[gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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There's a program I really want to use, and I was hoping it existed in
Gentoo.
It's called handbrake.  eix can't find it.  equery cannot find it.  But
there's
a bug (#89432) filed against it, with the last comment (#111) just 4 days
ago.

So where in the portage is
handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild<http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=229397>
?

WTF?

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Dale]

Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> There's a program I really want to use, and I was hoping it existed in 
> Gentoo.
> It's called handbrake.  eix can't find it.  equery cannot find it.  
> But there's
> a bug (#89432) filed against it, with the last comment (#111) just 4 
> days ago.
>
> So where in the portage is handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild 
> <http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=229397>?
>
> WTF?
>
> -- 
> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
>

Here you go.

http://gpo.zugaina.org/media-video/handbrake

It's in a overlay.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Stroller]

On 16 Aug 2010, at 01:43, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:

> There's a program I really want to use, and I was hoping it existed  
> in Gentoo.
> It's called handbrake.  eix can't find it.  equery cannot find it.   
> But there's
> a bug (#89432) filed against it, with the last comment (#111) just 4  
> days ago.
>
> So where in the portage is handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild?

To expand on Dale's answer, Handbrake is unlikely ever to be in Portage.

The Handbrake developers use the poor practice of snapshotting the  
upstream libraries they depend upon (I'm not sure if they also patch  
or modify them, instead of pushing those changes upstream) and then  
packaging those libs with Handbrake (in a particularly ugly way, too,  
one might add).

So when you install Handbrake you download a bunch of additional  
libraries (which you likely already have installed on your system) and  
it is compiled against those versions.

The correct way to do this would be for the handbrake developers to  
simply specify which libraries are required and link against the ones  
already installed on your system. If a specific version of a library  
is required - but generally speaking it shouldn't be - then that can  
be done as part of the ebuild / makefile dependency checking.

The link you posted to handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild is an ebuild. You can  
install it something like this:

# mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/media-video/handbrake/
# curl http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=229397 > \
      /usr/local/portage/media-video/handbrake/handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild
# ebuild manifest /usr/local/portage/media-video/handbrake/ 
handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild
# emerge handbrake

It's a shitty ebuild, and it has to be, because that's inherent in the  
way the Handbrake devs "package" their program, but the ebuild does  
install and work the way the Handbrake devs intended.

I would have thought you'd already know this if you had fully read bug  
#89432.

I know that transcoding is a bit of a black art, but I'm not convinced  
Handbrake is actually that good.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Dale]

Stroller wrote:
>
> On 16 Aug 2010, at 01:43, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>
>> There's a program I really want to use, and I was hoping it existed 
>> in Gentoo.
>> It's called handbrake.  eix can't find it.  equery cannot find it.  
>> But there's
>> a bug (#89432) filed against it, with the last comment (#111) just 4 
>> days ago.
>>
>> So where in the portage is handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild?
>
> To expand on Dale's answer, Handbrake is unlikely ever to be in Portage.
>
> The Handbrake developers use the poor practice of snapshotting the 
> upstream libraries they depend upon (I'm not sure if they also patch 
> or modify them, instead of pushing those changes upstream) and then 
> packaging those libs with Handbrake (in a particularly ugly way, too, 
> one might add).
>
> So when you install Handbrake you download a bunch of additional 
> libraries (which you likely already have installed on your system) and 
> it is compiled against those versions.
>
> The correct way to do this would be for the handbrake developers to 
> simply specify which libraries are required and link against the ones 
> already installed on your system. If a specific version of a library 
> is required - but generally speaking it shouldn't be - then that can 
> be done as part of the ebuild / makefile dependency checking.
>
> The link you posted to handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild is an ebuild. You can 
> install it something like this:
>
> # mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/media-video/handbrake/
> # curl http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=229397 > \
>      /usr/local/portage/media-video/handbrake/handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild
> # ebuild manifest 
> /usr/local/portage/media-video/handbrake/handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild
> # emerge handbrake
>
> It's a shitty ebuild, and it has to be, because that's inherent in the 
> way the Handbrake devs "package" their program, but the ebuild does 
> install and work the way the Handbrake devs intended.
>
> I would have thought you'd already know this if you had fully read bug 
> #89432.
>
> I know that transcoding is a bit of a black art, but I'm not convinced 
> Handbrake is actually that good.
>
> Stroller.
>

Now I'm curious.  Basically the programmers have a crappy way of making 
their package and Gentoo doesn't need the headache?  Based on your 
explanation, I can't blame the Gentoo devs for that.   They got enough 
headaches already.

I also noticed that bug report was started about 5 years ago.  I really 
think you are right that it won't ever be added, unless the people at 
handbrake do things differently.

Didn't Googleearth start out this way tho?  I know it used to be a huge 
mess.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>wrote:

>
> On 16 Aug 2010, at 01:43, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>
>  There's a program I really want to use, and I was hoping it existed in
>> Gentoo.
>> It's called handbrake.  eix can't find it.  equery cannot find it.  But
>> there's
>> a bug (#89432) filed against it, with the last comment (#111) just 4 days
>> ago.
>>
>> So where in the portage is handbrake-0.9.4.ebuild?
>>
>
> To expand on Dale's answer, Handbrake is unlikely ever to be in Portage.
>

I don't have that yet.  Maybe it wasn't sent to the list.  But thanks for
that info.

[snippage: why Gentoo does not like handbrake, plus how to try it anyway]

>
> I would have thought you'd already know this if you had fully read bug
> #89432.
>

I might have, but reading 111 comments about a package I've never seen is
more than my brain can do,
but I had suspected something like the result: not gonna happen.

I know that transcoding is a bit of a black art, but I'm not convinced
> Handbrake is actually that good.


Well, I'm a newb in video, but it was suggested to me by someone who uses
it, so I wanted to try.

My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my camera
broke, and I had to get
one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up with a
fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The problem
is that its videos are MP4s,
which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
about transcoding.   My previous
camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
browsers.  The MP4s are huge
and in a weakly supported format.

I'm somewhere on the learning curve, obviously, but having trouble getting
coherent advice.

Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Indexer]

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> 
> Well, I'm a newb in video, but it was suggested to me by someone who uses
> it, so I wanted to try.

Mplayer comes with a program called mencoder, which will do your video encoding. Its a bit more "hands on" but it is excellent once you learn it.

> 
> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my camera
> broke, and I had to get
> one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up with a
> fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The problem
> is that its videos are MP4s,
> which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
> about transcoding.   My previous
> camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> and in a weakly supported format.

IIRC, isnt MP4 just a container? what are the video codecs and audio codecs in the file? If they are 264 and mp3, you should be able to use HTML5 for them natively. 

MP4 is actually gaining alot of support in many OSes due to it being part of the HTML5 spec. 

If you need help with video transcoding, i'm happy to assist you as it makes up a small part of what i do in the work place. Just send me an email. (indexer@internode.on.net)

The basic run down is that you have a container format, that holds an audio and video stream. the container, has no part to play in what the video or audio codecs are, only the storage of subtitles and other metadata. 

Generally, with a program like mencoder you would use mencoder -vo <video codec> -ao <audio codec> -o file.<container extension>

In the majority of cases, it is the video codec, not the container that holds the issues, especially with the use of weird video codecs. (such as myself who is fighting with someone convinced they want to use real video still .....)

Thus if your camera is producing MP4, you should find out what video and audio codecs it is outputting. This can be done with mplayer from the command line, as when it opens a file it gives output similar to this

bash-3.2$ mplayer /Volumes/Storage/Videos/Butterfly_Total_Remix_Pro.flv 
MPlayer UNKNOWN-4.2.1 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
141 audio & 304 video codecs

Playing /Volumes/Storage/Videos/Butterfly_Total_Remix_Pro.flv.
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO:  [FLV1]  320x240  0bpp  24.000 fps  336.4 kbps (41.1 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 duration: 229
 videodatarate: 329
 lastkeyframetimestamp: 229
 lastkeyframelocation: 9435531
 creator: YouTube, Inc.
 metadatacreator: YouTube Metadata Injector.
 haskeyframes: true
 hasmetadata: true
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffflv] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Flash video)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 22050 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 8.0 kbit/1.13% (ratio: 1000->88200)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [coreaudio] 22050Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 320 x 240 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 1
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 5 -> 4
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]BICUBIC scaler, from yuv420p to yuyv422 using MMX2
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]using 4-tap MMX scaler for horizontal luminance scaling
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]using 4-tap MMX scaler for horizontal chrominance scaling
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]using n-tap MMX scaler for vertical scaling (BGR)
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]320x240 -> 320x240
VO: [corevideo] 320x240 => 320x240 Packed YUY2 
[ASPECT] Warning: No suitable new res found!
A:   3.2 V:   3.2 A-V: -0.007 ct:  0.184   0/  0  2%  5%  2.2% 0 0 

MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: sleep_timer
A:   3.3 V:   3.2 A-V:  0.050 ct:  0.188   0/  0  2%  5%  2.2% 0 0 
Exiting... (Quit)

The sections you are interested in, are between the ====  signs. They tell you it is a Flash video, with MP3 audio. You can also see it is a flash container. It may be worth running one of your videos with mplayer to find what codecs they are using.

> 
> I'm somewhere on the learning curve, obviously, but having trouble getting
> coherent advice.

Yes, its always difficult to work out the good from the bad. Im sure we have all been at that stage, and its why email lists like this are here to help. You get to see alot of opinions and you can choose the one that suits you best, as well as test some of the ideas we give you. :)

> 
> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

William Brown

pgp.mit.edu



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Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 9:49 PM, Indexer <indexer@internode.on.net> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> >
> > Well, I'm a newb in video, but it was suggested to me by someone who uses
> > it, so I wanted to try.
>
> Mplayer comes with a program called mencoder, which will do your video
> encoding. Its a bit more "hands on" but it is excellent once you learn it.
>
> >
> > My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
> camera
> > broke, and I had to get
> > one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up with
> a
> > fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> > and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The
> problem
> > is that its videos are MP4s,
> > which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
> > about transcoding.   My previous
> > camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> > browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> > and in a weakly supported format.
>
> IIRC, isnt MP4 just a container? what are the video codecs and audio codecs
> in the file? If they are 264 and mp3, you should be able to use HTML5 for
> them natively.
>
> MP4 is actually gaining alot of support in many OSes due to it being part
> of the HTML5 spec.
>
> [major snippage]

Well, there you go.  Among the things I've just learned:
1) There are containers
2) Codec != container
3) Video and Audio are encoded one from column A and one from column B.

I hope this gives you an idea of what a newb I am.  Please calibrate
responses accordingly.  My friend is pretty sure my problem is the video
H.264 codec.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Stroller]

On 16 Aug 2010, at 04:02, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> ...
> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my  
> camera broke, and I had to get one in a hurry, and didn't really  
> know what to look for. I wound up with a fairly good Sanyo 1080p  
> camera and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  
> The problem is that its videos are MP4s, which are definitely not  
> ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing about transcoding. My  
> previous camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with  
> most folks browsers.  The MP4s are huge and in a weakly supported  
> format.

MP4 is a much better container format than .avi.

I previously discussed this a little in July's "viewing .m4v files  
with totem" thread:
http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg103363.html

Use the `mplayer -identify` command given there to determine the codec  
of your video.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 12:35 AM, Stroller
<stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>wrote:

>
> On 16 Aug 2010, at 04:02, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
>> camera broke, and I had to get one in a hurry, and didn't really know what
>> to look for. I wound up with a fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera and video
>> recorder that's super light, and not too expensive. The problem is that its
>> videos are MP4s, which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I
>> know nothing about transcoding. My previous camera took acceptable .avi
>> videos, which had worked with most folks browsers.  The MP4s are huge and in
>> a weakly supported format.
>>
>
> MP4 is a much better container format than .avi.
>
> I previously discussed this a little in July's "viewing .m4v files with
> totem" thread:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg103363.html
>
> Use the `mplayer -identify` command given there to determine the codec of
> your video.
>
> Stroller.
>
>
The codec is H.264, which most of my readers don't have.  They are
non-technical which makes it a major pain, and I want out of it.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Stroller]

On 16 Aug 2010, at 20:52, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 12:35 AM, Stroller
> <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>wrote:
>> On 16 Aug 2010, at 04:02, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>>> ...
>>>
>>> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
>>> camera broke, and I had to get one in a hurry, and didn't really  
>>> know what
>>> to look for. I wound up with a fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera and  
>>> video
>>> recorder that's super light, and not too expensive. The problem is  
>>> that its
>>> videos are MP4s, ...
>>>
>>
>> MP4 is a much better container format than .avi.
>>
>> I previously discussed this a little in July's "viewing .m4v files  
>> with
>> totem" thread:
>> http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg103363.html
>>
>> Use the `mplayer -identify` command given there to determine the  
>> codec of
>> your video.
>>
>
> The codec is H.264, which most of my readers don't have.  They are
> non-technical which makes it a major pain, and I want out of it.

H264 is excellent - it's the best codec available today, and I would  
have expected it to be widely supported. As far as browsers are  
concerned, it's supported by about half of them, I think, natively via  
HTML5. The reasons the others don't support it are patent related -  
Mozilla won't incorporate h264 playback into Firefox, for instance,  
because h264 is only free as in beer, not as in speech.

I would have thought H264 would be easy to remux into an .flv  
container and host using an open-source YouTube-style player on your  
own site. Alternatively, just open a free YouTube or Vimeo account and  
upload your original .mp4 video files there. I appreciate that this  
latter is not an optimal answer, however...

I stated that "I'm not convinced Handbrake is actually that good" - to  
be fair, I don't know what *is* that good, short of an intimate  
knowledge of video standards (interlacing, frame-rates &c &c) and  
mplayer / ffmpeg / MP4box / other tools.

The reason the MP4 files out of your camera are so large is that  
they're high-def and this very high video quality. Stuff recorded in  
good light should look awesome, even on a huge great 42" TV. So you  
will need to resize them smaller for the web (so, in fact, my previous  
suggestion about remuxing h264 into an .flv container is useless for  
you, until you've done that).

Try installing Handbrake and see if you get along with it - I have a  
bias against it because I tried to rip studio-produced DVDs using it,  
and had playback issues on the PS3. Maybe I'm being unfair. You might  
also try media-video/h264enc - I think that is a wrapper script for  
ffmpeg / mplayer, written by one of the mplayer devs.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Bill Longman]

On 08/15/2010 08:02 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
> camera broke, and I had to get
> one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up
> with a fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The
> problem is that its videos are MP4s,
> which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
> about transcoding.   My previous
> camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> and in a weakly supported format.
> 
> I'm somewhere on the learning curve, obviously, but having trouble
> getting coherent advice.

I know several big-brained video geeks and most of them just use
mplayer's mencoder app to do their transcoding. Or they write their own
code. Your choice.

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Paul Hartman]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my camera
> broke, and I had to get
> one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up with a
> fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The problem
> is that its videos are MP4s,
> which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
> about transcoding.   My previous
> camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> and in a weakly supported format.

You might want to check out kdenlive which is a full-featured video
editor (using mlt as backend) but includes a simple transcoding
function and several presets for many different formats (with the
added bonus that you'll be able to edit your raw video should you so
desire).

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
> camera
> > broke, and I had to get
> > one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up with
> a
> > fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> > and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The
> problem
> > is that its videos are MP4s,
> > which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
> > about transcoding.   My previous
> > camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> > browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> > and in a weakly supported format.
>
> You might want to check out kdenlive which is a full-featured video
> editor (using mlt as backend) but includes a simple transcoding
> function and several presets for many different formats (with the
> added bonus that you'll be able to edit your raw video should you so
> desire).
>

Thanks, I emerged kdenlive.  I can not open my MP4 files, but I can add them
as clips. Okay.

The clips do not play in any reasonable form.  I get moments of sound, and a
few pixels
changing on screen; nothing coherent.  I'd been told that H264 needs a lot
of CPU and I
guess an old 4-core 32-bit XEON (effectively 800 MHz each) on 2 GB ECC DDR1
is not enough.  Okay.

The killer though, is that I cannot figure out how to export that clip in
some other form.
And of course, I'm clueless about what form would be optimum.  Asking for
help takes
me to a forum that has a thread on the topic, but no useful answer.

Is there a kdelive tutorial anywhere?  One basic walkthrough and I'd
probably be able
to figure out the rest of what I want.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Stroller]

On 17 Aug 2010, at 15:08, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> ...
> The clips do not play in any reasonable form. I get moments of  
> sound, and a few pixels changing on screen; nothing coherent. I'd  
> been told that H264 needs a lot of CPU and I guess an old 4-core 32- 
> bit XEON (effectively 800 MHz each) on 2 GB ECC DDR1 is not enough.   
> Okay.

Hi-def needs a lot of horses to play, I'm not sure about H264 compared  
to other codecs. H264 is designed so that specialised deciding chips  
(in mobile phones and set-top-boxes) can be built cheaply to aid  
playback, but on generic hardware I would imagine it would be a chunk  
more demanding than (say) the MPEG2 of the DVD standard written over a  
decade ago.

If you mean 4 *processors* at 800mhz, then that's Pentium III  
territory, and you have no chance. You'd really be requiring a Core2  
class machine. A Pentium 4 is likely to struggle.

Video playback does parallelise, if the player is written for that.  
But 800mhz is still massively underpowered for hi-def video.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
>> > camera
>> > broke, and I had to get
>> > one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up
>> > with a
>> > fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
>> > and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The
>> > problem
>> > is that its videos are MP4s,
>> > which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
>> > about transcoding.   My previous
>> > camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
>> > browsers.  The MP4s are huge
>> > and in a weakly supported format.
>>
>> You might want to check out kdenlive which is a full-featured video
>> editor (using mlt as backend) but includes a simple transcoding
>> function and several presets for many different formats (with the
>> added bonus that you'll be able to edit your raw video should you so
>> desire).
>
> Thanks, I emerged kdenlive.  I can not open my MP4 files, but I can add them
> as clips. Okay.
>
> The clips do not play in any reasonable form.  I get moments of sound, and a
> few pixels
> changing on screen; nothing coherent.  I'd been told that H264 needs a lot
> of CPU and I
> guess an old 4-core 32-bit XEON (effectively 800 MHz each) on 2 GB ECC DDR1
> is not enough.  Okay.

I don't think you'll be able to play back HD video in real-time on
that hardware. Even on, for example, Core 2 at 3GHz playing HD video
used something like 90% CPU (without a hardware mpeg4 decoder).

> The killer though, is that I cannot figure out how to export that clip in
> some other form.
> And of course, I'm clueless about what form would be optimum.  Asking for
> help takes
> me to a forum that has a thread on the topic, but no useful answer.

You need to add it as a clip, then drag that clip to the timeline in
the lower half of the window. It may take it a while to process once
you've dropped it here (I believe it thumbnails/indexes the video).
It's sort of like a multi-track audio editor, you can overlay effects,
drag the ends of the video clips to change the start/end point, etc.
The more effects you add the slower the encoding will be. For example
I used it on a 5-minute video from my wedding to fade-in and fade-out,
print a title at the beginning, and normalize the audio. I encoded it
to a 720p mp4 which I could then upload to YouTube and let YouTube
re-encode it to lower resolutions for people who can't do HD.

Once you've got your clip on the timeline, to save as another format
click the "Render" button. In the Render window, you can choose the
output format. It will give you many options such as MPEG-2, XviD,
Flash, RealVideo, Theora etc. You can also adjust the output video
dimensions and bitrate. Hopefully you can find something that will
work for your audience. If you have other video files that worked well
for you in the past, you might check out what their specs are and try
to mimic it.

It will probably take ages to process, depending on how long your
video is. I have a Core i7 920, overclocked, and encoding a 1440x1080
interlaced video to another format still takes more time than the
length of the video clip (usually 1.5 to 2 times with no effects
added). Since you're dealing with even higher-resolution video and
slower hardware I imagine you're probably looking at overnight, or
days, depending on how much video you're dealing with.

One "trick" to speed things up is to first transcode your video to an
uncompressed format, and then do all of your editing operations on
that uncompressed file. This requires massive amounts of disk space
and fast disks, though (I think a 5 minute clip was about 70
gigabytes).

> Is there a kdelive tutorial anywhere?  One basic walkthrough and I'd
> probably be able
> to figure out the rest of what I want.

There are some video tutorials here:
http://www.kdenlive.org/tutorial

And the user manual has a quick-start section, I believe:
http://www.kdenlive.org/user-manual

If you don't really need or want HD video, you might also consider
going "old school" and getting a video capture card (which encodes to
something more CPU-friendly like mpeg2). Then you could play the video
on the camcorder and record it onto the computer and let the capture
card do the heavy lifting.

If kdenlive is a dead end, other alternatives might be:
Install handbrake binaries into your user directory, forgetting about
portage entirely for the moment.
Use ffmpeg if you can figure out the commandline options (I never can)
Other video-converter packages include tovid, though support of HD
video might not be there.

Good luck!

Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Paul Hartman
> > <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my
> >> > camera
> >> > broke, and I had to get
> >> > one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up
> >> > with a
> >> > fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> >> > and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The
> >> > problem
> >> > is that its videos are MP4s,
> >> > which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know
> nothing
> >> > about transcoding.   My previous
> >> > camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> >> > browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> >> > and in a weakly supported format.
> >>
> >> You might want to check out kdenlive which is a full-featured video
> >> editor (using mlt as backend) but includes a simple transcoding
> >> function and several presets for many different formats (with the
> >> added bonus that you'll be able to edit your raw video should you so
> >> desire).
> >
> > Thanks, I emerged kdenlive.  I can not open my MP4 files, but I can add
> them
> > as clips. Okay.
> >
> > The clips do not play in any reasonable form.  I get moments of sound,
> and a
> > few pixels
> > changing on screen; nothing coherent.  I'd been told that H264 needs a
> lot
> > of CPU and I
> > guess an old 4-core 32-bit XEON (effectively 800 MHz each) on 2 GB ECC
> DDR1
> > is not enough.  Okay.
>
> I don't think you'll be able to play back HD video in real-time on
> that hardware. Even on, for example, Core 2 at 3GHz playing HD video
> used something like 90% CPU (without a hardware mpeg4 decoder).
>
> > The killer though, is that I cannot figure out how to export that clip in
> > some other form.
> > And of course, I'm clueless about what form would be optimum.  Asking for
> > help takes
> > me to a forum that has a thread on the topic, but no useful answer.
>
> You need to add it as a clip, then drag that clip to the timeline in
> the lower half of the window. It may take it a while to process once
> you've dropped it here (I believe it thumbnails/indexes the video).
> It's sort of like a multi-track audio editor, you can overlay effects,
> drag the ends of the video clips to change the start/end point, etc.
> The more effects you add the slower the encoding will be. For example
> I used it on a 5-minute video from my wedding to fade-in and fade-out,
> print a title at the beginning, and normalize the audio. I encoded it
> to a 720p mp4 which I could then upload to YouTube and let YouTube
> re-encode it to lower resolutions for people who can't do HD.
>
> Once you've got your clip on the timeline, to save as another format
> click the "Render" button. In the Render window, you can choose the
> output format. It will give you many options such as MPEG-2, XviD,
> Flash, RealVideo, Theora etc. You can also adjust the output video
> dimensions and bitrate. Hopefully you can find something that will
> work for your audience. If you have other video files that worked well
> for you in the past, you might check out what their specs are and try
> to mimic it.
>
> It will probably take ages to process, depending on how long your
> video is. I have a Core i7 920, overclocked, and encoding a 1440x1080
> interlaced video to another format still takes more time than the
> length of the video clip (usually 1.5 to 2 times with no effects
> added). Since you're dealing with even higher-resolution video and
> slower hardware I imagine you're probably looking at overnight, or
> days, depending on how much video you're dealing with.
>
> One "trick" to speed things up is to first transcode your video to an
> uncompressed format, and then do all of your editing operations on
> that uncompressed file. This requires massive amounts of disk space
> and fast disks, though (I think a 5 minute clip was about 70
> gigabytes).
>
> > Is there a kdelive tutorial anywhere?  One basic walkthrough and I'd
> > probably be able
> > to figure out the rest of what I want.
>
> There are some video tutorials here:
> http://www.kdenlive.org/tutorial
>
> And the user manual has a quick-start section, I believe:
> http://www.kdenlive.org/user-manual
>
> If you don't really need or want HD video, you might also consider
> going "old school" and getting a video capture card (which encodes to
> something more CPU-friendly like mpeg2). Then you could play the video
> on the camcorder and record it onto the computer and let the capture
> card do the heavy lifting.
>
> If kdenlive is a dead end, other alternatives might be:
> Install handbrake binaries into your user directory, forgetting about
> portage entirely for the moment.
> Use ffmpeg if you can figure out the commandline options (I never can)
> Other video-converter packages include tovid, though support of HD
> video might not be there.
>
> Good luck!
>
>
Great!  Thanks for all that useful information.  I think I'll be good from
here.
I was going to upgrade that 2002 Xeon system anyway (but maybe no right
away), but my results now make sense to me, and your information very
clear.

++ kevin
-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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