Free Cross-Platform DVD Authoring Software: Bombono

Bombono is a cross-platform open source DVD authoring software that was originally written for the GNU/Linux platform according to its developer. I'll be using it under MS Windows 7 (just for a change :D) for this review. Although I can't really suggest it as a complete suite for DVD authoring for the true professionals but for everyday day simple DVD authoring ... Bombono is an excellent little tool.

Bombono is actually a collection of libraries and the GUI is written in the GTK+ toolkit and uses ffmpeg for encoding videos into the DVD MPEG format. From Muxing into the .Vob container format to importing files from HDD to directly from another DVD ... it is certainly a handy utility.

Main features...

*. Supports a huge list of multimedia containers & files types such as: .mkv, .avi, .mpg, wmv, xvid, divx, wmv/wma, .mp4, .ac3, .dts, etc thanks to the ffmpeg multimedia library.

*. Has a very simple GUI that's easy to understand.

*. Save projects.

*. Mux files.

*. Built in Bitrate calculator.

*. If you've imported a vob file then you can easily customize (copy/paste, etc) the chapters (you know the standard "Timeline video viewer").

*. Add subtitles manually.

*. Define what happens after a file is played ("End Action"), whether it should automatically forward to the next one or go to the menu, etc.

*. Change menu Font size and Bold/Italic (but I couldn't change their colors though).

*. Add a motion Menu and manual background audio playback.

*. Change menu background.

*. Change Subpicture colors such as Selected and Activated items colors.

*. Write as a DVD folder, as a disk image, burn directly to a disk or just render the video only.

*. Change between 3 standard DVD sizes: 1.3/4.3 and 7.9 GB.

*. Progress-bar (while authoring the video) and an advanced/detailed output ... are among the main features.

Other than crashing while trying to access its preferences window, Bombono worked quite nicely in my Windows 7 setup. Although since it cannot let you change the text colors (I searched everywhere dudes and couldn't find a way to do that, do you know how to do it!?) but when considered its features and usability it's really a great application for simple DVD authoring "jobs" but I don't think it'll be able to replace your more powerful professional (paid one most probably) utility though.

So as final verdict, it certainly has some room for improvements but if you have simple needs and looking for simple DVD authoring software, then why not give it a try!. Click here for Bombono home page.

A Video Editor for Ubuntu: Cinelerra!

Cinelerra is a very powerful (although not the one with the best GUI though, lol) non-liner video editor for Ubuntu. Well, not just for Ubuntu ... it supports a lot of GNU/Linux distributions by default. But for this review, I'm gonna be using Ubuntu.

Cinelerra actually come from a previous project called "Broadcast 2000" but around 2002, the developers made the decision to release it using this name. And ever since, the Cinelerra community, slowly but steadily have been adding more and more features thus this is one of the best video editors that you can find that works under Ubuntu (or GNU/Linux in general). 

Are you ready!?... ;-)

As I said before, the GUI is not the most up-to-date looking one (but they've made sure to make it look like other professional video editors such as Adobe Premier, etc). It's written in Python and you can easily change its look-n-feel by installing a built in theme as shown below.

But the rest assured, when considered its features... this is one heck of an app!.

Main features...

*. Huge list of video effects (Blur, Chroma Key, "Aging and Burning TV", add denoise, Freeze frame, flip, down sample, etc).

*. A huge list of audio effects and features such as : Volume gain, equalizer filtration, freeverb, delay, reverse audio, Pitch shift, etc.

*. Add/remove audio video tracks.

*. Cut down the video into clips (of course) and easily trim, cut, paste or change clip positions, etc. 

*. Crop/Zoom in-out, Edit mask, lock the video, etc.

*. Show/hide overlays.

*. Undo/Redo.

*. Change output video Frame rate, resize, bit rate, aspect ratio, interlase, etc.

*. Outputs to other container formats such as: OGG Theora, MPEG, Quick-time (Linux version), Raw DV... or audio only formats such as AC3, OGG, WAV, etc... are just a fraction of its main features to mention.

You can install Cinelerra 2.1.5 (current version) video editor in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10, 10.04 and even in 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot by using the dedicated PPA channel.

So, as usual, open your terminal and enter the below command.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:cinelerra-ppa/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install cinelerra

That should do it. Since the professional video editors don't care much about the GUI... but still, I think it would be really if they come up a GTK/Qt version in the future. Enjoy!.

How to Install ClipGrab in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04?

Although you can download YouTube videos while using a web browser and installing an addon for whatever the one that you're using with ease, but if you usually deal a lot with YouTube and their clip downloads, then wouldn't it be nice to have a dedicated application for that exact purpose?.

If your answer is "Yes", then you should check out ClipGrab. It's written in Qt-toolkit, looks awesome and importantly, lets you search and grab any YouTube videos (and many other similar online video sharing sites!) you want with ease.

Main features...

*. Search for video clips with thumbnail previews.

*. Change save location.

*. Choose the video container format: Original, MPEG4, OGG, WMV (Yikes!), MP3 and Ogg Theora (the official Ogg audio derivative for the video formats). 

*. Add audio meta-tags automatically (album, artist, etc).

*. Change between video resolutions (1080p, 720p, 480p, medium or low, etc).

*. Clipboard support: meaning that, whenever you copy or play a YouTube video in your web browser for instance, ClipGrab will be able to automatically fetch that clip and let you download it easily at later.

*. It also supports Vimeo, Dailymotion, MySpass, Clipfish and mare other online video sharing sites.

*. Use proxy servers (you naughty geek! :P).

*. Enable/Disable run in the system tray area.

Settings window...

You can install ClipGrab in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using their PPA. For that please use the below commands in your Terminal window.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:clipgrab-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install clipgrab

If it does not show in your menus... then simply press "Alt" + "F2" keys and enter the below command into the Run box and press "Enter".

clipgrab

VideoCatcher - A Qt Powered TV Viewer for KDE4!

When it comes to downloading and viewing on-line TV videos there are few bloody good apps for GNU/Linux. But some are separate projects (non official projects of Gnome or KDE), although there's nothing wrong with that, but for all you KDE4 users, according to the developer, Videocatcher is actually the only TV viewer available for KDE4 at the moment!.

It's very similar to the excellent Miro ... but as said, it's especially designed for KDE4 geeks.

Main features...

*. Well, as said it is an online TV channel viewer.

*. Lets you view/add-subscribe/edit video casts via: RSS/Atom feeds, etc.

*. Downloading videos.

*. Can also be used as a podcast client.

*. Written in Qt4 toolkit.

Although there isn't a ".deb" package for Kubuntu/Ubuntu 11.04 at the moment but I think the Ubuntu 10.04 should work on 11.04. Not just in Ubuntu but you can install Videocatcher in other GNU/Linux distributions such as OpenSuse and Mandriva as well.

For that please visit this opendesktop page for more.

If the ".deb" package does not work for you then you can try compiling it in Kubuntu 11.04. For that use the below commands.

First download the source-code.

svn co svn://svn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/playground/network/videocatcher

Now get the dependencies.

sudo apt-get install kdepimlibs5-dev libqt4-sql-sqlite libboost-dev

Let's compile (yikes :P)

tar xjf videocatcher-0.1.x.tar.bz2
 cd videocatcher-0.1.x
 mkdir build
 cd build
 cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
 make
       
Finally, issue the below command to install it.

make install

Good luck. 

Install Kdenlive 0.8 in Kubuntu

Kdenlive is one of the best video editors for GNU/Linux. Although being a KDE project, it is written in Qt. So unless you want to have something that's written in GTK+, this I must say again, is one of the best of its kind.

Like two days ago they updated it to the latest version which is now the 0.8... this does bring a lot of changes according to their official announcement page.

Main features in general...

*. Few GUI improvements.

*. Add/Remove multiple audio and video tracks.

*. Cut/Paste/Delete...

*. Crop, change bit-rate, etc.

*. Various effects.

*. Import from DV/DVD or single files, etc.

*. Any codec supported by FFmpeg, Kdenlive supports (means: almost all the known codecs are supported).

Although these are very few to name and I'm not an expert on video editors, so I don't understand most of those "features" on their home page either :P.

Anyhow, in Kubuntu 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04 you can easily install the Kdenlive 0.8 by issuing the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sunab/kdenlive-release
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kdenlive

Install HandBrake in Ubuntu, A Cross-Platform Video Transcoder!

If you want to RIP your DVD's or Blue-Ray disks into smaller sizes, but still retaining high quality in GNU Linux then there are many tools that can be found nowadays. Mencoder, the command-line version of the Mplayer's encoder, is one of the best!. But being a command-line "version", it is not that popular among the users for the obvious reason/s :).

So, if you're looking for a fully featured video transcoder with an easy to use GUI, then you should consider HandBrake.

Main features...

*. Supports all sorts of DVDs and Blue-Ray disks (unencrypted ones only).

*. Supports some .VOB extensions, TS and M2TS files.

*. VIDEO_TS folder and DVD image file support.

*. Crop, change bitrate, calculate bit-rate, change file-size, add effects to your videos, change resolutions... it's all there!.

*. Currently supports MP4(M4V) and MKV container formats only.

*. Built in presets such as iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, high or normal quality settings.

*. MPEG-4(ffmpeg), H.264(x264), or Theora(libtheora), AAC, CoreAudio AAC (OS X Only), MP3, or Vorbis. AC-3 codec support.

*. Live video preview.

*. Select/un-select chapters..., etc.

So, if you use Ubuntu and want to install HandBrake, then as usual, open your Terminal and issue the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-snapshots
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install handbrake-gtk

How To Install SopCast In Ubuntu 11.04, Watch Online TV Channels for Free!

The idea behind SopCast is actually pretty simple. It is a P2P (peer to peer) based video player, so you don't have to rely on a server to stream online videos. Although this has both good and bad aspects, but one of the cools things about it is, it gives you the ability to create a TV channel/s of your own and stream it using SopCast and reach thousands of end users for free!.

Although it comes with a list of TV channels of its own, but you can add your own channels as well. Remember SopCast use the VLC as the engine. So you have to make sure VLC is installed first. If you haven't done it already, then do so by giving the below command.

sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

Now we can install SopCast in Ubuntu 11.04/10.10 or 10.04, by entering the next command below.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ferramroberto/sopcast
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sopcast-player

By using the G-conf tool, we can associate "sop" extension on your Gnome desktop automatically, again by giving the below command.

gconftool-2-t-s string / desktop / gnome / url-handlers / sop / command "/ usr / bin / sopcast-player% s"
gconftool-2 - set - type = bool / desktop / gnome / url-handlers / sop / enabled true
gconftool-2 - set - type = bool / desktop / gnome / url-handlers / sop / need-terminal false

Enjoy!.