

Open-Source Tools for Working With Video and Audio - newacc
http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/07/22/22gigaom-4-free-open-source-tools-for-working-with-video-a-34611.html

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cesare
I also suggest:

* Ardour (<http://ardour.org/>) - a digital audio workstation

* Cinelerra (<http://cinelerra.org/>) - for video editing

* Snd (<http://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd/snd/snd.html>) - a sound editor scriptable in scheme, ruby or forth.

~~~
Herring
kdenlive isn't bad for video either. It's much easier to figure out in my
opinion.

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shin_lao
I don't think the author tried to get any real work done with Audacity. It's
really not up to par with either Sound Forge or Wavelab.

I really had a terrible time last time I checked out Audacity.

I understand it's free of charge and you can definitely get some work done
with it (if you aren't in a hurry).

The thing is I just don't think open source is competitive in that kind of
market.

First of all: very limited export and import. I like my audio editor to be a
hub where I can switch from one format to the other.

UI : I really don't like the UI I'm sorry to say I find it very ugly. I also
have the feeling it takes a significant higher number of operations to trim,
zoom, detrim, cancel, copy, etc. Maybe with time I could cope with it if I
didn't have the choice. Ah, wait, I have a choice. :) In Wavelab you have a
virtual rack in which you can plug in the VST FX, and tweak it in real time.
It's really well done and the visual feedback is very helpful.

Effects : it's just not delivered with decent effects (where is the multi-band
compression?) and good VST effects (such as the Waves Diamond Bundle) are
expensive (> 3000 €). If you spend for 3000 € of FX, I guess you can spend
another 400 € for an audio editor.

But the real show stopper was that Audacity doesn't support the audio output I
need, that is ASIO. I need ASIO output to get the sub 40 ms output latency. I
don't think it supports WASAPI either which would be a work around.

For home usage, Sound Forge Audio Studio is only 35 € and in my opinion much
better than Audacity. You can burn you recording directly from the software,
in Audacity you have to export to wav and then burn the track (unless it
changed).

Hope this sheds some light.

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enqk
Audacity is clunky but gets the work done when it comes to simple editing. Not
really indeed very good for a musician since it misses useful realtime
feedback on effects, but for a Dad looking to record / edit / convert his
vinyls into mp3s it works perfectly.

As for why you'd want to have low latency on a sample editing software, I do
not really understand why. Unless you want to record and process effect
automations. For that purpose, why not use something more like an audio
sequencer? (Reaper -- pretty cheap -- or Logic Audio, Cubase, Ableton Live)

As for exports, Audacity supports ogg, mp3 and flac, which is pretty good. But
no direct burn operation.

Who burns CDs nowadays, though?

In summary I think the only crime that Audacity commits is to look and sell
itself as more advanced than what it really is: a simple sample editing
software. So bad marketing and an incorrect apparent focus on musicians.

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shin_lao
Low latency is interesting when you're tweaking the VST in real time and want
to see how it affects your recording. With enough CPU power and a good audio
card, this is doable even with a complex stack of effects.

I guess it could also be important when using external processors.

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enqk
Yet this has nothing to do with low latency. You can have a decent realtime
preview with ~120ms latency, which I use as a limit for instantaneousness.

Low-latency is good for performance, as in, for performing live. And that's it
(Then again ask any church organ player about latency.. He has ton of it)

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mgk
Shameless plug time.

www.celtx.com - Open source pre-production application for making films,
stageplays, audio, AV and comics (so far).

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anigbrowl
Woah!! + many internets, and I wish I could upvote you twice. I work in this
area (kitchen TV right now) and had heard of the project a while back but
forgot about it - this looks _superb_. The popular commercial alternatives
(EP/Movie Magic and Gorilla) are made of fail, and I'm not such a big fan of
Final Draft either.

After randomly dumping a bunch of day job (unscripted TV location plan data)
and personal (2 feature scripts) into it, you've got yourself an evangelist.

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mgk
Thanks much to you (and dtf) for the feedback. Really appreciated. We don't
get a lot of press (you'd think that whoever wrote the piece about open source
media apps would have at least Googled around a bit beforehand...), but the
WOM is working nicely.

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enqk
What a disappointing article!

Only four piece of software mentioned. Of the four, only Audacity and Blender
are really about working with Video and Audio. The rest are a format
transcoder (Simple Theora Encoder) and a general purpose media player and
broadcaster (VLC)

So in summary, none none of them are really about editing video.

The article even failed to mention you can almost do that with Blender, but
learning a complete and thus quite complicated 3d suite to edit your
vacations' videos is a bit "much."

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GvS
MeGUI (<http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/>) is my favourite.

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pasbesoin
I know nothing about this area, but Mums just asked me to help her and her
business partner put together a DVD demonstrating their healthcare treatment
techniques. They are "leading edge" in their field and need visual before and
after documentation to convince others, particularly the mainstream medical
community, that their results are real. To be clear, this isn't "crystal
magnets and stuff"; it's advanced physical therapy and neuro-physiological
techniques invoking neuro-plasticity and the like.

Nothing too fancy required of the video, except that faces need to be blurred.
Does anyone know of an open source / low or zero cost editor that can do that
reliably?

Once, some years in the past, she spent some thousands on a professionally
produced videotape, but was underwhelmed with the results and a bit
overwhelmed at the price tag given the relative simplicity of her editing
needs (although I can see face blurring as a multi-hour "target shoot" kind of
exercise, for the editor). Thus, this time her "computer literate" son has
been drafted.

EDIT: She works a lot with disadvantaged children. Good work, but there's not
tons of money in it. So, she's not just being cheap. And as I'm between jobs,
I'm avoiding expenses, myself.

