv.org/
: is a significant project, aimed at the professional user. It's both a NLVE and a compositing application. There is a friendly fork called the Community Version (CV) as compared to the original Heroine Warrior (HW) version.
=== Video Slideshows ===
; [http://ffdiaporama.tuxfamily.org/ ffDiaporama] : for making a slideshow video, and it's not bad. However, it simply refused to render my project with a 'encode error'. It is also outdated (last release in 2014) and doesn't install properly on newer Ubuntu. The project itself is a fork of the even less maintained Diaporama
; [http://imagination.sourceforge.net/ Imagination] : is a simple tool. Last released in 2011, there is at least a note in 2017 that contributions are welcome. The results weren't bad either. But, I still like the power of OpenShot.
This package includes can also be done with ffmpeg:<source lang="bash">$ ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -itsoffset -00:10:09.5 -i infile -ss 00:10:09.5 -t 00:05:00 outfile</source>Note that the "-itsoffset" option must be specified to make sure thatA/V timestamps synchronize, and that its value must be the negative ofthe "-ss" argument. Note that, for BOTH mencoder and ffmpeg, the order of command-lineoptions and arguments is not just significant, it's HIGHLY significant. To transcode the video, specify the output codecs as the "vcodec" and"acodec" sub-options to the libavcodec option (-lavcopts):<source lang="bash">$ mencoder -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=ac3 infile -o outfile</source>Here, "lavc" means to use one of the libavcodec codecs, specified bythe "vcodec" and "acodec" suboptions to the "-lavcopts" option (whichspecifies options for libavcodec). mencoder has about a bazillion^2command line options, sub options, sub sub options, and can get quiteconfusing. ffmpeg can also transcode audio and video streams from onecodec to another. If you want to change the framerate of the video, you can usesomething like this:<source lang="bash">$ mencoder -ofps 25 -oac copy -ovc copy -o outfile infile</source>Note that, whenever you use "copy" as the codec, mplayer will copy the libraries needed corresponding stream to the output unmodified. That means it will ignoreany filters set up to modify the copied stream. This is a BIG gotcha. For example:<source lang="bash">$ mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -af volume=10 -o outfile infile</source>WILL NOT DO what you probably want, because with "-oac copy" the"volume" audio filters (specified with "-af") will be ignored, and theaudio in outfile will be at the SAME volume as the audio in infile. When capturing video in the US, you may also run executables usinginto problems withvideo interlacing. Fortunately, mencoder has deinterlacing videolibavc1394filters, for example "-vf pp=lb". == See Also ==[[Video Editing/My Story]] [[Category:Video]][[Category:Multimedia]][[Category:Howto]][[Category:Applications]]