hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0114.txt

Episode: 114
Title: HPR0114: Linux video editing
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0114/hpr0114.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:39:37

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Welcome to Hacker Public Radio, episode number 114 for Friday, June 6th, 2008.
Super incredible mind blowing, life changing video, Linux, Vamanzon, Happy Abbey Fun Time, love a soul, love a soul.
Hey, I am Morgane, the low tech mystic, and I'm sort of you.
And you?
Well, you my friends would be listening to another fine episode of Hacker Public Radio.
And today on Hacker Public Radio, if you haven't noticed that I have a wonderful co-host with me today, it's Mr. Sortil.
Thank you very much.
And I'm very happy to have Mr. Sortil with me today on this episode of Hacker Public Radio, because we're going to talk about video editing.
And more precisely, video editing on Linux, because we all love Linux, and in one way or another, we love video.
Whether it be those late night prawn sessions or other such things, video is crucial to our daily experience.
So to be able to take that power of video and be able to control it in our own hands, much like we do with open source software, we have certain open source tools for video editing.
And let's go ahead and give a little rundown of some different video editors that are available in Linux.
Probably the most widely known, at least to the people I've talked to, obviously, is Kino, Ubuntu Studio, uses it by default.
Several people have used it.
In my opinion, it's a great video editor, but it lacks in several areas, it lacks in effects, it lacks in options.
Sinalara is another one that I think is really a great video editor overall, but I do find it, at least in my experience, to be a bit buggy, found that it lacks in options, it lacks in customization.
So clearly, these would most likely be the most common video editors that the average Linux user would be familiar with.
Like you said, Ubuntu Studio comes with Kino, and a lot of people are familiar with that, and that want to get into the whole video editing thing.
And I guess a lot of ways we kind of compare Kino to almost kind of like a Windows movie maker.
And it's not necessarily in its evil that it's a Microsoft-like product, and it's more like the fact that it's the ease of its use.
It's a very kind of drag-and-drop interface, and it's a visual kind of guided thing.
But clearly, from listening to you talk, you clearly don't, you find both products lacking.
So is there something else out there in the video editing world as far as Linux that you like to use?
The video editor that I use is Lives. It's an acronym for Lives is a video editing system.
So it's one of those funky acronyms that has an acronym within the acronym.
Yeah, I kind of like the GNU.
Yeah, it makes my head hurt.
It's just like the whole idea of, you know, those who play D&D, I'm getting prepared.
I'm going to blow your mind.
What would happen if you turned a bag of holding inside out?
Ah!
You know, I just blow your mind.
But anyway, okay.
So much like an acronym which we blow in our mind.
Lives is a cool video editing software.
I'm playing silly, and the fact that I don't know that you use Lives.
I know for a fact that you like to do some AMV editing, and we'll get into more of what AMVs are.
But I've seen your videos, and I've been really impressed with them.
And then the fact that I learned that while all that editing was done under Linux, it was very impressive.
So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to, I'm very happy that you wanted to join me on the show today.
And talk with the community about lives.
Because I think a lot of people really have never heard of lives or have no clue what it is.
And I think it's very important for people to know about it.
So I'll quit rambling and let you.
Lives is an extremely good video editor.
It's maintained by a gentleman by the name of Gabriel Finch who goes by the handle of Salsa Man.
And it's a very, very good multi-track editor.
It can handle just about anything you can throw out of it as far as video formats.
It uses in-player, so any kind of video format that in-player can handle.
It can handle as far as audio goes.
MP3, OGG, Vorbus, mod, exam, wave, CD track audio, or any kind of other external audio sources that you want to use.
It's capable of uploading.
Really lives kind of breaks down as far as when you're using it into two different sections, one of which is your clip editor.
And the other one is your multi-track editing.
The clip editor I found to be extremely good to go back to kind of the comparison to Keynote,
where it's Keynote tends to have more of like a slider.
And I've noticed that sometimes it's kind of difficult to get exactly where you want.
Do notice newer versions of kind of added a frame by frame and tracker.
Lives has the whole where you can go frame by frame from beginning to end.
You can select any kind of section of the video that you want.
You can cut from that.
You can merge it back into the frame so you get that nice bleed-through effect.
Lives also has a whole lot of effects that I've noticed a lot of other video editors don't carry.
One that I really like is called a charcoal effect and being an AMV maker.
It's a really, really good effect because it kind of gives that manga or comic book as far as the black and white comic book kind of style to the image.
Another really good one that I like is the negate.
Other video editors have negate obviously to make the image look like a negative.
But the amount of control you have is for how much, you know, you're going to negate the image or the manipulation of that negation.
I was really, really impressed with.
As far as any kind of the other effects that are involved, there's a whole usual list of default effects.
But anything you could think of the flip frames horizontally vertically.
There's blur effects, monochrome colorization, which is, you know, excellent for fade-in and fade-outs.
I'm a big fan of whiteouts, so I use colorization quite a bit.
Then there's also the RFX, which Gabriel Finch is also involved in the development of RFX, which really RFX is a.
It's a grouping of effects to be able to plug in and add real-time effects to video.
And lives has the ability to add on new effects off of the lives website, which we'll have in the show notes.
Of course.
There are add-on scripts being an AMB maker, another add-on script that's not in the default effects is desubs.
So, you know, if you're an anime fan and you happen to watch any get the anime is out there in their original Japanese with English subtitles, which you want to make an AMB.
But you don't want those subtitles in there, the desub add-on removes those.
There's a text overlay by default in the effects of lives that will allow you, you know, to put text over the video.
There's another add-on that's text overlay too that's a script that you can download from the add-on section at the Lives Home page that adds more to it, where you can move the text around within the frames.
You can add more effects to the actual text itself, but also as if I'm not mistaken, most of the effects are written in Pearl.
So, anytime, you know, if you could think of an effect you want to do and you had the knowledge with Pearl to write your own script for the effects, you could write it and it's a simple matter of when you're in the clip editor window for lives.
There's an Advanced tab. At the bottom, once you click on the Advanced tab, it says Add or Edit, RFX.
All you have to do is click on that and select where you've downloaded the script or written it yourself and it will automatically upload that effect for use at any time after that, which is one of the customization features of lives that other video editors, I think, you know, really should have already jumped on.
Alright, cool. So now to jump back kind of to earlier, like my keynote reference to Windows Movie Maker.
Now, do I hate to compare open-source software to other kind of things, but to help our audience and the people listening, what now lives definitely sounds from the list of options and stuff that you've been sharing with us, it definitely sounds like it's a very powerful environment.
Now, is these the kind of things that are available in Cinderella or Cinderella's capable of some of these things? And also, what would you compare it to as far as the commercial environment?
Is this something that's on par with Premiere or Vegas or how do you feel about that being a person that's familiar with the video editing process?
Well, as far as comparing it to some of the mainstream video editors that are out there, obviously Premiere is one of the cream of the crops.
Premiere Pro is just the top tier, in my opinion, I've used it personally. It's not quite there, but you're also talking about freeware from commercially available software.
A big difference in the pocketbook is where you're going to drop a nice penny for the Premiere Pro and such suites, so keep that in mind.
Another to talk about, like the Vegas, I really think that it's currently still in beta, the 1.0 release will be out, I believe it's supposed to be in July or August.
But as far as comparing it to Vegas, I think it's right on par with that or pretty close to Vegas.
I see in the future that it could surprise Vegas. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself or Gabriel may send me an email telling me I'm crazy for saying that.
But I'm really, really impressed with it. Encoding as one of the things like I've noticed with Sinolara and Kino that lives just really does such a better job with the encoders that it can use.
And it uses in player, M encoder is one, it can use trans code, FF MPEG, encode DV, MJPEG tools, SSWF, if you want to actually encode your video and flash, the one that I like the most is multi encoder because it gives you options for just about every format out there that's relevant at least.
And as far as say, MPEG gives you varying qualities. So, you know, if you're needing to actually scale down and get a particular file size, they're varying qualities of MPEG.
It's capable of doing OGM and MKV for people that, you know, are kind of worn to the MKV kind of wrappers or like the lossless audio of OGG.
It uses the jack audio server, which I'm really impressed with. If you use, if we're using it on Linux, one of the things that I did run into issue wise was that if you tried to use any other kind of video player, audio player, where lives takes over your audio server entirely.
You can't get audio playback. So basically, if I've got lives going, there's no option of me like opening up VLC or in-play or something and searching around for clips to put in like if lives is going, it's going to take over my sound and my video.
So I'm not going to be able to do anything else as far as that's concerned while lives is going.
So you'll be able to get video playback. There's no problem with that. There is audio issues, but I did find there's a package that's called Jack EQ.
And the package solves that issue because it strictly involves multiple in and out signals. So it will take a Jack signal where you can route it to multiple programs.
So it solves the whole problem of lives taken over your entire audio server.
And that's the Jack EQ plugin. Jack EQ plugin. And is that available for your standard repository? So is that something you need to go to the Jack website or as far as mandriva,
then to Ubuntu, Debian and of course any of those to any of their spin offs. It is in the repository by default. Never once not seen it in any of them.
Excellent. So easily available. So let's do a little bit of a comparison between most people are probably familiar with on one level or another that have missed with video editing and Linux.
They're probably familiar with similar because in time I've ever asked a question of what do I use in Linux to edit video. The response has always been similar.
So and like I said, not to bash or anything, but we're just wanting to compare basically on an open level, you know, how do you feel being a person that is somewhat involved with video editing?
How would you compare the lives and similar experience of the different option levels? Can we go one more powerful than the other? Does one have just pros and cons? How do you feel about it?
I feel that lives is a formal, powerful video editor than similar is. Another issue that many people found with similar is that, you know, it can be complex to install, whereas lives has packages for most major Linux distros.
The tower ball installation is obviously fairly simple. There's no added repositories like in Sonalara that you have to add.
As far as I know, it's capable of running in Windows and Mac as well. Oh, wow, which is a very cross-platform. So do you hear that you guys that are stuck on Windows or you've got a Mac? Hey, lives is there for you.
Another thing I can't confirm it, but there also is a live CD out there is on the tutorials page which we'll have in the show notes. There is a link in the page that says that it's a live CD for lives, but I'm not sure if Gabriel still involved with that project.
It's Don Bolic, if I'm saying that correctly, which is just a live CD for multimedia and artistic tools.
And it used to use lives at one point. I'm not sure if it still does, but I really thought that that was kind of a nice feature lives is very resource light have noticed compared to a lot of video editors.
So now is this something I'm going to be able to run on the tablet here? I mean, I've got a since Treno 1.7 megahertz processor with a gig of RAM.
I mean, is this something that can seriously think about doing video editing on using lives and Linux and not be frustrated with insane load times or what?
You know, you say it's hardware light, but video editing in general, you know, I've always thought of as I'm going to need, you know, the super awesome computer to even think about it.
Well, actually, memory wise, it's very light. It only requires 512 mega processors, another thing which, you know, every person that's ever tried to get into video editing before that's where you get, you know, that you need to power PC kind of thing going on to be able to do video editing correctly.
I'm almost positive that 2.4 gigahertz, Pentium 4 or equivalent is required, but I mean in today's world where dual cores and quad cores are kind of the standard.
The fact that it runs so well on a single core of that caliber or, you know, equivalent, I think is is actually very, very good.
Okay, so as far as we're getting into video editing is going to be somewhat of a resource intensive kind of deal, which you're saying as far as video editing goes, this is on the lighter end of that spectrum.
Yeah, it's very much so, especially going back to, you know, if you're talking about premiere or Vegas or I think everyone's cutting floor.
Any of those, those are, you know, from my experience, it's been extremely resource heavy and lives is half that if not less.
So, you know, it's very capable of running on a wide variety of systems.
Good deal, good deal, that's what we like to hear.
So, definitely feel free to try it out, remember your mileage may vary, but definitely with those slots in mind, feel free to check this out.
And if you're kind of questioning what kind of hardware you've got, feel free to check it out because it's free.
So, you're not going to be set back anything and if nothing else, you might have a broken heart for a few days, but, you know, hearts do heal.
So, but lives definitely sounds like a very interesting program and I'm very excited to learn about all these things that lives can do.
I'm not necessarily a video editing guy and you're talking about all these different options and things that lives can do.
You know, in some ways it's a little bit overwhelming, you know, while all these things that it can do, you know, so you mentioned earlier, they've got, I think you said they had a wiki or tutorial page.
So, they do offer a little bit of a helping hand to those of us who may be new to video editing and say, hey, I love Linux and I'd really like to get into video editing.
So, there are resources out there available for someone like myself that can.
The tutorial page that they have is a extremely great resource.
Gabriel himself, I had the issue where I could not figure out how to get lives to do the frame merging, which is the bleed through one portion of a scene, fades out while the next portion kind of bleached through that image as, you know, the previous one is fading out.
And I'd emailed him and I think maybe 10 minutes later he had already emailed me back explaining how you go about doing that.
Wow. So, he is an extremely cool guy.
He also does a lot of VJ work. His stage name is VJ salsa. He's gone all around Europe playing and he uses lives in his VJ shows.
And for those who may not be familiar with the term VJ, we're talking about video DJ.
Yeah, basically where they've set up a lot of different video clips or they've done, you know, a kind of mosaic almost of different videos with all kinds of effects overlay with music in the background,
and it's time and up to the effects changes and things such as that.
It's a very general description, but that's basically what it is.
And if any of us who have ever been to any kind of a concert or show, we can testify to the poolness of the stuff that's going on in the background.
And so while we're on the fact of Mr. Salsa Man, Old Gabriel, as he's known in the RL, you know, he's involved in some other things.
And I'm clearly very impressed with the lives, development and the whole environment that presents.
So I'd really like to go ahead and take a few moments to just promote in general, other stuff that Salsa Man has been involved with.
And so he does in general because he's done great work with lives and that builds that he deserves record, you know, to beat knowledge for the work that he's done.
And that other people should definitely check out lives, especially if you're interested in video editing, because it's clearly very amazing to see that level of performance on open source to Linux distro.
Yeah, definitely Salsa Man's also involved in a project called Video Jack.
It's a framework for passing a real time video between applications.
I'm not real familiar with the project.
A lot of it's over my head. This guy is 10 times smarter than I am.
So you're just wasting our time with fancy words.
No, I'm just kidding. Go ahead.
OCM, which is a multiple applications syntax and framework for the control of multimedia applications is another project he's involved in.
Lovito, it's a cross platform standard for video effects that's used in lives.
Obviously, he's part of the RFX, which is all the real time effects and the add-ons for real time effects and lives that you can do.
So really every portion of lives he's involved in.
Like I said, the video Jack that he's involved in, which would explain why they use the Jack audio servers and all that.
He, like I said, he's also a VJ and does a lot of work with that.
I also know that he worked for a long time as an IT guy.
He's been working for a long time now.
They're also looking for donations as far as the 1.0 release of lives that's also, you know, off of the source for a homepage that they have you can get to it.
So lives actually plans on other, like compared to other web 2.0 such applications.
He's planning on coming out of beta and actually going to an actual release is what you're saying here.
Oh yeah, definitely.
Incredible.
But yeah, definitely.
The 1.0 version, like I said before, I believe it's scheduled to be released around July or August, I think.
And I'm really shocked that the current version, which I think is 0.9.8.12, I'm really shocked that it's a beta because I've had no issues with it crashing.
I haven't found no bugs so far.
So it just kind of shocks me that it hasn't already hit that 1.0 mark.
So let's just give a point of reference for people who are listening to the show.
What is the system that you are running lives on as far as what distro, what kind of hardware, what kind of specs are you running lives with and having this positive experience with?
My system, the distro that I'm using is the Ubuntu 8.04, the hardy release as far as specs on the computer that I'm using.
And it has an AMD X2 5000 plus processor running on two gigs of DDR 400 gram.
And I've run it on the same computer when I had a AMD Athlon 4000 plus and 512 makes a RAM.
But yeah, currently I'm a little above par, I would say as far as specs and all that.
But it runs, you know, extremely smoothly on the setup that I have now.
And I can say no problems whatsoever out of it.
But also, like I said before, it'll run on a plethora of machines out there.
Well, that's definitely incredible and definitely makes me excited about the possibilities of some quote-unquote hardcore video editing within the Linux environment and stuff like that.
So we definitely would like to definitely give a lot of thanks to Gabriel Salsaman for all this time and work.
And while we're on the topic of video editing, I'd like to talk about a way of capturing video.
If you're going to get involved in video editing, depending on what you're doing, you may want to actually go out into RL or the real world as some people like to call it and actually go out and capture some video.
Or perhaps you are working on a project which you would like to take videos or pictures of and capture that be able to share that with other people.
I've recently came across a nice little piece of electronics hardware.
It is the 8-tech A-HD little video camcorder.
It's a nice little unit. It's about the size of a little bit larger than a pack of cigarettes.
And it's a little bit thicker than that size.
One of the most interesting things about this unit is the fact that it's capable of recording in high definition, hence the name the 8-tech A-HD.
So this device actually records in 720p and the neat thing about it is definitely the price tag is the fact that this is available for $120.
You can do a search on amazon.com and you can pull it up to that price.
Or if you're somebody like myself who is impatient and would like to go ahead and buy it that day,
Circuit City is also a place that has it for $120.
So that's actually where I went to purchase mine because I am an impatient little fool.
And so I wanted to go ahead and get it that day. I had a whole burning in my pocket.
So I went up and purchased it. And I've been very pleased with the unit overall.
I've had experience in the past with other 8-tech units.
And this is a great improvement upon the previous units that I've had before.
The device is capable of using regular SD card or an HD SD card.
So I currently have a four gigabyte high capacity SD card in my unit.
And it allows me to have up to about two hours of 720p definition audio recording or video recording.
Let me restate that.
But it also is capable of recording audio or just working as a camera.
And it's highest mode is capable of taking up to, I believe, 5.1 megapixel pictures.
I want to say it says 8 megapixel or capable.
But you know, your mileage may vary. I don't know about that.
But basically for $120 it's a killer little unit.
The battery as a battery is different compared to the previous 8-tech little camcorder devices that I had in the past.
Instead of being powered by two AA batteries, this is actually powered by a small lithium ion battery.
So it kind of eliminates the cool convenience of being able to go down to any kind of store
or just pull out some extra batteries and have battery life for the camera.
But on the side note, the camera also charges through USB.
So if you're able to have a small unit which I think most people have an MP3 player or such kind of devices,
maybe familiar with units that have two AA batteries that go out to a USB connector to charge various USB devices.
So this kind of thing will work with the 8-tech AHD. Also as well, if you go to the store and buy it,
it comes with various output cables.
So your output cable, you've got a headphone, an audio jack looking output,
and you're capable of doing the regular RCA output.
And also it comes with another cable that is capable of doing component audio out.
So if you've got a TV that's capable of doing a natural 720p,
you can use the component cables and see that full definition of the video that you've recorded from the camera directly straight to the TV.
Now as far as talking about the 720p on the camera itself, is it capable of scaling down the resolution?
Yeah, now you can scale it down. It has a, I'm going to space here on the resolutions,
but it's got 640 by 480 mode, and then a 320 by 220.
220, something, yeah, forgive me, much alcohol once again involved in the episode.
But so you're capable of changing the different resolutions of the video that you take and the pictures that you take.
So you can scale it down if you don't need the super high quality.
And also as a benefit, you get more storage space for your video or your pictures.
But one thing I have to say, it's kind of nice to have a cheap little unit like except for about $120.
It's capable of, you know, recording that high definition video.
So this is a unit that I can carry around with me.
And if something happens bad to it where I get splashed with water or I drop it or whatever worst case scenario,
I'm only out $120 as compared to a high quality video camera where I may be out, you know, $700.
Exactly, and be very, very sad.
Now, to mention a couple of, you know, this is not completely covered in glory, the 8-Tick, a-HD.
It obviously has some downsides due to its price and cheap manufacturer.
Some of the immediate downsides that are obvious is the fact that it's not really appropriate for high speed or quick,
a lot of video capture with a lot of motion.
So if you're thinking you're going to go out and buy this unit and record, you know, your children playing soccer or kind of sports like events in 720p,
you may be a little disappointed.
You may see a little bit of chalkiness with the video.
And while I'm on the subject on the way home from school today, I recorded a bit of audio.
Shit, a bit of video with the 8-Tick, a-HD camera.
While I was in the car to demonstrate the resolution quality of the picture and also how it deals with a high speed movement.
And one thing you see as far as well, I've got the camera pulling straight ahead towards oncoming traffic.
The picture's fairly good. There's no problems with this speed of stuff going on.
I think I'm going around 55 miles per hour in the video.
But now if I take the camera and I point towards either the driver side or passenger window,
a lot of stuff that I'm passing by that is relatively close to the camera gets relatively distorted.
And tears appears to come across as an angle or angle in a weird manner.
So it could give you that cool little quality aspect that you might be looking for.
But at the same time, if you were looking at something for a super high quality effect,
you're going to be disappointed with the camera.
But surprise, it was $120.
But overall, this is a nice little again to the construction.
It's at a bunch of different angles as far as the body of the case.
So this is not something you're going to be able to stand on its base and walk away from it and expect to take pictures or video with it just sitting on its base.
It's just kind of a disappointment because the previous 8-tack units have all been very squatter.
And this unit actually has some bit of an angle to it.
But to compensate for that, they also have the standard tripod mount for the camera.
So I can mount this with the small little 5-inch tripod that I have that's portable.
And I can carry it with me anywhere I go.
Or the standard big 3-foot, 9-foot, any kind of tripod that I work with in the other camera is going to work with this unit.
So that is a nice little compensation to the fact that it shaped real funny.
And you can't just stand it on its base.
Another feature that I was rather impressed with the unit's capability is the fact that you can record in from video sources using the unit.
So you can actually kind of turn the unit into a portable video recorder.
So if you're at a buddy's house and you have the ability of tapping into an RCAL or a component out,
you can actually record straight to this unit in H2.64.
So that's definitely something that's very neat or at least as far as 720p.
But that's something that I found that was very neat about the unit in general.
And another thing I was kind of curious about is when you actually film with it as far as you're just standing there filming,
as far as the automatic subtle motions that your body is going to naturally have, how does it do with stability?
The stability is a little bit off. It's actually better than previous models that I've owned before for around the same price range.
But you're still going to have that jitter.
You're definitely going to, if you intend to use this for a serious kind of, any kind of filming,
you can get away with using it to that aspect if you've got a tripod.
This is not something that you're going to want to use on any kind of serious level and attempt to use it hand mounted,
not without any kind of external device, because you're going to see that jitter.
Right. And going back to the scaling down of the video from the 720,
when you do scale down the video, have you noticed any kind of increase in battery life?
To a small extent, I've mostly only recorded only in the 720p,
because I'm still kind of in the whole love with the fact that I've got a device that will record in high definition.
But I've definitely read from the user forms and other people's commentary on the device,
and I've seen the same effect from my personal use, that you get much better battery life from the unit by doing short bursts of clips.
If the unit right now with the four gig SD card, I'm actually capable of recording two hours of video,
but if I were to turn it on and just leave it, the battery would die after about an hour of continuous use.
But now if I were to burst and just do short video clips, I could actually extend it much further beyond an hour.
So that's actually an interesting thing to bring up about the unit.
So it's definitely better suited for short clips and stuff like that.
So if you're somebody that's working on projects and whether it be electronics,
or just kind of would like to have the ability to record in a high quality definition,
whether it be video or pictures, this is definitely a nice thing to look into.
I've also recently noticed that last weekend, eight tech came out with an upgrade to this model of camera,
and it's now available in a 1080p definition.
And that model is selling for around 150, which makes me want to say,
because that was the original price for the AHD unit, which records in 720p.
So if the new unit is available for 150, I'd like to think that you might be able to find a 720p unit for cheaper than 120,
or you may look into getting a 1080p model for cheaper than 150.
Because they are definitely, the units definitely have their limitations.
They are made out of plastic. They don't necessarily feel rock solid.
So it's kind of hard to necessarily look at the camera and take it seriously.
But it does have a good picture quality output.
So I'd like to go ahead and start to wrap things up with just generally encouraging anybody,
if you're interested in getting involved with producing a video on one level or another,
definitely check out this little cheap eight tech A-HD unit.
It's a lot cheaper and it's a lot higher quality compared to other more popular units
that are out there on the market. I know a lot of people are really familiar with the flip model camera.
They're coming out with newer units and stuff like that.
But for the bang for your buck, so to speak, I'm really blown out of the water with the eight tech unit.
And so when it comes down to what do I do with the footage that I've captured, you know, definitely look into lives.
Lives is definitely a very interesting and amazing video application.
It's definitely amazing as far as its scalability, as far as, you know,
kind of in a way to compare it to a Windows movie maker, as far as like one of the things that I'll have to say,
guilty sin that I was impressed with that program.
This is the fact that I could, to a degree, set out the output file size.
So if I knew that I needed a file to be small in this output file,
because I was going to email it or something like that,
then I could really scale down that video.
And from what I gather as far as like the in-pay quality and stuff like that,
that's an option that you can do in lives as well.
Right.
Anytime you have a video that you've done and you go to encode the video,
it gives you options for the frame size that you want to do it in,
which is, you know, one way of scaling down your file size.
And then when you go to select your encoder, like I said,
my favorite is the multi encoder because it does offer those varying qualities of impact.
Which scales down your file size even more.
And too, we also have to note that just in general,
lives is very friendly about taking any kind of audio or video format
that you may have on hand.
At least as far as it's a modern codec is kind of concerned.
So that's something that's definitely very impressive,
no matter what you're bringing it in as far as the premise of my 8-Tech unit,
or at an important video from another source or stuff like that,
lives is not going to freak out about it and it's going to be able to handle it in a capable way.
Yeah, every video format so far that I've thrown at it,
and every audio format so far that I've thrown at it,
it's been able to load up and handle just fine.
So in to the scalability factor as far as the plugins that are available with the Paro module.
So if you've got the ability, if you've got the Paro Ninja skills,
you can jump into this much like in Audacity.
It has the function and availability to where you can code your own plugins for Audacity.
So that's something that it's definitely open to,
like how Premiere and certain other Apple video editors can take Apple scripts and stuff like that.
The same aspect is carrying over to lives.
And to the other thing that's really impressive as far as lives,
as far as video editors go,
it's definitely lightweight compared to others.
Yeah, it's definitely, you know, especially going back to the hole
if you're going to, you know, compare it to Premiere or Vegas or even from what I've noticed
as far as Cinalera goes, it's a bit more lightweight.
And like I said, I don't know if it was the version of Cinalera I used,
but it was very buggy work as I've had little to no issue bug wise out of lives.
So that's definitely very cool.
And so if you're interested in more about lives,
we do have some more resources available for you.
So you can dig into more information about lives.
There is a lives mailing list.
Yeah, there's a user mailing list that the lives homepage is lives.sourceforge.net.
And from there, there's links to the lives, lives users mailing list.
And then there's also a lives develop mailing list for if you have any kind of development ideas
that you want to throw into the mailing list or you got, you know,
you want to know about different techniques as far as coming up without on scripts.
Things like that.
And the user mailing list, if you got any questions about how to do particular things
everyone I've talked to, there's a way to do just about anything you want to do
in lives and somebody out there figured out a way to do it.
And the lives users mailing list is one of those resources that can help you out greatly in those areas.
Now do they have a wiki or anything else like that available that people can go back
and as far as looking at stuff that around other people have already covered?
There is a wiki.
The wiki basically gives you links back to their page at sourceforge.
It doesn't seem like many people have done a whole lot with the wiki.
It could definitely be added on to.
But then there's also the tutorials page.
And the tutorials page is available at this nice URL,
which I'm not going to attempt to at all pronounce with my fine Kentucky accent.
But I will annotate and spell it out for you.
It's www.REIMEIKA.ca
forward slash lives,
underscore guide.html.
And if you, for some reason, aren't comfortable with that, as always,
there will be extensive show notes available at the hackerpublicradio.org website.
You can look under episode number 114 or do a search for more gallon or sore teal.
And you will find this episode with all of our wonderful show notes.
And the availability to download this episode over and over to your heart's content.
And also we'd like to mention while we're giving out links that if you'd like to see some of,
as far as the application as far as what lives is capable,
we mentioned earlier in the episode that Mr. Sorteal likes to do AMVs.
Right.
And we didn't touch upon the fact that if you're not familiar with what an AMV is,
an AMV stands for anime music video.
And in general, an anime music video is clips from a particular anime,
or multiple anime set to a music.
So, like a music video, but instead the clips are using clips from a particular anime that you like.
Right.
And if you'd like to see some examples of some of the AMVs that Mr. Sorteal has greatly done,
they are very nice.
He's got a YouTube account and you can go to youtube.com slash Sorteal
that's spelled S-O-R-T-E-A-L.
So you can go youtube.com slash Sorteal to easily stream those videos.
And also we have a different, if you'd like to see the full quality of those videos,
you can go to serverwillprovide.com slash Sorteal.
And you can download full quality videos of the AMVs that he's done.
And also, if you're curious about the video quality of the A-H-D-A-Tick camera
that I've been talking about, the video that I mentioned earlier is available for download
at serverwillprovide.com slash HPR.
And these links will be available in the show notes.
Another thing that you can go to to see more of what salsa man has done as far as with lives.
When you go to lives.sourceforge.net slash demos,
he has a embedded YouTube player with a demo of what he's done in lives.
To give an example, it's very much, you know, VJ style where he's overlaid a lot of effects
of vision ideas, just the multitude of effects that are available.
There's another gentleman named Marco de Cruz, I think, or Della Cruz.
And he has another example that you can download.
There's links right off that demos page.
Plus, if you have any problem finding my AMVs, there's a link on the demos page directly to all the AMVs
that I've done that are uploaded on YouTube.
Excellent. Excellent.
So one thing too that I'd like to bring up here as we, we joyfully move ourselves towards the end of the show.
I would like to bring up the fact that it was really cool to the fact that we were able to contact Gabriel or salsa man.
And let him know that we were interested in his application,
as far as video editing Mr. Stortil has been using his application for a while now, has been in correspondence with him.
And the interesting fact I'd like to note, and I'll let Stortil expand upon this.
But it's the fact that, you know, A, he made contact having questions as far as I'm having problems doing this type of fade or stuff like that
and getting good feedback.
And the fact that we were interested in doing an episode of Hacker Public Radio about lives, we, you know, submitted an email,
or we know Stortil submitted an email to salsa man and let him know that we were going to do this.
And he was very responsive to it.
And it really sent us back an email and it was a very positive experience.
And so, I definitely would like to encourage people out there that are listening to this episode.
If you're still hanging in there with us, then you definitely feel passionate about either video editing or open source software,
or maybe you're just kind of drunk and, you know, you just kind of made hair accident.
But regardless, we definitely would like to encourage you to any kind of application that you like, especially this open source,
send a little bit of feedback to that developer and let him know if nothing else, hey, I enjoy it.
Or if you've got some kind of weird problem or something that happens only in a certain distro, give him feedback, let him know.
Because as a developer working on a project, even if it's just that metaphorical pat on the back through an email saying, hey, I like your application,
that really means a lot to those people.
And it can be that little bit of extra oomph that keeps them going and helps them put out that next edition of the next version that you so much enjoy.
Yeah, definitely.
Going back to the salsa man, you know, he was very, very cooperative.
More so than I had expected.
And, you know, he really made an impression on me as far as, you know, how quickly he got back with me and how he was willing to, you know,
give us a lot of this information as far as, you know, his other projects and his kind of bio and what he does and was interested in the fact that we were doing an episode on lives.
I think, you know, I think he was kind of excited about that or at least I hope he was.
Yeah, I hope we've done in quasi justice.
I hope not to get an email back saying don't ever email me.
You'll sound alive.
But yeah, we've definitely been very excited about, you know, just the openness that Mr. Gabriel, salsa man has had towards us promoting his application lives.
And we've been very happy with it.
And we also would like to know that, you know, as far as being in contact with the developer and, you know, letting me know that, hey, we enjoy your program.
And hey, we're going to do an episode on this, you know, weird podcast about your program.
You know, would you be interested in doing an interview and talking about it with this?
And that was something that we were very excited about or, well, you know, sort of TV.
And yeah, I was ecstatic when I got it back.
I mean, I'd just kind of asked him out of the blue.
And yeah, I think he maybe had two, two, maybe three other kind of email correspondence with me about this.
And, you know, it asked him about doing an interview and, you know, again, maybe 10 to 15 minutes later.
I had an email back saying, you know, I love to do an interview at some point, which I thought, you know, was just really cool of this guy.
But that's definitely something that we look forward in the future, getting together again with you guys
and bringing him an interview with Mr. Gabriel, Mr. Salsa Man.
And letting him firsthand explain how he feels about lives and some of the stuff that he's involved with,
because he's done some great work here.
And he definitely deserves that proverbial nod and on the back for all the hard work that him and all the others
in the development team have put into lives.
Yeah, definitely.
Heck, if he's listening, thank you very much for lives.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
So we definitely appreciate that work.
And we also would like to encourage other people out there.
You know, if there's an application that you enjoy using,
get in contact with those developers.
And, you know, maybe you'd like to do an episode of HPR, about it.
Or maybe, you know, let them know that you'd be interested in doing an interview with them.
You know, let's, you know, we, everybody's all about the self-promotion.
And especially if it's a quality product such as lives or other open source applications,
there's nothing wrong with that self-promotion.
And it's on cases such as lives.
It's well deserved because this is a wonderful application that most people are unaware of.
And it needs to be for like everybody's time brought to the forefront and to people's awareness.
Yeah, definitely.
And any kind of program you've ever used that, you know, kind of sank under the water or something,
maybe if that developer, group of developers had gotten a bit more feedback,
a bit more, you know, push to keep doing what they're doing and saying,
hey, we appreciate what you're doing.
You know, some of these open source projects that people love that kind of went down the tubes,
you know, might still be around.
So it's just something to think about.
Definitely.
So it's not all about, you know, well, I don't have the coding skills or there's nothing that I can contribute
just by using the application you are contributing.
And to be able to give feedback as far as I have this kind of bugs or maybe it just works perfect.
You know, give that kind of feedback and let that developer know because it may work perfect for you.
But it may definitely work differently under other circumstances and different distributions
and such as the way of Linux.
So don't underestimate yourself that you don't have anything to offer to the community
because even if it's just feedback of, I don't like it or I really like it,
if you can illustrate that in a constructive manner other than just flame bait.
You know, that's really helpful to the developer.
And that's part of the open source community and what ties those bonds and those strengths together.
Yeah.
And, you know, any project that you like and you use and they've got a forum or an IRC channel
or anything like that, you know, that's another way to contribute.
Somebody runs into a problem and you've been using it.
You may not have the technical skills to actually help develop that project.
But you can help other users and those users will pass on through word of mouth
that, hey, this community behind this project will help you out in so many different ways.
And that's a perfect example of one of my favorite quotes is that I had the ability to see so far
because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
And the open source community is a perfect example of that because not only do we put out our work out there
but we put it in such a format that it's open for other people to develop upon
or maybe introduce ideas that we would have never thought upon.
So this is definitely a strong driving point of the open source community.
And as our rambling episode continues, we definitely like to, you know,
just drive this point home one time further.
So definitely get involved in any way you can and definitely have nothing else
continuing listening to Hacker Public Radio.
We'd like to tune you, or we'd like to tune you.
Woo!
Get a little risque!
Hey, you know, on Hacker Public Radio.
We'd like to thank you for tuning in.
And for those special selected individuals out there, we would like to tune you as well.
But, uh...
Also, last is this long.
We will tune you.
Yeah!
Definitely, yeah.
Nothing else.
If you've made it this far into the episode, if you run into myself, Morgana,
or Swartiel at a HackerCon, you know, we owe you a beer.
Definitely.
So thanks for listening today to Hacker Public Radio.
And if nothing else, keep in mind that there'll be somebody else
completely different on the next episode.
So thanks again for listening, and we look forward to talking to you again.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
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