Introduction to Video Editing with a Samsung VP-D10

The Samsung VP-10 at first glance may appear to be a good choice for a hand held camcorder but is it a choice with Linux in mind, today we tried to marry the contents of this video camcorder into Linux Ubuntu Hardy Heron Version 8.04. The Samsung VP-D10 does not support USB (Universal Serial Bus) it uses tapes and has no non linear storage facility. We tried to use the Samsung with the Dell Inspiron 1521 this laptop not only supports the USB with four ports but Firewire also with admittedly only one port but it is enough to get the job done.

The Inspiron 1521 utilising the Ubuntu Studio distro with an RT (Real Time) Kernel, real time systems are those that have to respond to time critical events such as in data communications. If you are designing such a system you want to be able to specify an absolute and accurate upper limit on the systems performance capacity. The Ubuntu Studio distro does not run as a LiveCD so it is difficult to tell what extra packages and modules where needed but here is a list of the packages asked for.

• lives
• dvgrab

In addition to this we needed to activate raw1394 via the Ubuntu Studio Controls via System >> Administration and rebooted the system not forgetting to plug and switch on the DV Camcorder be sure to press play and initiate the lives application. With the Lives application running select from the menu File >> Import from Device >> Import from Firewire Device (dv) this will display a Graphical User Interface if all dependencies are satisfied you can use the Grab Button to record from a pre recorded tape. The data being streamed through the Firewire from the DV Camcorder is being captured on the Firewire ieee1394 port this capture is then stored as a segmented incremental file(s) with each segment 1Gb in size.

As it goes by way of Video Editing applications for Linux the Tools available are just not adequate for the professional Video producer, as a dedicated user of the Linux operating system we are disappointed a more viable non linear and intuitive application has so far alluded the Linux community. That's not to say that Linux does not have some very good Video editing software but most with the exception of Blender and Cinelerra are low end tools Jashaka was meant to address these issues. Jashaka can be very hard to install and even harder to run, a lot of time and effort has been focused lately on the desktop and rightly so. However in doing so the 3D applications such as Blender fail to operate correctly in a 3D desktop environment an issue so far doesn't seem to be one that has been addressed, to resolve this issue one must revoke 3d desktop for a nominal 2d desktop.