smooth scrolling credits for Cinelerra

An easy way to simulate scrolling credits is to use a very long jpeg or png image and use camera automation in order to scroll from the top part of the image all the way to the bottom of it. The one issue that has been called out on the Cinelerra boards is that the default camera automation is done using bezier curves. So, what'd you'd see by taking the defaults is that the scrolling would quicken at the beginning and the end of the automation, but be somewhat linear in the middle. The steps below show how to straighten out the curves in order to make the scrolling linear from beginning to end; in other words, a constant rate of scrolling all the way through the automation. Thanks to Nicolas from Paris for the directions!

- turn on the X and Y camera position indicators in the View menu
- click on the "Generate keyframes while tweaking" small key icon in the Timeline or Compositor
- for the scroll beginning, modify the Y position of the camera, in the compositor window. You can also click the "?" icon to enter the value directly
- at the end of the scroll, click and then I go back 1 frame to edit the Y camera position again
- go back to the main window and select "Camera Y" in the view menu.
- type "Alt-F" to modify the "Camera Y" green line height to see it entirely on the video track
- click on the start keyframe while typing "CTRL" to modify the keyframe curve slope
- do the same for the end keyframe in order to get a straight line between the start and end keyframes

After tweaking the settings, the scroll speed becomes nice and linear.

FC4 dependencies for Cinelerra CVS

Here are the packages you must have installed in order to compile the Cinelerra CVS from source on Fedora Core 4:

automake-1.9
libdv4, libdv-0.104*
ffmpeg*
xvidcore*
lame, lame-devel
libvorbis*
libogg*
libtool-1.5
a52*
libtheora*
libpng-1.2*
libjpeg-6*
libtiff*
esound*
audiofile*
libraw1394*
libavc1394*
freetype*
fontconfig*
nasm
e2fsprogs*
faad2-dev*
mjpegtools*
OpenEXR, OpenEXR-devel
fftw3*
libsndfile*
libiec61883*
x264, x264-d*
faac*

Notes
*for libdv-0.104, you must remove libdv-1.0.3 first which is used by *many* programs
*for mjpegtools, conflict msgs w/dries mjpegtools-libs
*OpenEXR path problem on build, create sym link to /usr/include/openexr

Thanks to Brendan Conoboy for suggesting the libdv-1.0.4 upgrade. Really sped up my playback framerate from about 9fps to 30fps.

Sweet!

shaking title/freeze frame effect

The Projector is responsible for the shaking title effect. With "generate keyframes while tweaking" option selected, I created the shaking effect manually by moving the X/Y coordinates of the projector randomly in the compositor. I added further jerkiness by resetting projector coordinates manually via the X, Y, Z projector coordinate tool. I set the coordinates to 0,0 sometimes and then wildly negative and positive numbers (-264/+300) for real bouncy titles. I enabled the video track with titles only:
blurTitleShake
400K

After the shaking title experiment, I then completed the picture by adding a second video track with a Freeze Frame.
blurTitleShakeVideo
3MB

Timing fade outs and the proper freeze frame position were somewhat of a chore, but since I will be repeating this same sequence with different video and titling three or four more times, I should have the process optimized after finishing the last one.

blurred title

Boy, does that blur effect take forever in Cinelerra. And my box isn't a slouch: P4, 3.2Ghz, 2GB of 400DDR. For this short, four second video, it took 4.5 minutes to apply the blur effect on the title at DVD resolution using YUV4MPEG & FFMPEG. Ridiculous. Here it is though:
blurred title

Baby steps, I tell myself.

system reconfig, final entry

Sil680 Not Recognized by Fedora
OK. I'm tired. Going to make this quick. Sil680 ATA RAID0 stripe set not recognized automatically by Fedora. Tried reinstall of Fedora. Does not recognize the RAID0 set I created. ARGH.

Saved by MDADM
I had to dust off my very, very rusty Linux RAID creation skills and manually create a software RAID set. In short:
- fdisk to mark the drives as part of a raid set
- use mdadm to make the raid set active
- create a mdadm.conf for the array
- put it in /etc/fstab
- format the stripe set

Here is the most important snip of what I did:
[root@computer /]# mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/hdg1 /dev/hdh1
mdadm: array /dev/md0 started.
[root@computer /]# mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm.conf
[root@computer /]# cat /etc/mdadm.conf
DEVICE /dev/hdg* /dev/hdh*
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid0 num-devices=2 UUID=9c4c078f:8935e3e4:bfface8f:6a3c2c18
devices=/dev/hdg1,/dev/hdh1

[root@computer RPMS]# cat /etc/fstab
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sys /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/md0 /mnt/videos ext2 defaults 1 1
[root@computer /]# mkfs.ext2 /dev/md0
mke2fs 1.37 (21-Mar-2005)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
29310976 inodes, 58609088 blocks
2930454 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=58720256
1789 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872

Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 32 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

Congrats to me/Girlfriend Doesn't Care
Pretty good for a guy who didn't know mdadm before tonight. So yeah! RAID0 set works! Hoohah! Copied a movie to it and then tested it in Cinelerra. HOLY SMOKES! Getting 50fps on a 1280x720 HDV movie! Damn that's fast! I can't understand why my girlfriend doesn't care about this at 1am??!

Gotta crash. I think my work is done here.

Update, 9/11/07:
Here is a very nicely organized article on adding new hard drives to Fedora:
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/storage/

system reconfig, #3

Cinelerra Installed..Working Another Matter
OK. So I am going to take a two hour break to watch Apollo 13. What better movie to watch to get you psyched to configure a RAID set! Before I am leaving, I have installed Core 4 successfully, got yum working after some RPM key stickiness, and downloaded all the dependencies for Cinelerra:

Dependencies Resolved
=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
cinelerra i386 2.0-0.4.20051210.2.fc4 /root/Desktop/cinelerra-2.0-0.4.20051210.2.fc4.i386.rpm 23 M
Installing for dependencies:
OpenEXR i386 1.2.2-6.fc4 extras 404 k
a52dec i386 0.7.4-8.fc4.rf dries 50 k
faac i386 1.24-3.fc4.rf dries 75 k
faad2 i386 2.0-8.fc4.rf dries 382 k
ffmpeg i386 0.4.9-0.lvn.0.21.20051228.4 livna 1.6 M
fftw i386 3.1.1-1.fc4 extras 865 k
fltk i386 1.1.6-1.2.fc4.rf dries 1.0 M
gsm i386 1.0.10-5.2.fc4.rf dries 39 k
imlib2 i386 1.2.1-1.fc4 extras 562 k
lame i386 3.96.1-4.fc4.rf dries 394 k
libiec61883 i386 1.0.0-0.2.fc4 freshrpms 35 k
libquicktime i686 0.9.7-0.lvn.8.4 livna 355 k
libsndfile i386 1.0.15-1.fc4 extras 218 k
mjpegtools i686 1.8.0-1.2.fc4 freshrpms 763 k
Updating for dependencies:
cpp i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 2.1 M
gcc i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 2.8 M
gcc-c++ i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 2.8 M
gcc-gfortran i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 2.3 M
gcc-java i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 2.3 M
libgcc i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 60 k
libgcj i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 7.6 M
libgcj-devel i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 1.1 M
libgfortran i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 152 k
libraw1394 i386 1.2.0-1.fc4 updates-released 37 k
libstdc++ i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 307 k
libstdc++-devel i386 4.0.2-8.fc4 updates-released 9.0 M
libtool i386 1.5.16.multilib2-3 updates-released 656 k

Now that's alotta dependencies. And this doesn't even cover the development versions of the programs so that you could compile the CVS version of Cinelerra. Cinelerra now works! Untested however..

Note to self: create image of this pristine FC4 root filesystem BEFORE it gets gobbed up!

Now let's watch the movie!

system reconfig, #2

Woops with Ghost
OK. A minor foul up in the steps from the last post. Seems that Ghosting the utility partition is not working as expected. Norton Ghost created a total new partition at the end of the XP partition on the 80 gigger. So, I went ahead and deleted it, as this 2GB partition eats into my Linux root partition. I never used the utility partition anyway, but I thought that Ghost would have correctly selected the 100MB partition I had chosen. Oh well. I'm not that concerned.

FDISK is for F*@K!
Another foul up was trying to use a Windows 98 boot disk and the classic fdisk program to both create the XP/Linux partitions and mark one as active. Word to the wise: DON'T USE FDISK! It has an annoying habit of "Verifying Drive Integrity" that takes FOREVER. So, I just decided to reboot and use my old 40GB XP system to carve up the drive and mark the 30GB partition as active. Saved a good deal of time there with that brainstorm. Phffflt!

Going SLEOOWLY.
Applying the XP image to the partition designated for it went super smooth, but the Dell has this ugly habit of taking forever to start up when I have the power to some disks plugged in and some not, but still connected to my Sil680 IDE stripe set RAID card. Frustrating, as it adds two minutes at the front end of every boot cycle. Argh. But now I have my XP system back up and running on my new 80GB drive! Hooray!

Core 4 from Scratch..with a bad CD!
I've decided that installing Fedora Core 4 from disks will make life cleaner. I could apply a partimage of my FC3 build or take the time to reimage the FC4 system, but I just want this to be over, so I am now in the middle of reinstalling FC4. The install has been crapping out on the Open Office RPMs. Seems there is a bad spot on the CD for them, so I deselected those packages for install. Only took me three FC4 installations and an hour to realize that I should do this. Oh, I'm just not very smart. :(

OK! What's left? Finishing the FC4 install and the stripe set.

system reconfig, #1

New Memory
Earlier this week, I had called TechDepot on the mistaken assumption that the memory speed drop to 333Mhz was due to the wrong Kingston memory being sent. So the Depot sent me another pair (at an unhealthy $187 per). So, after battling during the week with a conflict between my older Corsair (non-ECC/400DDR) and my new Kingston memory (ECC/400DDR), I decided to throw in the towel and use the older DDR in my audio editing rig and use both Kingston clips in the Dell video box. Installation was a snap, as all four Kingston clips were the same. Now I am running at full 400Mhz/Dual DDR/ECC POWER! Nothing like an upgrade!

Move the System Drives
Right now, the steps to moving the system drives are quite a few:
1) boot with Ghost disk
2) save an image of my XP system drive
3) save an image of my XP utility partition
4) sweep clean the 80GB drive I have in the system by backing my Fedora Core 3 partimage files to USB drive
5) remove 40GB drive
6) reformat and repartition the 80GB for two systems (XP and Linux)
7) apply recent XP image to XP partition
8) reinstall or apply Linux image to Linux partition

Right now, I am waiting for Ghost to finish creating the XP image. Talk back later.

system reconfiguration

All right. The time has come. This weekend, I intend to reconfigure my Cinelerra video rig for the upcoming task of editing surprise birthday, Stockholm and Paris videos. This will entail:

• 2GBs of 400Mhz ECC, Dual DDR
• migration of system drives from older 40GB to newer 80GB drives
• 2x120GB stripe set

I have a lot of work ahead of me. Ugh. So let it begin.