h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi taliesin ,
well as you know I have been having a few compatibility problems with my linux distro .
I am running :
Ubuntu [ hardy heron LTS ]
dell dimension 5150
pentium D 2-66 ghz
graphics.....radeon x300se
printer......cannon pixma 4300
scanner......epson 4490 photo

Firstly I would like to point out that I am a bit of a computer dunce . They [ PC's ] had not been invented by the time I left school and I have had no training whatsoever in how to use them . So it has all been trial and error on my part [ and every error was a trial ] .

It was around spring time when my hard drive started to make funny noises and began to malfunction . So I decided to buy a new hard drive and instead of giving Bill Gates a wedge of my hard earned cash I installed Ubuntu gutsy gibbon . It would not work with my radion graphics card and would only work in safe graphics mode . Or off the live cd . I spent a fair bit of time looking on the Ubuntu forums and seeing that other people with the same card were having simular problems and that none of them ever resolved the issues , I removed the graphics card and ran my pc off of the on board graphics .
I did not see this as much of a problem as I do not play games or use any 3d effects . It now works fine with the onboard graphics .
Next up my printer would print fine in black and white , but colour printing was muddy with very subdued colours . I did try to find a solution to this but after trying severall drivers that had been recomended , I gave up .
A simular situation occoured with my scanner . The only driver for it was an rpm file ? and I had to try to convert it to a deb file . It was all getting a bit too complicated for me and I again gave up . There is a pattern developing here isn't there
Now I have bought a video camera which uses mpeg-4 and suprise suprise Ubuntu linux doesn't work with that either .
I upgraded to hardy heron about 6 months ago as I was attracted to the idea of long term support . I like it and as a self contained operating system for web browsing and the like its fine , but as soon as you plug anything into it that was designed for windows Its an uphill struggle .
Sitting in the box the video camera came in is a nice shiny dvd with adobe premiere elements on it , it is very tempting to just buy vista and solve all my problems that way .

While there's not really all that much 'wrong' with Ubuntu, per se, and I've not extensively researched it, I've noticed many users growing disenchanted for for similar reasons.

Some of those users give up, and return to MS, or go Mac. Others grit their teeth and segue to Debian, which is similar, but often seems easier to customize.

I'll do a little research regarding your hardware, but I must tell you Canon peripherals in particular are notoriously difficult under Linux. That doesn't mean impossible, however....

I've been playing with kdenlive for a bit, and it seems to have no difficulty with various flavors of mpeg-4. I downloaded a few clips, and the program loads them with no problem. I'm not familiar with the program yet, although it comes with a very nice tutorial, so I don't know how well it renders output.

If you install kdenlive, and are using the default Gnome desktop environment, the process will pull in a few kde dependencies.

I'd like to see the output of a few system files:

Open a terminal, and type -- cat /etc/apt/sources.list > ~/Desktop/sources.txt

That will create a text file on your desktop called sources.txt

Similarly for disk information --
df -h >~/Desktop/diskspace.txt

And system memory --
grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo >~/Desktop/ram.txt



I may have mentioned somewhere that PCs hadn't been invented when I left university, and I've never had any computer training, either!

Thanks for the reply Taliesin ,
I am at work at the moment , but when I am at home I will type the commands into the terminal and see what comes out .
As for mpeg-4 I can download and watch clips no problem with VLC amoung others . The problem I have is that the Kino editing program only uses DV . Due to copyright issues I expect . Using the video camera is only half the job , I really need to have a half decent editing program so that I can find out if I am a Bergman or an Ed Wood .
I will struggle on for a little longer before admiting defeat . I did , before coming to work , come across a program that claimed to convert mpeg-4 to DV . Trouble is there is no gui its all done in the terminal and I dont know what I am doing when it comes to typing in commands . I am definately out of my depth .
Still hay ho , I am not swimming until my feet are off the bottom am I ?

>>As for mpeg-4 I can download and watch clips no problem with VLC amoung others . The problem I have is that the Kino editing program only uses DV<<

Try ffmpeg. It should be installed already. If not, do sudo aptitude update, then sudo aptitude install ffmpeg.

ffmpeg should do the conversion for you. Note ffmpeg is a command line program, but once you learn a few commands, you'll find it's quite simple, and very fast.

Assume your video file is called 'original.mov', and you want an output called 'new.dv'.

In the folder in which you have your 'original.mov' video file, open a terminal.

type this:

ffmpeg -i original.mov -target pal-dv new.dv

You can even specify things like aspect ratio and audio quality:

ffmpeg -i original.mov -s pal -r pal -aspect 4:3 -ar 48000 -ac 2 new.dv

Note you can choose ntsc instead of pal.

man ffmpeg for more details, and visit http://doc.gnu-darwin.org/ffmpeg/ffmpeg-doc.html for on line documentation.

There are gui editors capable of handling mpeg-4 --

kdenlive is a non-linear video editing system. Apparently it can handle mpeg-4. It is a fairly simple application, and lacks some features such as chroma-key.

cinelerra is another non-linear video editor, with many more features, including chroma key. It has a gtk interface, however, and could be a bit more difficult to install.

Oops. forgot a couple of links --

cinelerra - http://cinelerra.org/getting_cinelerra.php
(note the detailed instructions for installing cinelerra on ubuntu!)

kdenlive - http://kdenlive.org/

canon pixma iP4300 --- http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Canon-PIXMA_iP4300
Like most canon products, this printer has mixed reviews and generally unsatisfactory results under non-windows oses. the gutenprint driver is recommended. I'd suggest looking for a supported printer when the ink runs out. hps are good bet, and often go on sale for not a lot more than the cost of new ink cartridges.

epson perfection 4490 photo scanner -- there isn't an official 'sane' project driver, but you can convert the avasys-epson .rpm driver, available from here -- http://www.avasys.jp/lx-bin2/linux_e/scan/DL2.do to a .deb package using alien.
Follow the instructions here: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-users/2007-March/014889.html

radeon x300se -- bit tricky, but should work with the official binary driver from ATI.
Obtain the installer, and follow the instructions available here -- http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeon.html

If any of this is confusing, don't hesitate to ask me for help, or pop over to the Debian user forum, (they'll help a Ubuntu user, too!) or the Linux Agora, (very newbie-friendly) or LinuxQuestions, (also newbie-friendly).

Debian User Forums -- http://forums.debian.net/index.php

Linux Agora -- http://www.linuxagora.com/vbforum/

LinuxQuestions -- http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/index.php

Hi taliesin ,
back home after an 11 hour night shift To bed soon , but I did manage to install ffmpeg
This is what I got when I tried to use it ;
john@john-desktop:~$ ffmpeg -i original.mov -target pal-dv new.dv
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libogg --enable-libgsm --enable-dc1394 --disable-debug --enable-shared --prefix=/usr
libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
built on Jul 23 2008 22:38:24, gcc: 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)
original.mov: I/O error occured
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.
john@john-desktop:~$

That's about as clear as mud to me !

You do realize I used .mov extension as an example? I have no way of knowing what format your original file is in, but it may not actually be a .mov, in which case you'd see that I/O error, because ffmpeg would try to see it as something it isn't.

Check the file type for your original, and use that in the command string.

For example, if your file is an avi, the command would be --

ffmpeg -i original.avi -target pal-dv new.dv

And so forth.

ffmpeg can handle a huge variety of formats. If the input file really is corrupt, you won't be able to view it in a media player like vlc.

btw, check that you have the w32codecs installed. For Ubuntu they are available from -- http://www.medibuntu.org/

Thanks again Taliesin ,
I will have another bash when I get home in the morning . I did guess it may be something along those lines and did try a few different file names I will persivere .
Or as homer would say 'trying is the first step on the road to giving up'

I installed the w32codecs but still no joy As far as I know the file is an mpeg-4 ie quicktime. I am off work all next week which gives me plenty of time to fiddle . Thanks for the help , I will persivere with it and let you know how I get on .

If you like, you could e-mail a _very_ small clip from your camera to me.

I'm really curious now to see if ffmpeg can do the conversion, or if there's something weird with the format. I'd also like to see if the clip will load in kdenlive and cinelerra.

email addy is on my PS

I will do that Taliesin , expect a short clip of hendrix the walking around my back garden in the next day or so !

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1346

Good article

I am still sticking with ubuntu . There is some frustration when programs you would like to try are not possible on linux . But I am still not giving any money to 'The Man' and with the economy getting tight , linux will be on the up . { this is my prediction for 09 }

So far Linux has met my requirements

Multimedia and A/V editing has lagged, but is rapidly catching up with some of the best commercial and proprietary software.

Some of the better applications are currently being ported to run on Mac OSX, including the new KDE4 desktop environment

Encouragingly, the Canadian government has officially expressed interest in FOSS

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/12/tech-feds-open-source.html

I asked one of our IT guys at work why we didn't use Linux . It would save the taxpayer a fortune . He said it would be too difficult to configure all the printers and faxes 'n' stuff . Surely with the number of machines HM Gov. buy they could force manufacturers to supply linux drivers . Or write there own .

h2g2 uses Apache on Debian (sort of): http://web-sniffer.net/?url=www.h2g2.com.

The real thing uses IIS.

TRiG.