Will be getting a linux server, any good distro for video editing ? (noob)

[mordorspfc]

Hey guys

I know almost nothing of linux and will be getting a dedi server with linux on it, since its more expensive with windows,. i want to try with linux first to see if i can work with it.

I've played with linux a couple of times in my own PC, but dont remember almost nothing, so just like to know what would be a good distro to start with, i think i can choose between those:

* Ubuntu Desktop 8.04
* Debian
* Ubuntu Server
* Open Suse 11
* Red Hat Ent. Linux 5
* Fedora 11
* CentOS
* Gentoo
* Slackware 12.1
* Mandriva

I believe CentOS and Debian are the "easiest" ones, am i right ?

I think what i'll be doing is basically just cutting and watermarking videos. Does linux have good tools for this ?

Also, any idea if the usage and encoding will be faster than using a Windows remote desktop ??

What are the basic codec packs and tools i would need to start with ?? Best video tools for those tasks i need ?? I want quality videos smile.gif

Sorry for the many question, and thanks a lot

[microchip8]

Ubuntu is the most popular distro around, mostly due to excellent marketing from Canonical and not so much that it offers something more special than others. CentOS is an free *enterprise* distro used by people who run servers and need long time support but don't need (or can't pay) the support Red Hat offers. It's also used by SMBs (Small to Medium Businesses). Fedora is the development distro which Red Hat uses to create its enterprise RHEL solutions. CentOS is basically RHEL but stripped from Red Hat marks and is exactly the same as RHEL in all other aspects. Debian is an excellent distro too (and Ubuntu is based on it) but it may be not so user friendly for newbies. Mandriva focuses on desktop usage, though also has enterprise products. openSUSE resembles Fedora and Mandriva but is IMHO more polished than them. It also has YaST, a central control center for configuring system/server settings which can be an advantage for newbies. SUSE has also a few advantages compared to Fedora. It has the excellent build service where one can build with just a few clicks packages for all other major distros, like Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Debian, etc. SUSE also has SUSE Studio, a very easy to use distro building tool/website, which one can use to build his own (desktop) distro with only the components he likes or needs. It can build from JeOS (Just enough Operating System) up to free enterprise SLED/SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/Server). Gentoo is way too technical for newbies and you need to compile everything yourself, like the whole distro which can take a lot of time. Slackware is one of the oldest distros around, very stable, but also not so user friendly for newbies. There are other popular desktop linux like Arch and MEPIS (which is built on Ubuntu). In the end it's up to you to choose one you like. Most people try a few of them and then choose. It's called distro hopping where you use a distro just enough to get familiar with the basic things of it, then move to another one and do the same thing. Then in the end you decide which one from those your tried you like the most and use it.

There are a few tools for cutting and editing. PiTiVi, Avidemux, Cinelerra and probably a few more I can't think of now since I don't do editing. Encoding can be a bit faster on Linux, but it depends on the tools themselves. I think x264 is a bit faster on Linux than on Windows (I may be wrong though)

There are no "codec packs" on Linux. There's mostly libavcodec from ffmpeg which offers virtually all needed encoders/decoders for multimedia and is used by many other tools, like MPlayer, MEncoder, Gstreamer, Handbrake, Xine player, etc, etc.

[nm]

I think what i'll be doing is basically just cutting and watermarking videos. Does linux have good tools for this ?
I'd recommend Kdenlive or Avidemux. Kdenlive provides more advanced editing operations while Avidemux is good for filtering (deinterlacing, denoising, sharpening etc) and re-encoding video. What is the format of the video and audio tracks you are editing, AVCHD from a camcorder or something else? What is your target format, H.264 & AAC for Flash distribution?

Also, any idea if the usage and encoding will be faster than using a Windows remote desktop ??
If you mean local Linux desktop compared to remote Windows, then a local desktop is certainly faster for video editing when properly set up, whatever the operating systems are. Encoding can also be slightly faster on Linux if you use x264. If you mean remote Linux compared to remote Windows, both should be about as fast.

[CpT]

Fedora 9/10 then yum install everything.

Just add the rpmfusion repos (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-fedora.html) and pretty much everything is there ;)

yum -y install mencoder mplayer vlc
or to get everything imaginable
yum -y install *mencoder* *mplayer* *vlc*

CentOS5 is kick ars but for a media setup there's more steps involved and occasionally the repos aren't as up-to-date as fedora

[mordorspfc]

Ubuntu is the most popular distro around, mostly due to excellent marketing from Canonical and not so much that it offers something more special than others. CentOS is an free *enterprise* distro used by people who run servers and need long time support but don't need (or can't pay) the support Red Hat offers. It's also used by SMBs (Small to Medium Businesses). Fedora is the development distro which Red Hat uses to create its enterprise RHEL solutions. CentOS is basically RHEL but stripped from Red Hat marks and is exactly the same as RHEL in all other aspects. Debian is an excellent distro too (and Ubuntu is based on it) but it may be not so user friendly for newbies. Mandriva focuses on desktop usage, though also has enterprise products. openSUSE resembles Fedora and Mandriva but is IMHO more polished than them. It also has YaST, a central control center for configuring system/server settings which can be an advantage for newbies. SUSE has also a few advantages compared to Fedora. It has the excellent build service where one can build with just a few clicks packages for all other major distros, like Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Debian, etc. SUSE also has SUSE Studio, a very easy to use distro building tool/website, which one can use to build his own (desktop) distro with only the components he likes or needs. It can build from JeOS (Just enough Operating System) up to free enterprise SLED/SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/Server). Gentoo is way too technical for newbies and you need to compile everything yourself, like the whole distro which can take a lot of time. Slackware is one of the oldest distros around, very stable, but also not so user friendly for newbies. There are other popular desktop linux like Arch and MEPIS (which is built on Ubuntu). In the end it's up to you to choose one you like. Most people try a few of them and then choose. It's called distro hopping where you use a distro just enough to get familiar with the basic things of it, then move to another one and do the same thing. Then in the end you decide which one from those your tried you like the most and use it.

There are a few tools for cutting and editing. PiTiVi, Avidemux, Cinelerra and probably a few more I can't think of now since I don't do editing. Encoding can be a bit faster on Linux, but it depends on the tools themselves. I think x264 is a bit faster on Linux than on Windows (I may be wrong though)

There are no "codec packs" on Linux. There's mostly libavcodec from ffmpeg which offers virtually all needed encoders/decoders for multimedia and is used by many other tools, like MPlayer, MEncoder, Gstreamer, Handbrake, Xine player, etc, etc.

Awesome, i guess i'll get either Fedora or Open SUSE then, not sure yet. Very helpfull explanation, really appreciate it, thank you!

I'd recommend Kdenlive or Avidemux. Kdenlive provides more advanced editing operations while Avidemux is good for filtering (deinterlacing, denoising, sharpening etc) and re-encoding video. What is the format of the video and audio tracks you are editing, AVCHD from a camcorder or something else? What is your target format, H.264 & AAC for Flash distribution?

I think i may be converting from divx/xvid or x264 to flash/mp4 distribution.

Actually i just needed a tool that will be easy to use, and will not drastically reduce the video quality after watermarking. Dont know if i'll be messing with avisynth scripts, filters, etc... just want the videos to have acceptable quality.

BTW, theres no way to watermark with re-encode the video, right ?

If you mean local Linux desktop compared to remote Windows, then a local desktop is certainly faster for video editing when properly set up, whatever the operating systems are. Encoding can also be slightly faster on Linux if you use x264. If you mean remote Linux compared to remote Windows, both should be about as fast.

No, i mean, will converting videos from a linux remote desktop be faster than converting videos from a windows remote desktop ?

Thanks!

Fedora 9/10 then yum install everything.

Just add the rpmfusion repos (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-fedora.html) and pretty much everything is there ;)

yum -y install mencoder mplayer vlc
or to get everything imaginable
yum -y install *mencoder* *mplayer* *vlc*

CentOS5 is kick ars but for a media setup there's more steps involved and occasionally the repos aren't as up-to-date as fedora

Im almost deciding to get Fedora, although Open Suse seems to be a great option aswell, so not sure yet. Thanks for the tips!

[excentro]

Try Ubuntu Studio (http://ubuntustudio.org/)

[nm]

I think i may be converting from divx/xvid or x264 to flash/mp4 distribution.

Actually i just needed a tool that will be easy to use, and will not drastically reduce the video quality after watermarking. Dont know if i'll be messing with avisynth scripts, filters, etc...

Ok, Avidemux should be fine for that. If you have videos that don't need to be cut manually, you could also write a MEncoder/ffmpeg script for batch encoding.

just want the videos to have acceptable quality.
Quality is determined by the encoder (x264, xvid, ...) and encoding parameters that you use.

BTW, theres no way to watermark with re-encode the video, right ?
You mean without re-encoding? Maybe for MPEG-2 sources with some academic and commercial tools, but not MPEG-4 ASP or H.264. You probably need to re-encode for Flash compatibility anyway.

No, i mean, will converting videos from a linux remote desktop be faster than converting videos from a windows remote desktop ?
As said, x264 may be slightly faster on 64-bit Linux. There are certainly other performance differences due to the tools used and the remote desktop implementations, but it's hard to say which solution is faster without testing things.

If I was setting up something like this, I'd cut the videos on a local desktop with some suitable tool (without lossy re-encoding!) and then move them to the Linux server that runs a shell script for watermarking with AviSynth or MEncoder and re-encoding with x264. No laggy remote desktops needed.

[smok3]

i'am no expert, but some random thoughts:
- i did find cinerrela way to ugly to even look at it, (i'd try blender maybe?)
- i'd use some cmd tools for the job
- i think you can use pretty much any newbie distro and 'steal'/try tools from ubuntu studio
- it was not that hard to compile x264 and ffmpeg for a noob http://blog.somestuff.org/index.php?entry=entry090818-162358 (i'am pretty sure you could use ffmpeg for watermarks)
- it is not that hard to setup a simple ftp/www/ssh server, check http://blog.somestuff.org/index.php?entry=entry090810-113014
(instead of graphical remoting you can use ssh (putty))

the distro i'am using is an ubuntu derivate http://www.linuxmint.com/, main difference between that and ubuntu seems to be decent irc help channel (with ubuntu there is like 1000 ppl on channel at every time, with mint there is more like 100...), oh and it will play huffyuv avi file inside a firefox if you really need that ;)

'workflow':
say you have a win/mac workstation for editing, then you could:
a. install sun virtualbox to this workstation and play around with the distro of your choice, install, compile, break everything, ect
b. if a. works as expected do the same on the real machine with the same distro

[mordorspfc]

i'am no expert, but some random thoughts:
- i did find cinerrela way to ugly to even look at it, (i'd try blender maybe?)
- i'd use some cmd tools for the job
- i think you can use pretty much any newbie distro and 'steal'/try tools from ubuntu studio
- it was not that hard to compile x264 and ffmpeg for a noob http://blog.somestuff.org/index.php?entry=entry090818-162358 (i'am pretty sure you could use ffmpeg for watermarks)
- it is not that hard to setup a simple ftp/www/ssh server, check http://blog.somestuff.org/index.php?entry=entry090810-113014
(instead of graphical remoting you can use ssh (putty))

the distro i'am using is an ubuntu derivate http://www.linuxmint.com/, main difference between that and ubuntu seems to be decent irc help channel (with ubuntu there is like 1000 ppl on channel at every time, with mint there is more like 100...), oh and it will play huffyuv avi file inside a firefox if you really need that ;)

'workflow':
say you have a win/mac workstation for editing, then you could:
a. install sun virtualbox to this workstation and play around with the distro of your choice, install, compile, break everything, ect
b. if a. works as expected do the same on the real machine with the same distro


If I was setting up something like this, I'd cut the videos on a local desktop with some suitable tool (without lossy re-encoding!) and then move them to the Linux server that runs a shell script for watermarking with AviSynth or MEncoder and re-encoding with x264. No laggy remote desktops needed.

Sorry for the late reply

Problem is that my upload speed is only 300 kbps, so would take too long to upload.

nm, smok3 and excentro thanks a lot for all the great info, server should arrive today, anything i'll let you guys know, again, thanks everyone

[GLUBSCH]

Many good choices have been posted here, my friend. Remember: If might choose one, and SNAP! - you´ll get addicted to it and stick with it a lifetime.
Give the allmighty OpenSuse (www.opensuse.org) a try and you´ll experience what I mean. ;)

[nm]

Problem is that my upload speed is only 300 kbps, so would take too long to upload.
Are you really planning to edit videos on a remote desktop over the internet? That's not going to be pleasant unless you get at least 100 Mbps down (10 Mbps may be enough if you're fine with some lagginess).