[NBLUG/talk] Editing .avi files - Flip Video Camera

[Bob Blick]

Hi Dave,

mplayer will play them if you have the right codecs installed on your
machine. And probably avidemux will edit them also.

Since I use Kubuntu, I found a program called EasyUbuntu that installed
all those things for me. Now my computer will even play more M$ formats
than my Windows machine. "Automatix" performs similar install functions.
There are versions for various distros.

When I was getting that PAL DVD to play I installed tovid, which I
recommend for making DVDs. It comes with "idvid" which will analyze a
video and tell you what it's made up of.

Cheerful regards,

Bob

Dave Sisley wrote:
> Hey, Luggers:
> 
> I just bought my son a Flip Video Camera for his birthday, and I need 
> some help setting him up with a film editor.  The camera saves video as 
> .avi files and we are having trouble opening them with the various 
> editors I have installed.  The errors seem different, depending on which 
> editor I use
> 
>     * kino
>           o complains that the file is not a DV file and asks to import
>             it.  The new file will play, but is missing a good chunk of
>             the video (it only plays a few seconds of the whole thing)
>     * cinelerra - won't show any of the video, displays error messages:
>           o 'virutal int FileMOV::read_frame(VFRAME*):
>             quicktime_read_frame/quicktime_decode_video failed, result:'
>             [and that's it... no 'result']
>           o If I launch it from the command line, I get the same message
>             in a gui popup as you see above, but the console shows the
>             following:
>                 + new_acodec: couldn't find codec for "
" [this is
>                   printed out 3x, and that unreadable character looks
>                   like a weird capital D in my terminal screen]
>     * avidemux
>           o complains that no audio decoder is found and will play the
>             video with no sound
> 
> 
> I looked at the product info page for the camera 
> <http://www.theflip.com/products.shtml>, and it says that it features 
> 'MPEG-4 recorded video files saved in AVI format'.
> 
> The ultimate goal is to be able to edit videos and convert them if 
> necessary for posting on our webserver.  Can someone point me in the 
> right direction as to how to install the proper backend stuff that will 
> get one of the listed apps  to work (or please feel free to suggest 
> another...)?  Or do I need to dig into the AVI format that this camera 
> puts out in order to tell the application how to play it?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> -dave
>