Sam Javor

I wrote a tiny tutorial to cover some of the more complicated basics for Linux Video Production incase anyone wants to give linux a shot on their workstation. If anyone has other walkthroughs they want to write I'm collecting them for a Linux Media Production tutorial site. I am posting this in a couple forums. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linux based media production contimues to develope and many tools have been produced to accomplish each task necessary to capture, edit, and output to DVD a video. ... the problem is the documentation is very sparse. I personally use DeMuDi Linux 1.3.0 RC1 because it is tailored for Audio production and is fairly complete along those lines. To capture footage - I havn't tried yet but most people seem to use Kino which is a very straight forward program like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie... a basic "splicer" Editing is done in Cinelerra. There are two versions of Cinelerra... the origional is released by Heroine Warrior and another is a an unofficial development group called Cinelerra CVS. The editor is along the lines of Primier or Final Cut... however it has two things .err....three... three things going against it. #1 Documentation is practically nonexistant. #2 It has been touted as the worst usersupport in the world... the sourceforge forums are a wasteland. #3 It's often called a resource hog... and #4 it's hard to compile... but I installed from binary. Installing Cinelerra from "binary" is fairly easy though not straight forward for new users... a seperate program called Alien is necessary when running DeMuDi. Alien can convert Red Hat packages (.rpm) to Debian packages (.deb) which are then easy to install. The commands will look like: For x86 users download the Athlon RPM from the Cinelerra website apt-get install alien (to install alien) alien -d cinelerra-package.rpm (to create a cinelerra-package.deb) dpkg -i cinelerra-package.deb (installs cinelerra) For me Cinelerra is then started from the commandl line by: cinelerra It should also be noted that programs can be started as root user for convient access to all devices (and the power to destroy them!) by: su (which prompts for the root password...and then entering the command) Editing in Cinelrra - I havn't done much yet :) Exporting from Cinelerra... I render to Quicktime for Linux... and go do something else for the next hour or so... this creates a DV video. Creating the DVD file system was a bit odd and took me a while to figure it out... but is easy to do once the right command is found. ffmpeg may need to be installed: apt-get install ffmpeg and then to convert the big DV file to a useable fullscreen mpeg file: ffmpeg -i imovie.dv -target ntsc-dvd -aspect 4:3 movie.mpg (ugly eh? this was the second hardest thing to figure out... the are different varialbles if the movie is widescreen or PAL) Then to actually make the DVD file system use dvdauthor... if not installed can you guess how to install it? yep: apt-get install dvdauthor THE UGLYNESS at the moment is you actually have to type an XML file to create menues for the dvd... right now I use the absolute minimun. In a text editor type: <dvdauthor> <vmgm> </vmgm> <titleset> <titles> <pgc> <vob file="invisible2.mpg" /> </pgc> </titles> </titleset> </dvdauthor> (replace invisible2.mpg with your mpg... and save it as moviename.xml ...this DVD will start playing automatically with no menu.) then to create the DVD file system it's only: dvdauthor -x moviename.xml (this will create the dvd directory and the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directory with all the files necessary to burn a DVD... To actually burn a DVD I use K3b ...because it's pretty... DeMuDi 1.3.0 RC1 does not come with it for some reason... simply: apt-get install k3b (you will need to uninstall Rosegarden which is ok) Then in k3b click: file->new project-> New Video DVD Project ... then just load all the files in the proper directory and burn... then enjoy. peace Sam Javor zekthedeadcow@hotmail.com

when in doubt go to the source... http://www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/sum_film.htm http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/...s_airport.jhtml http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/tib/tib5201.shtml

I am just starting to get paying work doing a 30min training video for a "small" national corporation... I'm charging $30 an hour. I expect the project to take (may change) 20 hours... a competing bid was $10K... but I think that company was going a bit overboard... now I have go get "legitimate" and get a DBA and vendor's license :) I think I'll start as a sole proprietorship and maybe go to LLC if I get bigger...but it's just me and I might hire crew on larger projects...

The Specs: http://www.rode.com.au/downloads/VideoMic_WPaper_v2.pdf http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/pdfs/mke300.pdf The Rode apparently has much better frequency response

I use my DAW... on last project is was: Compaq Presario AMD Semptron 3000+ 2Ghz 768MB RAM XP Pro Cakewalk SONAR 2.2XL Aardvark Q10 soundcard now it's the same Compaq DeMuDi Linux (Ardour, etc) Edirol FA-66 soundcard Most of the sound is the engineer beind the console and the talent behind the mic.

If your sound guy is good at editing doing it in post isn't that hard... just time consuming... doing it after closing my be noticable due to the lack of people... if you do it in post be sure to take sound anyway so you having something to sync to... and so you can reference exactly what the person said...

I personally use an Edirol FA-66 on a Linux workstation... it nice... has buit in limiters and is very quiet... more so than my previous Aardvark Q10. In stead of Creative I would suggest M-Audio... creative is generally disrespected in the home recording world... and generally for pretty good reason :) The rule of thumb is that if you can buy the soundcard in a regular computer store then it's not acceptable for recording... you should go to a music instrument store like Guitar Center. then hang out at some home recording forums like http://homerecording.com/bbs/ or http://homerecordingconnection.com and learn how to actualy record audio... though bear in mind that most people at those fourms won't be much use in information on shotgun mics... another great site is: http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

I did a direct to disk system on my first DV feature (Invisible Bridges) last year... it was a Panasonic WV-F250 with studio adapter going into a datavideo DAC-100 going into an iBook G4... being that the entire system (including Ibook) was probably around $2500 it yeilded great pictues even over s-video. we hired some editors from the local CBS affiliate and they were impressed. The problems though: 1. old camera so Low light performance was awful... however daylight was beautiful... 2. it was quite a rig to haul around... though I did buy it to get used to dealing with large cameras...and a big camera scares away pesky police 3. Data storage... we shot a lot of footage grand total of about 2TB I think... 4. Hard drive failures ...we lost 3 hard drives and one during the backup process... so we had to redo 300gig of DV25 footage... which wasn't so bad as it was our first three months...and we got better over the entire project... movie came out better because of it.... but I spent three days puking and still had to send one drive to the local lab to be recoverd at $500 When I do it again... I'll probably use a RAID 5 setup for data integrety...

...and more bluntness from me :) ...you have a fairly basic layout... however when I viewed the source I about died... everything you do can be done in CSS with a lot less overhead... I'm a fan of simple pages...mainly because I host mine myself on a home server which is really old. http://asg.hopto.org The big problems: 1. you have no actual text or even discription and keyword meta tags... these are necessary for search engines to index your page...and though not really necessary I suppose for cinematography... for blind people to have the page read by software. 2. because it is image based it is not resizable...so people with the still very common 800x600 graphics have a hard time reading as they have to scroll horizontally...ie the page edge cuts off at John.

Depending on the ammount of clips 250gig might do it... my first DV feature which is almost done I think is around 500gig in raw footage... including backups and work files I think we're around 1.5TB... of course we've had 3 drives suffer head crashes... next time I'll probably use a low density SCSI raid array instead of high density ATA drives and backup on tape...but we also recorded direct to disk so there was no tape in the recording process.

if you're backing up data you could use a filesplitter to break it up into smaller segments...however if it's for long term storage if one disk fails the entire thing will. Don't try to use a harddisk as a backup medium as they arn't meant to do that as they are very fragile. You could buy a archival tape drive as thats how data is "supposed" to be backed up.

Basically: Sensor size is important because each sensor has about the same ammount of pixels so as the sensor get smaller they get crammed together more and more which adds noise. "professional" camcorders usually have atleast 1/2" sensors and more commonly 2/3" sensors. Thgood prosumer ones usually have a 1/3" sensor. multiple sensors are used to capture each primary color independently which can do a lot of things... if a pixel goes bad in the red channels it won't affect green or blue, there is less noise, color correction can be internally aplied to one channel without effecting the others. If you have a digital8 camera I would spend the money on other necessary equipment like a good microphone (atleast an AT835) , lights, and a sound recorder. Each of those could easially burn through $1k on their own and they have a much longer life expectancy :) Being a student it will probably be a lot easier to meet people with a camera than a lighting package or microphone...and therefore if you have a decient lighting or sound package you would quickly make friends :) You're going to be better off with an ok camera and an ok lighting and sound package than a good camera with no lighting and sound package.

My impression is that it's basically the modern version of the AG450 which was my first camera. The bad is that it's a single chip camera...and 1/4 inch sensor. Finding a better camera depends on a lot... like how tech saavy and creative you are. I used an old ENG S-VHS camera a Panasonic WV-F250 that for my feature... I added a studio adapter and recorded digitally... minus the iBook the cost of the system is in your price range... however it's an awful lot of crap to lug around...and had increadably poor low light performance... but when lit looks very nice for less than $1k. Even when analog most eople who should know "ie my video profs and editors" usually said "wow that looks nice" It depends on how long you're going to spend on your projects too... we spent about 6 months shooting so we needed a camera system that would last that long and be good enough to make it worth while... whithout breaking the bank... as money is often best spent infront of the camera.

just as odd myself and my great great grand father (US civil war) played the drums and were in the military and even have practically the same expression on our face in our miitary photograhs. military service has also been very other generation in my family. Also, my mom wanted to get an art degree but her dad made her get an accounting degree :) My dad has a fairly successful handyman business. I think alot of it is based on non-cosmopolitan lifestyle in that children knew exactly what it was that their parent did for a living and for fun and could step in and replace them at nearly a moment notice in case of disability...and that that practice was more accepted in the past :) ie can I fill in as an accountant when my mom is sick? no... could I fill in for my dad to do home repairs? yes.

I can only suggest google... if you don't understanding a topic google it... then google everything in each article you don't understand...especially acronyms... and maybe pick up a cheap camera (and I mean really cheap) to screw around with for a bit to apply some of the knowledge and to find new questions to ask... if you want to stick to film then you can get a 35mm still camera for next to nothing now and the basics still apply. I should also add that you need to read multiple article on the same topic :) Then you get a good perspective on the general concensous

On Invisible Bridges we used a iBook G4 as a hard disk recorder and went tapeless. However it is now aparent to me that the ibook g4's will probably suffer the same recall/fate or worse that the ibook g3's did... ie the mother board will burn up. Our G4 died two weeks ago... fortunatly it had 3 weeks left on applecare. With mac if you don't get applecar you are screwed. Plus Mac tech support is awful...had aplecare and a mac genous tell me data recovery was impossible... but it is possible... just twice as expnsive with less than half the features one would expect for NTFS. There are some significant short comings in Mac archetecture... like not being NUMA aware and having a max of 2 processors. sure RISC is nice now but I think parallel processing is where it's going to be and the *nixs do that best...especially the free ones $$$ :) Personally, I'm going 100% open source especially after my sound card manufacturer (Aardvark Audio) went belly up and gave all of us customers the finger by not GPLing the drivers. The main reason for the switch though is that there's no license fees :) My personal laptop that I just bought for $30 is an IBM thinkpad 760 which I am finagelng linux onto. :) I only want it as a word processor though.

well I've only known of people being beatup by the teamsters and the american federation of musicians... :)

I will admit having an army of coders would help a little :) Phil, was that question directed towards me? if so, no... and if not... no. edit----- there... got the signature thing going now...

I want to make a "vision of the future" mixed with some influence from hollywood roman epics like Sparticus and Cleopatra...as an indie I want to do this as 3D motion capture and be an animation every scifi geek knows ... like akira... just distinctly american. i choose 3D animation as it is an inexpensive format that can be competitive with majors if proper care is taken... otherwise I would only do it as 35mm and it would be increadably expensive.

Having spent 3 years as a drummer in a regional level band in the Midwest I know that the music industry is nowhere near as sleezy as the film/video industry. I am assumeing this thread is about this guy http://www.ukscreen.com/board/Casting/0/27008 ... ya got to love it when indie shorts have "casting divisions" and can say they have a "great cast" in their cast call :/ I don't understand their mentality... in music we called it "rockstar mentality" it create a persona that is decidedly out of league with the person wielding it. Not only does this make them look like an a**ho** but they usually fail in their plans because they simply don't have it in them to succeed at the level they think they should be at. While shooting our first DV feature (Invisible Bridges) all three of us (myself {Sam Javor}, Fawn Cay, and David Conrad) who are the producers will easially admit that we don't really know what we're doing... we have a combined total of 4 shorts between us..in fact we were talking a couple weeks ago that if we knew what we were getting ourseves into we probably wouldn't have done it. When we were trying to get equipment and a DP we only ran into sleezeballs... one group called themselves a film company... when they showed up with their camera it was a 1CCD 1/4" handycam that was about half the size of my cameras lens... then they wanted us to basically give them the script and go away. another guy said he "has access to" a DVX100 ... what the hell is "has access to?" But then he wanted $100 a day and when we said no because we had 30 scheduled days and we could just go and buy one he said "then we must not take our movie seriously"... Fawn tore into him after that... I think I still have the emails... :)

I would suggest going for the smaller screen the website says 40'-60' screens... IMHO nonHD DV shouldn't exceed 20'... preferably 2' :)

I would suggest simply calling the processing center that will be doing the uprez (if any) and see what they preferr. there are couple other issues to address too that may influence choice... like mobility and appearance of professionalism. Some actors feel better about the project if the camera head is bigger than theirs (physically)... etc. Plus as far as police are concerned... do you think they would rather hassle something that looks like a news crew or something that looks like some kids with a handycam? :)

I use an old Panasonic WV-F250 which is an MII camera ... it's viewfinder is supposed to come off or swing on the hinge... if it comes off easially it may be a problem... I am trying to remember why I take it off though... I think it's when I'm going a moving camera shot so I can't easially have my head next to the camera and the glass has a glare on it. ... or if I have to stand in a awkward position off to the side and can only see the screen inside the viewfinder that is before the mirror... oh! I remember... the cap has a magnifying lens in it so if it is cranked all the way up the tripod the image will be distorted/not fit in the viewfinder or something like that. It can be taken off to prevent it from flipping back down.

It's been a while since I posted here when I was getting ready for my first DV feature... now that we're wrapping up (and I can no longer afford college this fall) I wanted to do some upgrades to my camera system. For our feature I ghetto rigged a Panasonic WV-F250 (3ccd 750lines) to a Datavideo DAC100 analog to firewire converter (4:1:1) and ran that into an iBook G4 so we recorded direct to disk. For SD I really liked shooting to disk even though our monstrosity had it's issues..ie disks had head crashes and the Mac dies in a scary manner every once in a while but all in all the system worked well over the past 6 months. When we are finished though, I will no longer have access to the Mac (which I hate anyway) and am looking for a dedicated hard disk recorder that can do 4:2:2 video in the $1k or less range. I like the Rosendahl BonsaiDRIVE but I don't need that many features (and it's $2k). It doesn't really even need audio... and if there is one in the $500 range it would be great as I would be able to buy a second camera... :) Some "preferences" would be: standard IDE hard drives or commercially available external drives (like how the Firestore works) ability to daisy chain external drives any suggestions would be greatly appreciated Sam Javor zekthedeadcow@hotmail.com

Tube equipment comes on ebay every once in a while... I was thinking of picking one up myself for the same effect incase I ever needed it. I have never seen one for more than $50 too. The condition of the tubes would be suspect of course, and I don't know what kind they usually take.