Re: [gentoo-user] OT HD video camera & Gentoo

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 3:20 PM, James <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I'm going to get myself an HD video camera, that
> works well with open source software on Gentoo.
> Problem is (head scratching), I recall when I went
> through this some years ago I had lots of problems
> making a decision that worked with linux. I ended up with a
> Sony DCR-SR42. It works and the disk is mounted
> via the usb port. I can cd into the /dev/disk/<sony>
> mount point and used scp to remotely copy
> the mpg files and jpg photos to any system
> on the network. That to me is minimal functionality.
>
>
> Surely somebody has a HD video camera that works
> extra cool with Gentoo and gives a variety of video output
> formats, like h.264; or the video output can be
> easily converted to h.264 and other formats?
>
>
> Surely, there is an easy method (software app) to just
> burn a dvd from the contents of the video camera directly
> with (gentoo) linux; just like I can do, from the old
> sony(XP)  software that came with the camera?
>
>
> Any recommendations are most welcome. I mostly record
> fast moving sports, like basketball, football and
> water skiing, so the 'debouncing technologies'  or
> motion compensation if you like, are also of keen
> interest to me.

Hi James, sorry nobody replied to your message yet. I was on vacation
but I have an HD video camera and have used it in Gentoo to edit the
videos etc. :)

I have a Canon Vixia HG10 camera, which is a bit old by now and I
don't think it is made anymore (the newer models in the same line are
similar but better in basically every way). It does 720p and "1080i"
(I put the latter in quotes because the actual resolution is
anamorphic 16:9 in 1440x1080, not the 1920x1080 that one might expect
when the packaging proclaims its 1080 HD support...). It has a hard
drive and stores the movies in avchd format. It gets mounted as a
normal USB mass storage device, no monkey business is necessary in
getting to the files. In fact, this format is H.264 video and AC3
audio already, and from what I understand it is compatible with
blu-ray players. You can simply burn the files onto a disc (even a DVD
if the video is short enough) and play it in HD on your blu-ray
player, or play them on your PC with mplayer. I don't have a BR player
so I've never tried (you can also hook the camera directly to the HDMI
port of your TV).

I think that any camera that stores its files in avchd format would be
just as easy to use from that standpoint.

From an editing-in-linux standpoint, by far the best software I've
found is kdenlive, which is free and open-source and uses mlt as its
video processing backend. It supports the modern HD formats and is
very actively developed, and lets you do everything you'd expect from
a video editing software. It can export files in almost any format
imaginable, and has presets for most of them, including mobile devices
and sharing sites like youtube and vimeo in addition to the standard
files like avi, mkv, etc. It also has a transcoder if you simply want
to convert files as-is. There is a pretty active mailing list as well.

One thing to keep in mind is that dealing with HD video is hugely
processor and disk space intensive. If you don't have at least a Core
2, or equivalent, or newer, it might be prohibitively slow. Be
prepared to use up hundreds of gigs of disk space, too. Processing
time is likely to be several times longer than the length of the video
itself.

Good luck!