F8(1) vs multimedia production(0)

[Tim]

Tim:
>> The input side of things is similarly warped.  I need to be able to
>> import DV, and work on the files in their own format.  Notwithstanding
>> the problems in trying to get video into a system on a virtually ignored
>> firewire port, converting digital video from one format to another is
>> not only wastefully time consuming, but damaging to video quality.

Jeff Spaleta:
> hmm... dvgrab as shipped in F9 saw my camera on my firewire port just
> fine. And i can do simple clip manipulation of the dv footage pulled
> with dvgrab in pitivi then render it to whatever compressed formats
> gstreamer supports on the system...by default that would be theora. 

Here, nothing would import video through the firewire port, even if I
just hit play on the camera and didn't try remotely controlling the
player from the computer (which didn't work either).  Apparently the
firewire port does work enough that you can see the camera's been
recognised, if you look through the system logs.  And even if I imported
video via Windows, then tried to make use of the already captured files
in Linux, I got nowhere.  And adding every available codec didn't help,
things, at all.

Again, re-rendering lossy compressed video is to be avoided at all
costs, it's seriously detrimental to quality.  And usually would be
completely avoidable, anyway, as most editing is "cuts only" which
doesn't need re-rendering, just interrupting the streams at the right
moment, and joining two streams together.

To be fair, though, I find all computer editing software to be crap
(including Windows and Mac).  Unless you have the dosh for real
professional editing software, they're rotten to use compared to a real
edit suite.  Terrible user-interfaces, lacking essential features (while
full of rubbish features), time-wasting operating principles...

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686

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