June 2009: Media Creation using Linux (Video)

Martyn Ranyard talked about video in Linux. The main points were:

• For YouTube and others, use Video DownloadHelper for Firefox; this also has a conversion option but won’t download certain videos.

• WinFF will convert most formats including iPhone.

• MEncoder, which is part of MPlayer and a command line utility, will convert pretty well anything. Use the mplayer help file to find the codec and options which take the form

• mencoder input_file -ovc codec -oac codec -o output_file where using copy instead of codec simply places the file in a different container.

• mencoder file -ovc help lists the available codecs.

• Use firewire to download videos from video cameras and Kino [no longer being developed] for capture and editing.

• ’Q’ DVD Author allows you to create DVD menus.

• Most webcams will work with either Video4Linux or Video4Linux2; n.b. not all webcams know about the other version and they are subject to frequent changes of chip; so different examples of the same model may not work with the same software.

• Use Cheese as the GUI interface for a webcam.

• Most people who use webcams for communicating have MSN or Yahoo; for MSN, use aMSN and for Yahoo use GYachE Improved; Kopete also works with Yahoo.

• Alternatively mebeam.com [defunct] used flash video instead to transfer the signals.

• Use mencoder to convert from flash.

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