Video Tools for Linux

Free tools for video manipulation and editing in Linux aren’t that hard to find if you know where to look.

Here are my favorites:

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Interestingly, it’s available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows under the GNU GPL license. I haven’t tested Mac OS X and Windows versions, but the program runs fine under Ubuntu Linux (Dapper Drake).

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

For file conversion, there’s FFMPEG, which is free–but you’ll have to learn to use it through the command line. Unfortunately, the MAN page for the program isn’t very clear.

To save some of you the trouble of figuring it out, here’s a quick tutorial.

Let’s say you want to convert a file called MYVIDEO.AVI to the mpg format, which is the format supported by the K3 CD burning program. After installing FFMPEG (you can use Synaptic Package Manager), fire up Terminal.

From the command line, navigate to the folder where the file is kept. So you might type:

cd /home/user/Converts

to go to the folder where the file is kept.

Then type the following at the command line:

ffmpeg -i MYVIDEO.avi -target ntsc-vcd MYVIDEO.mpg

and hit Enter. That should get the conversion program started, and you ought to see some text scroll by in the Terminal window. Don’t accidentally close the window, because that will stop the conversion. You can minimize it, however.

To convert an avi file to SVCD format, you would type:

ffmpeg -i MYVIDEO.avi -target ntsc-vcd MYVIDEO.mpg

There’s a GUI front-end for FFMPEG on Mac OS X, but I haven’t found one for Linux.

For ripping DVDs, I use AcidRip. Very simple but fast and efficient.

From Digital Life by Chin Wong

http://www.chinwong.com

Chin Wong has been covering the technology industry since the 1980s, starting as a reporter for Business Day, Southeast Asia’s first daily business newspaper. He is now a lecturer in journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines and associate editor for the Manila Standard Today. Before that, he also served as technology editor of the Manila Times until October 2004.

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Simplifying the Web Hosting Process

The Internet is growing each day. More and more players continue to dominate the virtual world. The market is thriving, and each day new service providers are entering the market. But many call this market asymmetric and the key reason being the disparity of information between the buyers and sellers. Another industry from which a comparison can be drawn is the second hand car market where the seller of the cars always has more information than the buyer. Only when the car hits the road, the user can determine the true value of the vehicle.

The companies and individual can bridge this gap by learning all that they can about the industry. New technologies are flogging the market, some good, and some deficient. Information is critical and enables the customers to sieve the later.

Decide on the Web hosting provider: Getting a quote from more than one service provider is advisable. Also checking their track records, service basket, hidden costs if any and variety of software they provide are the key ingredients to make the website hosting a success.

Understand the Operating platform: Windows and Linux are the two primary operating platforms and users need to take an informed decision on which system to adopt.

Linux is like Unix-based operating system designed to efficiently work for personal computers and is cost-effective. This system is popular among the UNIX users and uses the PHP and Perl scripting languages. It is suggested that if the website is to be launched by an individual, small business or a non- revenue organization, then Linux is an ideal system.

Windows uses ASP and ASP.net is geared to handle large transaction, e-commerce and interaction on the website. It costs more and preferable choice when the business is expanding.

However, both Windows and Linux servers are secure and powerful and provide excellent speed and performance.

Choose your option: Content based website, e-commerce, video web hosting or non-revenue website, shared hosting or a dedicated web hosting – the user needs to decide his option and ensure that the service provider equips the website with all the essential features. These should definitely be good connectivity, email service, interactivity, speed, security and reliability. There are other optional services could be shopping cart, design templates and software, additional backup and storage space.

Acquire IP address: Ensure that you get an Internet Protocol address a system that helps transfer information from one computer to another. Whether the user opts for a Shared Web domain or a dedicated web platform acquiring the IP address is a must.

Constantly update yourself so that you can demand the latest and the most efficient technology from your service providers.

It is important that you understand key aspects of this virtual world so that this powerful medium is used to your advantage. In the highly competitive world any error or wrong decision may prove to be fatal. The website is the virtual window to your real world. It leads customers, target audience, your viewers or your business to your doorstep.

Cirtex hosting offers web hosting, ffmpeg hosting, shared hosting and video hosting at affordable prices.

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How to Install and Setup RecordItNow in K-Ubuntu Linux For Professional Screencasting

Professional screencasting has always been left to proprietary systems such as Windows and Mac since the only quality software created for screencasting has always been geared toward those users. That all changed once RecordItNow was released for the KDE platform.

RecordItNow was created to fill the gap between the poor performing free applications and commercial approaches (none of which are available in Linux). Tauted as a “plugin based [KDE] desktop recorder”, it is much more than a simple desktop recorder. It can be used on any Linux variant with the help of a few KDE libraries.

Installing RecordItNow is rather easy, though it does require a few extra ‘plugins’ to fully function. One required plugin is the well known RecordMyDekstop application. Since RecordItNow is completely plugin based, it can use other recording applications with ease though it currently only support RecordMyDesktop.

For full functionality you will also want to download and install Mencoder and Ffmpeg. These two plugins are required if you want to encode your screencasts into formats like.flv (flash),.avi or just about any other standard format. Best of all, once installed RecordItNow can handle all the encoding automatically.

Installing RecordItNow and it’s plugins can be done in three ways in Kubuntu. The first and easiest way for most people is the GUI package manager KPackageIt. There are also two command line ways, through apt-get and with the aptitude package manager.

Before you can install RecordItNow though, you have to add the PPA repository which contains it. To add the new repository from the command line, enter in this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:darcio53/ppa

Or by using the GUI:

Click on the Menu to open it. Then select System Settings. Under Computer Administration click “Add and Remove Software”. From the left menu, click on Setting and then on “Edit Software Sources” from the right panel. You will be asked to enter the administrator password. Once the Software Sources window opens which on the “Other Software” tab. Then click on “Add” and add the repository:

ppa:darcio53/ppa

Once you have reloaded the repository list, its time to download and install RecordItNow.

Still in the Add and Remove Software window, click on Software Management in the left panel. Now in the search box type in “recorditnow”. Once it’s found click the gray arrow on the ride, and then click Apply to install it. Do the same for “mencoder” and “ffmpeg”.

To install via apt-get and aptitude is easy. Open a terminal window by pressing ALT-F2 on your keyboard then type “konsole”.

Once in the terminal, all you have to do is type in one of these two commands to install RecordItNow, mencoder and ffmpeg

sudo apt-get install recorditnow mencoder ffmpeg

or

sudo aptitude install recorditnow mencoder ffmpeg

That’s it! Once you have completed those steps you can open RecordItNow and begin recording professional quality screencasts in Linux.

Piotr Krzyzek is a young, energetic technology entrepreneur. His childhood passion for computers evolved into rapidly growing start-ups and a desire to share information. As he continues his studies on computer programming in Europe, he manages his businesses and helps others use emerging technologies. In addition to Linux specialties, he is honing his knowledge of Internet Marketing and Joint Ventures. Follow Piotr’s most recent technological discoveries at his technical business blog: PiotrKrzyzek.com

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