More of the same

Today, gratefulfrog and son saw some music videos and went shopping. Also, gf's gf arrived from London, which is like the big apple but different, let's call it the big pear, ok.

Gf's gf doesn't think much of this blog, alas, I'm destined to eternal misunderstanding...

I recently learned quite a few things which I may report at a later date.

That's all for now. Don't despair.

sudoku generator, Azores & teeth

Well solving sudoku's is easy, generating them is another matter. Particularly if it's got to be elegant, and it does. The first version of the sudoku generator is nearly ready, just keep hanging and it'll appear here one of these days.

By the way DP just got some teeth pulled and is not suffering at all. In fact so not suffering is he that he has to play DOD all day long.

In other news, we're looking for info about diving in the Azores, if anyone's been there or has any ideas, please comment.

Today GF's son DP has something to say!

He says that he has a video to show but no place to put it, alas. We're shopping for a place to put videos on the net, for cheap, very cheap, even for free may be too expensive...

More later from GF & DP.

All in a day's blog

Well, that's it for today, and what a day it's been!

I created this blog.

I populated it with lost blogs from my old blog which didn't allow for enough sharing.

I went diving, too!

sudoku solver in Common Lisp

Hi Ubuntu!

Sorry to have been so slow in getting news out there, but I spend so much time tweakin' that I don't have much left for writing.

Anyway, here's the news from http://gratefulfrog.net

I've just posted a little common lisp program that will solve any sudoku puzzles that you may have on your mind. It is fully documented and will run on any Common Lisp envt.

Hope someone finds it interesting

How To - have done...

Yes, as promised the HowTo DVD is now available.

All comments, good, bad and indifferent are welcome.

http://gratefulfrog.net/PhotoAndVideo/HowToDvd.html

short aside, but necessary to have done, once

After some discussion on #cinelerra IRC, I learned that the ffmpeg package available at the Ubuntu repository is out of date.

Downloading and installing the latest cvs snaptshot was child's play (particularly since I learned of "checkinstall" which automatically updates apt's list of installed sources), and now my video workflow consists of:

Capture: 2 choices, both work perfectly.
- dvgrab (on Ubuntu 64 bit) at the command line
- Kino (on Ubuntu 32bit) with a little GUI, but I don't find the preferences dialog very intutive, particulary for directories and file names.

Edit:
- cinelerra works well!

Render (cinelerra)
- render in a single file to quicktime4linux:
--> audio settings: 2's complement,
--> video compression as DV

Encoding: ffmpeg
- use the command line:
> ffmpeg -i rederedFile.mov -target pal-dvd dvd.mpeg
- still to explore encoding as a CVCD, or other CD-ROM format for short films, so as to save on blank DVD's.

DVD Authoring: dvdstyler
- use the intuitive GUI to create menus,
- write the iso image to disk: dvd.iso

DVD burning: nautilus
- insert blank DVD,
- in file browser select dvd.iso,
- right click, select burn disc.

short, sharing, with whom?

After making my first DVD on Ubuntu, I have decided to write a HowTo. This will soon be available either here or on the forums.

I am very happy to have gotten this to work on a Ubuntu system, with free software only!

Soon the HowTo...

first success story, before!

After last attempts, I took a new approach:

Editing:
- cinelerra to make a 3.5 min sequence

Render:
- separate the video and audio:
- cinelerra render video as mpeg video to small.mpv
- cinelerra render the audio as mpeg audio to small.mpa

Multiplex:
- mplex -v 0 -f 8 small.mpv small.mpa small.mpeg

Create iso image:
- dvdstyler: load small.mpeg
- make simple menu with "play" button.
- create iso image.

Burn iso image to DVD using gnome.

It works!

another step forward, in the past...

Well, today at least I can say that things are moving forward. This is due to the great help of the Ubuntu bugzilla team and the cinelerra IRC channel.

I have managed to accomplish the followning:

Capture DV:
- kino capture worked perfectly,
- captured 5 hours of DV into quicktime4linux containers, shot by shot,
- but now I cannot load the captured files back into kino...

Edit:
- cinelerra 1.2.2 worked perfectly.
- I built a 25 minute video sequence with titles and color correction,

Render
- again cinelerra:
- I rendered it audio+video as quicktime4linux with 2's complement audio and DV compression for video. This 6GB file could be copied back to DV tape.

Convert to mpge2:
- failed using ffmpeg 0.4.6 prel,
- cinelerra IRC informs that I should get the latest cvs of ffmpeg and rebuild.

This is my next step.

old news, the start of the journey, again.

This first entry in my gratefulblog will be followed by the story of my voyage through the world of Linux and its use in digital video editing.

My vessel is 64bit AMD based with the devilish NEC ND3500 DVD burner in the engine room.

Today we're sailing on Ubuntu Hoary 64bit, but this has come after more or less success with Fedora 2 & 3 / 32 & 64 bit, Suse 9.2 32bit, Ubuntu Warty 32 & 64.

There is one thing that sets Hoary apart from the others: Support! Response to bug reports on bugzilla, support & documentation on the forums all make Ubuntu the pole-star of Linux distributions.

After very tough installation problems, initial operational issues involved getting various aspects of sound recording & playback to work. ALSA & OSS, sox jack and friends, all work more less than more, today.

The same for graphics & video playback, they work much less than more.

Other tools that you may read about here are:
- kino
- cinelerra
- transcode
- dvdauthor
- dvdstyler
- avidemux
- anything useful or needed to go from DV to DVD.

Until next time, don't give up, GNU & FSF are what's right!

Level 0

Hello World!

This is the first day in gratefulf frog's new gratefulblog. The old gratefulblog, hosted on Ubuntu Forums seems to refuse world access. So the frog has been looking for a new home and he's found this one, for now.