YouTube

I recently found out it's quite easy to create a page on your website showing your own YouTube videos, which automatically displays new videos as you add them (provided you have basic knowledge of PHP). My YouTube page is right here on my website. You could create the same page as follows:

• Download an RSS parser for PHP. I used Magpie RSS: http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/. Read their documentation to set up the parser. Amongst other things, a writable cache folder is needed.
• Create a PHP file which will generate the list.
• Optionally, create a PHP file which will display a YouTube video player.

Files with the PHP code can be found at the bottom of this page. To view them on screen right away, click the images below. I am sure this code can be greatly improved, but at the moment this is working just fine for me.

Code for the list page:

Code for the player page:

Note I added the fmt%3D22 suffix to the parameters for the embedded player, this will show videos in HD if possible. Warning: the videos will not load if this suffix is added while the quality is actually lower. Use fmt%3D18 for high quality and stereo sound, or no suffix if the quality is even lower than that. Be sure to take a look at the div tags and replace their style (including size) attributes to create a look which suits your website, or add the CSS style to your CSS file.

Be aware that the RSS file doesn't get updated every few minutes, but within an interval of a couple of hours. This means newly uploaded videos on YouTube will not be visible immediately.

So, you're a Linux user and you want to process some footage, be it of your mom's birthday or perhaps your own humble video project. You don't want to resort to Windows (or obviously a Mac for that matter) which are supposedly (and probably) easier platforms to edit video.

Give it a shot with your Linux system first. I've no experience capturing video from a digital camera yet, but that should be possible with Kino. I have a simple digital photo camera which can record videos in XVID/MP3 format, or so KDE tells me. I took some random shots with it over the years that I have all saved, so I figured I might experiment with these recordings for a bit, since I plan to do more video editing in the future to process old VHS tapes to digital storage.

Avidemux

The first program I tried was Avidemux. This program allowed me to cut up, stick together and apply certain visual changes to videos. One feature I needed Avidemux for was the altering of the frames per second. The first editing program that I used got into trouble when video samples had a frame rate that wasn't exactly 25 per second. Avidemux can also alter the image by adding filters. These filters can do things like resize the image, add colours to it, blur the image, sharpen the image, add scan lines to it, add subtitles or even add a whirl effect to the video. The most useful application of Avidemux is perhaps the possibility to convert a video to another video (and audio) format.

The Open Movie Editor

Another interesting program is the Open Movie Editor. This software is designed to be an editor rather than a conversion utility. It allows for quick and simple placing of video samples on a time line, while cutting them up or arranging them into a proper sequence. Audio tracks can be added in the same manner. Transitions between scenes (i.e. inserted video files or cut up samples) can be achieved very easily by letting two scenes overlap for a number of seconds. By doing this the overlap becomes visible in the timeline and when the video is played the one part of video is automatically faded into the other. I had some trouble finding an audio and video codec that would actually save the video sequence to a file that was properly readable. The probable cause of this is that I used a precompiled version and not too many codecs were installed or detected the right way by the Movie Editor.

Kdenlive

Because of this I tried another editor, named Kdenlive. I finally settled on this one because

1. it exports videos properly, providing many audio and video codecs
2. sports a couple of effects/ transition types by default
3. is a KDE application and is therefore graphically integrated and translated into Dutch (I like consistency)

The only disadvantage in my case was that for some yet unexplained reason Kdenlive would crash every now and then, but saving the project regularly takes care of that. This is probably again because of the fact that I used a pre-compiled version. I know it's not a good excuse but everyone deserves to be lazy every now and then. Usually I compile software myself, but because I'm now using Kubuntu on a laptop in stead of my usual Slackware set up this makes it very tempting to apt-get everything.

The results

I've uploaded two of my experiments to this website, so anyone reading this can admire or ignore the results of my video editing adventure. The first video shows some of the (very bad quality and out of focus) material which I recorded with my photo camera while moving, using transitions and some other effects. Eventually I used Kdenlive for this, but I achieved about the same using the Open Movie Editor.

The second one (also made with Kdenlive) is a recording of people walking down a shopping street. It's been slowed down, a "charcoal" effect has been applied to it, and the beginning and ending of the video demonstrate the blur effect.

I have probably missed out on a lot of alternatives, but these are the tools I've chosen to use for now, and Kdenlive does the job quite nicely. Finally I've taken some screenshots of the three programs that I tried: