video

MultiTaction's MT Canvus-Connect

James Gray — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 12:05:22 +0000

"A new era in visual collaboration" is the promise of MT Canvus-Connect, MultiTaction's new real-time collaboration software that enables visual touchscreen collaboration across remote locations in real time. The platform-agnostic solution provides remote users the means to share, manipulate, draw and input information in real time wherever they are based.

MT Canvus-Connect grew out of MultiTaction's MT Canvus product, which "is already unique in the way that it helps visualize big data and encourages collaborative working". It enables multiple sources, such as video feeds, web-based applications and content from smart devices, to run in parallel. MT Canvus-Connect extends this functionality by enabling multiple remote locations to collaborate in real time.

MultiTaction is also a leading manufacturer of ultra-responsive large touch-display systems, so the software solutions are all designed from the ground up to function in touch-enabled environments. MT Canvus-Connect operates in both Linux and Windows environments and integrates with current meeting-room technologies.

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BirdCam, Round Two

Shawn Powers — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 16:26:50 +0000

by Shawn Powers

In the October 2013 issue, I described the hardware and software I used to create my "BirdTopia Monitoring Station", more commonly called BirdCam. If you've been visiting BirdCam recently, which a surprising number of folks have been doing, you'll notice quite a few changes (Figure 1). In this article, I describe the upgrades, the changes and some of the challenges along the way. If you like fun projects like these involving Linux, please read on and join in my birdy obsession!

Figure 1. BirdCam has changed a lot. Here, the biggest changes are highlighted. Also, look at all those birds!

Slicing and Dicing

One of the first changes I wanted to make to BirdCam was to zoom in a bit on the feeders. Yes, the enormous photo provided by the Galaxy S2 phone mounted in the window is nice, but for displaying on a computer screen (or HDTV, as I'll talk about later), a 1920x1080-size snapshot is really ideal. Unfortunately, when I crop the photo, it leaves out the birdbath. Because I spent the money on a heated birdbath this winter, I didn't want to miss out on any candid water shots. You can see in Figure 2 how I planned to zoom in on the bird feeders and then relocate the birdbath onto what was left of the photo. Although it took a bit of trial and error, the code for doing this was remarkably easy. I used the convert program from the ImageMagick suite. It might be possible to include the crop and relocate into a single command, but I just created a temp file and then overlayed that temp file later on:


convert /dev/shm/original.jpg -crop 640x360+1800+1425 \
        /dev/shm/birdbath.jpg
convert /dev/shm/original.jpg -crop 1920x1080+220+130 \
        /dev/shm/birdbath.jpg -gravity southeast -composite \
        /dev/shm/final.jpg

Figure 2. My old cell phone takes really high-resolution photos. I was able to clip out the birdbath and overlay it nicely to get a closeup of the feeders.

In the code snippet above, I crop out the small birdbath photo from the original camera photo and save it as birdbath.jpg. Then, with another convert command, I crop the original photo to that 1080p size I mentioned earlier and overlay the birdbath onto the photo with the -composite flag. In this little example, I use the -gravity flag to put the birdbath in the corner. You can be more precise with the -geometry flag, which you'll see in my final script (see Resources).

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At Home With AV Linux

Dave Phillips — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:26:58 +0000

by Dave Phillips

My studio computer collection includes two custom-built desktop machines and a Hewlett-Packard G60 laptop. As described in my previous article, the primary desktop box has been running an old but rock-steady 64 Studio 2.1 that has recently been replaced by a shiny new 64-bit Arch system. The secondary desktop machine and the laptop are both running the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 10.04. However, while I like and enjoy using Ubuntu I hardly require two identical installations of the same Linux distribution, so I decided to replace one of them with AV Linux.

What It Is

AV Linux is a complete Debian-based Linux distribution that includes optimized audio and video subsystems along with the expected wealth of system utilities and productivity software. A live version can be tested and used without disturbing your installed system, and an installer is provided if/when you decide to permanently add AV Linux to your boot menu.

Figure 1. AV Linux 5.0.1, at your service. (Full-size)

The AV Linux Web site tells us that the system is based on the stable "Squeeze" release from Debian Linux, the LXDE desktop and Openbox window manager, and the Remastersys utility. That last item is of particular interest - Remastersys can make a distributable copy of a personalized Debian or Ubuntu system, which is how AV Linux came into existence. At some point in 2007 Glen Macarthur recognized that his custom Debian-based audio/video production system could be useful to more users, so he spruced it up with some neat extras, pulled it all together with Remastersys, and voila, he created a new Debian-based media-optimized Linux distribution.

You can read the full story of the growth of AV Linux in its excellent manual. It's enough here to note that AV Linux has become a popular and recommended audio-centric Linux distribution. For good reasons, too, as we shall see.

Getting Started

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Linux Audio Conference 2011: A Report From Maynooth

Dave Phillips — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by Dave Phillips

On May 7 and 8 I attended the Linux Audio Conference for 2011 held in Maynooth, Ireland. Due to a temporary mental malfeasance - for some reason I assumed the Earth rotated in the opposite direction - I booked my flight for the wrong departure date and was unable to change its itinerary without paying out a hefty sum to the airline. So, on Saturday morning I arrived at NUI in Maynooth, completely out of sync with the local time zone and ready to pack four days worth of activity into two.

LAC 2011

Due to scheduling constraints it's impossible for anyone to attend all the presentations and demonstrations at the conference, so I didn't bother trying. I attended some of the scheduled presentations, but the bulk of my time was spent in inspiring conversations and casual meetings with friends old and new. Of course the talk focused on the conference events, related Linux audio news and stories, and where to find the best pubs in Maynooth.

Before all else I want to send a huge shout-out of thanks to Dr. Victor Lazzarini and his able crew at NUIM. As far as I could tell everything flowed smoothly from time slot to time slot with no logistical disasters. The presentations I attended were well-prepared and very enjoyable, thanks especially to the great efforts of the organizers.

Time worked against me, but I was able to catch Jeremy Jongepier's hands-on demonstration of his creative use of Linux audio software such as QTractor, Yoshimi, QSynth, and others; Joern Nettingsmeier's lecture on loudness metering and why it matters; an update on recent improvements to the Fluidsynth soundfont synthesizer; and Conor Dempsey's unveiling of the WADE system, a portal for on-line audio synthesis. Of course I missed a dozen other presentations, due primarily to those lively conversations that went on constantly in the halls at NUIM and at the restaurants and pubs in Maynooth.

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Watch O'Reilly's Velocity Conference Keynotes Streaming Live

LJ Staff — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by LJ Staff

We will live stream the Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference keynotes on Wednesday and Thursday, June 15-16, so those who can't be there in person can enjoy the content online. For more information on the keynote presentations and schedule, please visit the event site at http://velocityconf.com/velocity2011/public/content/keynotes and make sure to join us right here June 15th and 16th. Presentations will begin at 8:30 AM Pacific TIme each day.

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Kdenlive 0.8 Released

Michael Reed — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by Michael Reed

April saw the release of Kdenlive 0.8. I'll take you through some of the new features, along with some notes on how I built it for Debian Sid.

Kdenlive 0.8 is a release that fixes bugs and adds new features rather than being a complete departure from the previous version, probably welcome news to the regular users. New features aside, my hope for this revision is that it can overcome the main shortcoming of Linux video editing programs: poor stability. It didn't crash while I was testing it, but user feedback in the long term will be the real indicator of improvements that have been made in this area.

The Kdenlive main window looks much the same as before, but it's actually a bit more configurable.

The Kdenlive team run a website that resembles the quality of that of a commercial software vendor, and many of the new features have their own mini articles. I'm not going to replicate what's on the Kdenlive site, but in brief, the heavy hitters are:

Rotoscoping - a way of placing irregular objects into moving video.

Corners - a way of placing objects into the videos that are adjusted for perspective. This feature has been updated and showcases the new effects GUI. Rather than adjusting sliders and then previewing the results, the user can now drag points about within the monitor itself.

Widget layouts - Layouts can be customized, named and saved as profiles. This is particularly helpful as there are now quite a few optional GUI elements that are not needed at all times.

Audio scopes and spectrogram - The level scope indicates when the audio is clipped. The spectrogram allows you to tell, at a glance, if the audio is good quality.

There are about 20 other significant new features. See the release details page for a complete list. I'm pleased to see that the list of bug fixes includes a lot of crash fixes.

Installation

As the 0.8 series isn't in the repository of my distribution yet, I built Kdenlive from source. Building an application like Kdenlive can be somewhat difficult as it depends on a lot of libraries. The Kdenlive project have tried to ease this problem by providing detailed instructions. There is also an automated build script that fetches the latest snapshot of the Kdenlive source and all other needed sourcecode. Helpfully, the instructions on the website list all of the needed libraries so that you can type

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FlashVideoReplacer Continues To Improve

Michael Reed — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

by Michael Reed

We covered FlashVideoReplacer, a video add-on for Firefox, last year, but the new 2.x series offers several improvements. We look at what the new version offers and ask the developer a few questions.

[Update April 2 2011: Gonçalves got back in touch with me to tell me about the latest updates to FlashVideoReplacer. The updates are quite considerable so I've pasted his email to the end of this article. For example, the plugin now does not require Flash at all.]

As for how the add-on works, I got the information straight from Caio Gonçalves aka Lovinlinux, the developer:

When you visit a video page of a supported web site, the extension catches the direct link to the video embedded in the page, then removes the flash player object and inject a new object using the direct video link. As a result, the video is played with a different plugin on the original page, without the need to download it first. In order to work, the user needs a compatible plugin or standalone player, capable of playing at least mp4, which is the most common format. However, support for other formats like flv, mov, wmv and m4v is required for some videos.

This is a boon for Linux users as flash-based video players are normally comparatively inefficient on Linux, particularly for full-screen video playback. For FlashVideoReplacer to work, the user must have a working Flash plugin and a multimedia plugin browser installed. According to a survey recently carried out the the add-on site, Gecko Media Player, an MPlayer based plugin, is the most popular choice for Linux, although other plugins do work.

At the current time, the plugin supports video from YouTube, Vimeo, MetaCafe and a few adult orientated sites. Support for other sites, including Ustreme and Blip TV, is planned for version 2.03. As before, it's possible to disable the add on for some supported sites, but there is now an option to retain the user notifications when this is done.

The add on now offers a set of options that control how the intercepted video feed should be presented, and it's possible to have the video automatically open in a new window, a new tab, a stand-alone player or to prompt on a video-by-video basis. Facilities to download videos or to simply copy the URL of the video are hidden away in an addition to the standard Firefox context menu. This might allow some people to manage without a separate video downloading add-on, but it's worth noting that some of the dedicated add-ons have more facilities and support for a broader range of sites.

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FlashVideoReplacer - Use Native Video Playback Facilities On Sites Like Youtube

Michael Reed — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0000

by Michael Reed

FlashVideoReplacer is a Firefox add-on that strips out the Flash video on sites such as YouTube, automatically replacing it with a standard video file that is re-embedded on the page. In a nutshell, this means that a native player is used instead of the embedded Flash player. This can offer a huge performance benefit for web-based video playback, particularly full-screen playback.

Flash video performance on Linux is quite poor compared with that of Windows. Even if the playback is acceptable for a given situation, it tends to be inconsistent, often slowing down periodically. Full-screen video playback is particularly poor, often becoming unacceptably choppy. This high CPU usage also slows down the rest of the system.

There is a solution, although it has some limitations, in the form of a Firefox add-on called FlashVideoReplacer. This add-on dynamically changes the website sourcecode in order to replace the Flash video with a format that can be played using a native video playback plugin. This means that sites should look much the same but the videos themselves playback smoothly and consistently while using very little CPU. Best of all, it makes high quality, full-screen playback viable on Linux.

The main limitation of the add-on is that it currently only supports three sites, YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo. Fortunately, these are three of the most popular sites and FlashVideoReplacer wont interfere with video playback on sites on which you are already using standard flash playback.

Another problem is that seeking doesn’t work on material that hasn’t yet entered the cache. This means that you sometimes have to wait a while before seeking forward, although, once the whole video has loaded things begin to work as expected.

The familiar YouTube display, yet not so familiar?

Installation

I installed the add-on from the Mozilla Firefox website in the usual way. Following the advice on the add-on page, I installed the MPlayer-based Gecko Media Player using the Ubuntu package manager. Upon restarting Firefox, YouTube videos weren't replaced as expected due to a conflict with the FlashBlock extension that I had installed. Not to worry though, I simply added YouTube to the whitelist inside the FlashBlock preferences. Following this, I reloaded the page, and sure enough, the YouTube video popped up inside an embedded, but native, video player. Right-clicking on the playback window allows the user to access the preferences for the video player itself, giving a lot of options for video and audio quality.

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An Ecology Of Ardour

Dave Phillips — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:56:06 +0000

by Dave Phillips

This article is a brief report on some of the current news and activities going on in the world of Ardour, Paul Davis's superb open-source digital audio workstation (DAW). What began as a labor of love has become one of the most significant projects in the world of Linux audio and in the more general world of Linux applications development.

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A Primer on HTML5

Shay David — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:00:00 +0000

by Shay David

There is good news: the “open Web”, a vision for the future of the Internet that is participatory, collaborative and free from vendor lock-in is finally coming to fruition. Following Mozilla Firefox's successful introduction of open Web standards into their browser platform and the rapid adoption of Android on mobile phone, today we see many browser vendors and Web-enabled device manufacturers gravitating toward supporting vendor-neutral platforms for rich-media Web experiences. Only a few years ago, it seemed unlikely that tech giants (such as Google, Apple and Microsoft) and nonprofits (such as Mozilla) could agree on something so contentious as future standards for the Web. But because of the fragmented market across devices and the increasingly fragmented browser market on desktop computers, browser vendors and device makers are forced to move forward together or fall behind. There is bad news too. The vision of "write once publish anywhere" is far from reality. Like many contentious agreements, the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of details. The open future of media on the Web is far from guaranteed. In this article, I highlight how the industry is transitioning away from targeting a single vendor for rich-media Web experiences to targeting multiple rich-media Web browsers instead. In this environment, middle-layer solutions will bridge the small differences between implementations. The open Web traditionally has faced significant challenges when it comes to handling rich media such as video and audio. Rich media on the Web has been a battleground for proprietary solutions for years. Adobe Flash has won the current battle and is now the de facto standard for rich media on the desktop Web. However, Flash, is proprietary and is not supported by many devices, such as the iPhone and iPad. The new specifications for rich-media handling that are part of the W3C’s HTML5 standard, namely the and tags, are a great leap forward in addressing these challenges. They specify a vendor-neutral, device-neutral way of including rich media in Web pages, just like images are handled today. However, HTML5 requires a transition period. Until we have wide industry adoption and universal agreement on all the details of the specification, systems will be required to support existing proprietary media playback systems in cases where HTML5 is not supported. In the next few years, we're likely will see open-source JavaScript middle layers providing innovative and unified development platforms drawing from both Flash and HTML5 for building robust solutions for rich-media Web experiences. This robustness will include handling everything from analytics to playlists. During this transition period, developers can use JavaScript middle layers to bridge the current gaps between Flash and HTML5. This will provide a unified user experience, regardless of the browser and the underlying technologies that are used.

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video

MultiTaction's MT Canvus-Connect

BirdCam, Round Two

At Home With AV Linux

Linux Audio Conference 2011: A Report From Maynooth

Watch O'Reilly's Velocity Conference Keynotes Streaming Live

Kdenlive 0.8 Released

FlashVideoReplacer Continues To Improve

FlashVideoReplacer - Use Native Video Playback Facilities On Sites Like Youtube

An Ecology Of Ardour

A Primer on HTML5 and Why You Should Care About It

A Primer on HTML5