W.Chris Shank on Sun, 09 Feb 2003 10:21:05 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] Without OS X


I just used OS X to create a 20 minute video montage for my daughter's first B-Day. It took me about 2 nites to understand how the software worked and about 2 nites to actually edit all of the clips and put it to music. This was something that I ALWAYS wanted to do with Linux or Windows, but always ran into one problem or another - ie: IEEE1394 didn't work at all, IEEE1394 worked but was flakey, BCast 2000 couldn't compile, BCast 2000 compiled and installed and could run - but it was so complicated, I couldn't figure out how to use it, couldn't convert the AVI files from my digital camera to VideoCD, I could go on. But this was even difficult to do with WindowsME, which I found to be very unstable with the large video files and frequently paused for a few seconds for no reason - which made it nearly impossible to get video snippets into the computer. I tried Windows 2000, while more stable, I couldn't install the video software that came with the PC, since it was lumped into a file reformatting restore CD.

I think that Linux has some good software for this type of editing - but since I'm not a professional and have no desire to become one- most of the apps I worked with were too difficult for me or I didn't have all the libraries needed to run. But I will concede that the job was probably made tougher by the hardware I was using- particularly the IEEE1394 issues. I'd really like to see Linux mature and apps be easier to use- heck I'd even (gasp) buy software for Linux.

BTW: I've used gPhoto before and found it to be rather good. My only complaint was that ti wouldn't transfer the video shorts off the camera - only the jpeg photo's.

Chris


On Saturday, February 8, 2003, at 12:48 AM, Jason Costomiris wrote:


On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 03:47 PM, christophe barbe wrote:

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 02:52:48PM -0500, Chris Hedemark wrote:
Right now OS X sort of fills a niche that Linux hasn't quite grown into
yet. The freedom of Linux does have its downsides, including the lack
of any meaningful integration of software components or software with
hardware. I *can* do many of the same things in Linux that I can do in
OS X but in Linux it is sometimes made a lot more convoluted than it

I fail to see what would take more times to be done under linux than under Mac OS-X. Perhaps an example to illustrate would help.

How about:

1. Pull all the pictures off of my digital camera and import into my photo software
2. Run over each image to get the color levels, etc. straightened out
3. Output a slideshow in Quicktime format with music behind it.


Takes about 2 minutes on OS X...  The process is:

1. Plug in camera
2. Wait for iPhoto to finish launching
3. Switch to Import Mode
4. Click Import
5. Click on each photo and do a "One-click Enhance" on each.
6. Click to output a slide show, choose my background music and save it.


On Linux, I'd be stuck checking to see if I can get gphoto or somesuch to slurp the images off of my camera. Once doing that, I'd have to manually do all 5 or 6 operations that iPhoto's one-click enhance does, then figure out a way to output the slideshow as a movie file of some sort.

I don't know of anything on Linux that can output slideshow movies like that... Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. I use it on all of my servers, but I just don't think it compares to OS X for a desktop platform.

What do I like about using Linux for my servers? It just works, and works well. Same goes for OS X, but for the desktop...
-- Jason Costomiris <><
E: jcostom {at} jasons {dot} org / W: http://www.jasons.org/
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


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