Kdenlive video formats export

A few years ago I used to regularly publish videos, so back then I started with an evaluation of FOSS video editors available for Fedora. At the time I decided the "winner" to be Kdenlive (at the time PiTiVi was useless, OpenShot unavailable and Blender unknown for its video editing capabilities), despite all the drawbacks of its KDE interface and sudden crashes.

Fast-forward, about a year ago, I needed again some video editing, this time for a home project. Not wanting to deal with KDE again (I don't want to flame KDE, I just find a GTK2 interface more friendly to use and GTK apps integrate better in my desktop), I tried OpenShot and it worked good enough.

Fast-forward again to current times, after upgrading my desktop to Fedora 21 (from F18, no less!) I needed again a video editing task, I fired-up OpenShot but it refused to cooperate (something related to creating a video clip from a sequence of images, something I used it for before), so back to the old friend Kdenlive again.

Yes, Kdenlive can do the work just fine, it just had an unintuitive UI annoyance that had me searching the web to learn where to find a simple option (I was not seeing a tree for the forest). You open the render window and there are not many formats to pick from besides MP4, MPEG-2 and Matroska. Where are the others? Not gone, but hidden behind a "Destination" drop-down.

I can see why they decided to split the list in smaller sections, it can be quite long, however 1: I didn't see the drop-down and surely many others don't and 2: categories are totally arbitrary: MKV is a file, AVI a media player and WebM a website? Why? Fortunately, you can add them as Favorites or learn their place quite fast (unfortunately,after you close the app and open it again, it will default again to File rendering instead of Favorites)

Some other issue that made me lose a lot of time is related to video quality. At first I created a video with the default format, which is MP4 with H.264, which from what I tried later is the thest regarding file size / image quality (didn't try WebM, it isn't useful for my client here, who is the type of person using Internet Explorer on Windows 8, so it has to work OOTB). Then I tried to find a set of settings for MPEG2 or AVI/XVid close to it. No luck! By trial and error (which means rendering the video again and again) I settled for one while the file size is not that large (only ~2.5X time larger) and image quality not absolutely horrible (note: my personal projects always default to WebM).

Get 'em while they are young

A relaxed post as for a lazy Sunday afternoon: the little one is "hacking" graphics with Inkscape on a Fedora Linux laptop.

In case the VIDEO tag does not work for you, here's a YouTube version.

First day of Wiki Love Monuments

With all my honesty, the first day of Wiki Loves Monuments, the free photography contest for Wikipedia, exceeded my expectations: we received 56 images on Wikimedia Commons and 19 images on the Flickr group, this is a total of 75 images. Was I too pessimistic again? Well, I start to believe we will beat my most optimistic expectations. We'll see :)

Now, after yesterday I published a video tutorial for uploading photos for the contest to Wikimedia Commons, is time to make the next step and show a video to the other way to contribute, by adding the photos to the Flickr group (starting with new images and having accounts on both systems, I find uploading to Commons easier ...and it will make the work easier for us, wikipedians, but... contribute in what way to find yourself easier):
Încărcare pe grupul Flickr (if not working from here, the video is up on YouTube and WikiMedia)

Clipart spotting: 2D Photography

Not sure how many of my readers remember how excited I was half a year ago when I spotted on YoutTube one of my clipart images being used by the Marina (very few probably know she did it again and again and she even blogged about it - awesome!). Today is one of those days again: a friend of mine wanted to make my day brighter by showing a funny photography-related Rube Goldberg machine and watching it I spotted something familiar: go to the 3:21 minute and notice a little cardboard rocket moving... it is my Public Domain rocket clipart, part of my free clipart collection, an image for which I even wrote an Inkscape tutorial.

Not sure about the total number of views, but only on YouTube the video has over 430.000 views so far, so I guess I made the world a tiny bit better. Then why do I feel so crappy?

YouTube and CC: a baby step in the right direction

I wanted this feature forever, since I started uploaded stuff on YouTube, the ability to license them under CreativeCommons terms and today it was at last added. Have I already relicnesed my videos? Not yet... why? for the same reason I call it a "baby step", only CC-BY can be used, CC-BY-SA is not available. Still, I have hope for it, looking at the comments on the announcement, most people ask for two things: mass re-license and CC-BY-SA, pretty much what I expect too before taking this step. I asked for the feature too, I invite my readers to do the same.

RLUG meet, March 2011

Yesterday we had the March edition of the monthly LUG meet, held again in a room at the Polithnica University of Bucharest, with help from our friends at ROSEdu.

This time it was short, we had only 3 talks, each of them being "lightning" (mine was the longest, at around 12 minutes), so for the next time we need you as a speaker too. The event ended with some traditional pizzas and beers.

The talks covered:

• QR codes with Free software in Linux, by Nicu Buculei
• Linux From Scratch 6.8 by Ovidiu Constantin
• Scapy, python packet generating tool by Alex Juncu

A better home for our LUG videos

After enough troubles with video hosting services we decided to take our destiny in our own hands: we have the infrastructure, don't have to be held hostages.

So I imported (manually...) the archive in the new site, videos from December 2009 until today, a total of 51 recordings, summing 11.3 GB, all available freely in free formats (Ogg Theora) in the Media category of the ProLinux website (or under the video tag, if you fancy that).

Now it the time to assume my deserved blame: 3 months are missing from the archive - May 2010 when due to life happenings I simply forgot about editing and uploading the videos (sources are available, will do it at a later time), August 2010 when I misses the monthly meeting (was at a Metal festival, out of the city and unable to record) and November 2010, when again due to life happenings, I didn't record the meeting, even if I attended. Sorry.

And for the future I will take more care with encoding, not relying on external services will try not to strain our resources too much, compress more aggressively and save storage space and bandwidth for everyone. Of course after the Firefox 4 release (it that will ever happen :p ... it was delayed so much...) will investigate moving to WebM for video delivery.

Enjoy the viewing! (of course, all the content is in Romanian)

Video woes / February RLUG meet

I know people wait for me uploading the videos from the February RLUG meet and I am delaying more than usual but is not my fault!, all the blame is on crappy video hosting services, especially blip.tv.

When you upload video presentations from your Linux User Group you obviously want them in a Free format and playable out-of-the-box on a Linux box, so Flash-only is not a solution, YouTube is not a solution until they will have guaranteed WebM delivery (I upload there HD videos, they are still Flash-only)... the best solution seems to be blip.tv, but it fails the expectations very often.

I complained it in the past when the frustration was big enough, then it worked for a while and now again it does not work: quickly after the meet last Thursday I started editing and uploading and by Friday everything was up... but queued for Flash conversion, without what playback is almost impossible. In the past when the conversion failed, it failed after a few hours, this time they are stuck: waiting in the queue and nothing happening.

I did wait, one, two, three, four days... until it was enough and wrote a ticket to the support system, asking about the status (remember, the conversion was, and still is, queued, not failed, not successful, not anything). Of course my ticked was closed as solved with the following resolution:

Hey Nicu,

We're huge fans of free software and OGG in particular. We're very much looking forward to the day when a majority of Web video is encoded using free tools like OGG.

That said, unfortunately, blip doesn't offer any active support for .ogg or .ogv conversion to Flash. It works sometimes, but not always. We use ffmpeg and ffmpeg2ogg for conversion to an intermediary format, and from there to Flash. Unfortunately it's hit or miss.

Until we have a reliable OGG/OGV transcoding solution (and we're working on it) you're probably better off uploading MOV, WMV or FLV files as your "primary" format. You can still upload OGG/OGV files as an "alternate" format so that people using GNU/Linux can watch in that format if they choose.

blip.tv

Thanks for nothing! Sweet talk and no action - they didn't even look at the files, they are still "queued", it was a standard answer (and is true the Theora tools sucked always, that's why the format pretty much failed).

But enough with apologies, I have to deliver something, surely people are waiting... what can I do is to link directly to the OGG sources on blip.tv, people will be able to see them with a competent browser and blip.tv won't receive full page views and ads display... sorry, they let me with no choice.

So the February RLUG meet was again hosted by ROSEdu in the Universitatea Politehnica Bucuresti and we had a number of talks:

• Fotografie Remote cu Entangle by Nicu Buculei (lightning talk)
• Distractie cu MeMaker by Nicu Buculei (lightning talk)
• Linux pe un Tablet PC by Radu Zoran (lightning talk)
• Tune in .. on Linux ! by Cornel-Florentin Dimitriu

And, of course, there is a photo gallery from the event, hosted as usual on our Fedora local website.

Since I was lazy enough not to prepare formal slides, under the excuse my presentation were live demos, showing applications in use, I feel I needed to deliver more, so as they were short enough (remember, lightning talks), I also uploaded them on YouTube: Entangle, MeMaker.

I have no idea what to do with my videos next month, suggestion welcomed.

Let It Snow! - video: Inkscape demonstration at the monthly RLUG meet

What did I do that I have my upload limit increased to over the 15 minutes, unlike the other mortals? Don't know but surely enjoy it, I was limited before and not linking it. Then the second question: how can I ensure my videos are available ASAP for delivery in the WebM format? (I upload in Ogg Theora, Kdenlive in F14 still does not have WebM export, I need Theora also for blip.tv and don't want to transcode once more with my pity CPU).

But enough blabbering, yesterday at the monthly RLUG meet I continued demoing Inkscape drawing from December (people asked for it, I couldn't refuse) with making a snowflake (yup, I know we are all feed-up with the winter and looking forward to the spring but... it was requested). As you already suspect, the video recording is up on YouTube, unfortunately not yet in WebM, and also is free format on blip.tv, together with the other RLUG recordings (the other two videos from yesterday are still processing).

Of course, there are also some photos, but they are just usual, nothing extraordinary. And sorry... I have no formal slide, since you can't do one for such a presentation. Maybe, just maybe I would put myself to work one day and do a tutorial one day, but don't take this as a promise.

RLUG meet, December 2010

Yesterday we had the last LUG meet for this year, and the last in this current location (from next month we need another place, still looking for it). One above another, it was a good one.

I presented, as planned, a lightning talk about creating presentations with Sozi, an Inkscape extension. Then, as the schedule seemed light enough, I continued with some Inkscape demo drawing. Then Petre shared his experience with signatures and cryptography on Linux, Doru continued with a talk about databases and Matei closed with a presentation about a Fully Automated Install (FAI) on Debian.

I should mention there are photos from the event, many of them brought with the contribution of an unexpected helper, thanks a lot!

Clipart spotting: HotForWords

I do watch constantly a single one YouTube channel, HotForWords where the "teacher" Marina Orlova has weekly lessons about the origins and meanings of various English words, made in a funny style, with a very cute Russian accent and sometime with a sexy blond wig. The show has millions of viewers, is really popular.

Today I was effectively floored seeing in the latest video one of my clipart images, a pencil (used there to illustrate the term "-graphy", "write") appearing suddenly on the screen (around minute 1:19). I have no idea it was taken directly from my clipart collection or from OCAL, but this does not matter, my day is already a lot better see how my Inkscape made, Public Domain released, clipart is used in my favorite show and going to be seen by millions. In an episode about the origins of the word "porn", no less. I feel like I made a difference.

Update: minutes after I published this, here is a folow-up on Marina'a blog. Thanks a lot.

Quick review: Sintel

As many probably know, after high anticipation, yesterday was the Internet launch for Sintel, the third short film from the Blender project.

Obviously, I hurried to view it (is available in multiple formats, video qualities and and packages, from torrents, to direct downloads and YouTube streaming), as I was warmed up about it since the preview we were offered in May at LGM.

Technically the video is impressive, it shows the software advancements and the grown experience of the team, it had good music and voices and it slightly longer. Still... I think it will be a smaller success compared with its predecessor, Big Buck Bunny.

Why? Because it has a !!!spoiler warning!!! sad story, not the same slapstick comedy from Big Buck Bunny and I expect the larger audience will go for slapstick, even if the fantasy story are cool (or used to be cool before the wave of lame teen vampires?)

So so watch the video, is a thoughtful fantasy story nicely done with Free software by an open community. A bit of learning and maybe you will make the next film :D

Free movies?

My knowledge about Free movies is limited beyond the "classics" eveyone knows like Sita Sings the Blues and the shorts from Blender but with the idea of holding a Free cultural event I need some suggestions, please help.

Of course there is a catch:

• The movies should be good enough, so they don't bore an audience composed mostly from university students (but not only);
• The movies should be Free, as in freedom, so it can be licensed as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, without restrictions like NC or ND, which are contrary to our philosophy.

Thank you in advance for the ideas left in the comments section :)

No video for you

According with the latest thread of doom from the devel list, despite the expectation set in May when WebM was released, we won't have Firefox 4 in Fedora 14, so effectively no out-of-the-box support for web video, nor the other goodies coming in this release (how fast you can say "faster JavaScript"?)

At times like this I am happy I am not a (full) Ambassador, after GNOME 3.0 was postponed for more 6 months (don't get me wrong, I am happy my desktop will remain usable one more release cycle), from a desktop user point of view our feature list is very thin so at the release I won't have to look end-users in the eyes and say "sorry, we don't have anything for you". No wonder they perceive Fedora as a distro focused on "obscure server stuff" and defect to other distros, which do have desktop features and advertise them.

As for myself, I can't endure 6 more months without working web video support so I have two options: jump to Epiphany, something I try from time to time and return back since I find Epiphany a sub-par browser, or simply install a current Firefox from a 3-rd party and forget about dependencies and updates. Currently running without problems Firefox 4 Beta 2 from Remi on Fedora 13 (the only problem is it is installed in addition not instead of the old Firefox 3.6)

In the words of the release Nazi: no web video for you! Come back, 6 months! Next!

Video: Fedora Design Team at LGM 2010

Until the official video is up, you can see a recording of our talk about the Fedora Design Team made with my pocket video camera (so low quality).

Slides are also available as PDF and if you want to reuse them under CC-BY-SA, just change the extension to .odp and will get the source.

PS: thanks to Martin for being the better half of the presenting duo and to Tatica for adding the final polish to the slides.

PPS: if you have problems playing hte video, you can change the format to Theora and download the original.

My geek card

I ask quite often my friends/colleagues to return their geek card when they fail at basic geeky things (like not knowing basic things about Trek or D&D) and I also strongly believe in putting your money where you mouth, so I decided to eat crow publicly:

notes:
1. do not write, asking what the video is about
2. thinking deeply, I suspect I may didn't failed at being a true geek, but reinforced my übergeekiness.

Videos: RLUG meet, April 2010

My CPU is still hot from editing and uploading videos, the few photos are up too, my media editing for the April RLUG meet is done:

• Editare colaborativa real-time in intranet with dserban
• Comunitati si unelte pentru localizarea in limba romana with nicu
• Povestiri din transee - Partitionare cu forta with rpetre

Inkscape workshop

Yesterday was a full day for me, with the type of work I hate the most: on field, setting surveillance cameras, DVR-s, proprietary drivers, badly designed proprietary software, Windows laptops and such so didn't have the time to enjoy April Fools nor to go emo-style about my friends letting me alone in the cold with DFD.

But there was a positive part of the day, in the evening I had planned an Inkscape workshop with Ceata, to which I barely managed to arrive after the field task, so it was not completely wasted.

One of our friends who is a fire fighter by day and Linux user by night needed to learn how to make some signs and symbols for his day job, asked my for advice and tips so I proposed the workshop. We gathered 5 people with 3 laptops, no mice and one tablet (when I realised I forgot the USB mouse at home, I took with me the tabled which is gathering dust at the office). Lesson learned: no matter how good are you with the trackpad, when doing graphics you need a mouse.

We had the time for two signs, "no smoke" and "electricity hazard", as we had to go into many basic things, like drawing a circle or a star, using Ctrl key to preserve aspect ratio, changing colors and so on. My signs came like this (for source, open the URL and change the extension to .svg):

We also recorded on video as much as we could (the battery in my camera lasted for about 1 hour and 20 minutes) from which I made available a 5 minutes long segment to probe the interest (not sure is worth the effort for the full 1.7GB raw footage - editing and transcoding may take at least half a day and hosting + uploading would be tricky).

Making of: Document Freedom Day photos

The tools are far from perfect, so my struggle to put out a "making of" video and encourage people to spread the friendly photos for Document Freedom Day encountered a lot of setbacks, so in the end I had to put out two versions, one in Flash for the larger audience and another one in Ogg Theora (keeping my money in the same place with my mouth) for those who care about Freedom and have the bandwidth:

Since I was busy with the photo camera, most of the video was recorded by Adrian, for whom it was the first time doing something like this. Thanks Adrian!


PS: YouTube FAIL, Blip.tv FAIL, ffpmeg2theora FAIL, OggConvert FAIL.

March videos up at last

Follow-up to a follow-up: my video editing problem was solved quickly, but then I got distracted by some photography stuff, so only a couple of days ago got to focus again on editing the videos from the March RLUG meet, but finally I managed to get the work done:

• Sky 101/UNAWE
• gcx: procesarea imaginilor si astronomie
• Criptare "manager proof"
• Alegerea browserului
• Bitslack
• De la partitie bruta la iSCSI target
• Aventuri cu DNS
  
• Telefonul Linux-arului
• OpenStreetMap on your site
• Semnaturi electronice
• Vizita microsoftisti