Video Editing on Linux at The Open Source Futures

I gave an hour and a half demo of video editing on Linux at the May Open Source Futures meeting in Lansing. I covered a little bit of FFMPEG and a lot of the OpenShot non-linear video editor. There were a lot of questions at the meeting, so I put together this blog post full of useful commands and links to help answer a few of the questions I couldn’t answer at the meeting.

Preparing Your Ubuntu-based Linux for Video Editing
There are a gazillion codecs and video editors and players for Linux. Here are some of the things I always use to prep my machine for video editing joy.

The Medibuntu Repository (for great codecs!)
You want to make sure you have all of the video and audio codecs you will need before you start. The Medibuntu repository is the best place to get them. Just run the script on the Medibuntu page to install the repo, and then run the following commands to install all of the good stuff. These commands assume you’re running a Linux distro based off of Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04.

• FFMPEG and gobs of codecs: sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-extra-53 libavutil-extra-51 w64codecs libdvdcss2 h264enc libquicktime2
• GUI Players and Utilities: sudo apt-get install vlc avidemux
• OpenShot Video Editor: sudo apt-get install openshot blender inkscape
• Everything You’ll Need: sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-extra-53 libavutil-extra-51 w64codecs libdvdcss2 h264enc libquicktime2 vlc avidemux openshot blender inkscape
• Encode a video for iPhone or iPod Touch

You can also use OpenShot via a LiveDVD. I haven’t personally tried this method.

Useful FFMPEG Commands

• Convert (almost) any video file to an editor-friendly format: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -sameq -r 30 -acodec libfaac out2.mp4
• Convert a video to a series of JPEGs: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mjpeg -sameq temp/out-%d.jpg
• Fix some out-of-sync audio: ffmpeg -i infile -r 30 -sameq outfile

OpenShot Info

• The OpenShot Website
• The OpenShot Users Manual
• How to make scrolling credits in OpenShot

Python and Django Groups “Near” Lansing
The subject of Python and Django groups in the area came up, so I put together this quick list.

• GRPUG: Grand Rapids Python Users Group
• MichiPUG: Michigan Python Users Group
• Coffeehouse Coders Detroit
• ChiPy: Chicago Python Group
• Chicago Djangonauts

If there are any more questions, especially any that I missed from the meeting, please ask them in the comments below.