Programs I tried on Ubuntu.

• Open Arena

Official Description:

OpenArena is an open-source content package for Quake III Arena licensed under the GPL, effectively creating a free stand-alone game. .

My Thoughts:

Great game if you like FPS and don’t mind annoying serves. It played at about 60fps on my GPU.

• InkScape

Official Description:

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

My Thoughts:

Functional but Ugly interface. I prefer Xara

• Xara Xtreme

Here are the specs from the Asus website:

So why do I want this cute little laptop?

1. It’s portable: great for note-taking, using in bed, outside, anywhere.
2. Cheap: costs about $400
3. Runs pre-installed Linux out-of-the box, although I will probably switch to Ubuntu.
4. Weighs only a pound.
5. Has webcam!

I used a mediocre computer.

Hardware Specs

AMD Athlon 64 3400+

2 x 512MB PC 3200  DDR RAM

200 GB Hard Drive

Sis 760 Integrated Graphics Card – 128MB Shared Memory

I received a DVD-R of the original DV-taping from my team mates. So I had to convert it to digital format first.

Freeware

For converting the DVD Video to WMV format so I can edit it in Windows Movie Maker.

DVD-WMV

Excellent Program for converting VOBs to WMVs. It uses the Windows Media Encoder engine, so you’ll need that if you don’t already have it.

http://www.dvd-wmv.com/ 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx – Microsoft website, needs genuine validation before downloading.

To download clips to use for the project.

Real Player 11

Great for downloading video clips from Video Sharing sites such as: YouTube, Vimeo, MetaCafe…  Also a great jukebox and media player.

http://www.realplayer.com/

VLC Player

Simply the best media player ever (virtually plays all video and audio formats). I used it to convert the videos I downloaded with Real Player (FLV to WMV). There are no easy-to-use free FLV to WMV or any other format converters because of licensing issues. The only I know of, is ffmpeg which is command-line based (no GUI). I found it very difficult to use. VLC is open source and if you don’t feel like installing it, download the portable version.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable – Portable Version

In a few sentences, this is what you’ll have to do to get the downloaded videos into the right format.

1. Launch up VLC and open the FLV file you want (usually located in Videos\Real Player Downloads\)
2. File > Wizard > Transcode/Save to file > Existing Playlist Item
3. Transcode Video Settings: WMV9 (or whatever format you’d like) Audio: MP3 (if WMV9 is selected)
4. On the next page, choose ASF and then the location of the new file.

If you need further explanation, check out this detailed LyteByte guide.

What program should I use?

If you have Windows XP SP2 or later, you can use Windows Movie Maker. It is pretty straight forward, simple and free. Located at: Start> Programs> Windows Movie Maker.

Want a more advanced version?

If you are on linux or an open source fan, you can use

t@b ZS4:

http://www.zs4.net/downloads

I highly don’t recommend using this program unless you have a powerful computer and lots of patience.

Online Video Editing

There are dozens of web based video editing programs available. Most of them take a long time to upload, and use.

You’ll need a fast Internet connection for these. I personally don’t recommend these either.

http://www.jumpcut.com/ – Very popular.

http://www.cuts.com/ – Never tried it.

http://eyespot.com/ – Tried it once. Not practical and can’t download video back. (at least the proper way)

http://www.motionbox.com/ – Never tried it.

I simply got frustrated with all the crashes and limitations of Movie Maker so I said to myself, Why not try a professional video editing program?

30-day Trials

Many professional video editing software are expensive. BUT, you can download a free 30-day trial and try them out with FULL FUNCTIONALITY.

I used a fully-functional 30-day trial of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Premium to finish my project.

If you are patient enough to go through the incredibly simple and interactive quick tutorials, you’ll love this program. It integrates nicely with other Sony multimedia editing programs like Sound Forge and has very impressive effects and transitions.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/vegasfamily.asp – Sony Website.

Other popular video editing programs include:

Adobe Premium and After Effects: Industry-standard applications. I recommend a dual-core processor with atleast 2gigs of RAM for these two.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/?ogn=EN_US-gntray_dl_trialdownloads

You can try other programs like Photoshop and Flash here.

Ulead Video Studio: Last used it in 2005. Very memory intensive yet easy to use. Great for home editing.

Free Trial

Page

If your computer runs slow while running these programs, try increasing the amount of RAM it uses under “Preferences”. If you have more than 2GB of RAM and it still lags, get a new computer or borrow a friend’s computer. You don’t have to go through all this mess if you have a Mac, you can use iMovie to do most of the work I had to do. I did the job on a sub-$500 desktop, I am sure your computer can handle all that stuff.

P.S.

When your trial expires, just uninstall the program and buy it (if you need it for more than 30 days).

Don’t try playing with your system clock, or typing in serial numbers.

Don’t try re-installing it, the trial will not restart.

Don’t search for a serial number, you’ll get a virus.

If you are very desperate and you happen to have a spare PC, you can try reformatting your hard drive to restart the trial. Your hard drive will die out(get real slow) if you do this, say over a course of a year.

Open-Source

You can also try these free open-source video tools:

Avidumex: http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

VirtualDub: http://www.virtualdub.org/

Cinelerra: http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Kino: http://www.kinodv.org/

For more free open-source alternatives, check out: http://www.osalt.com/

( Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
AMD Turion 64 MK-36 2.0 Ghz (512 KB L2 Cache)
2 GB Memory

Ati Radeon Xpress 1100 (256 MB Shared)
120 GB HDD SATA
Atheros Built-in Wireless (B+G)
15.4″ Widescreen display (1280 x 800)

Installation

1. I downloaded the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (64 bit) from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download.
2. I burned the ISO image onto a CD-ROM.
3. Restart Computer, F12 at boot, select DVD-RAM.
4. Chose “Start or Install Ubuntu” and waited until the live disc loaded.
5. Alt + F1 while booting, displays what its processing.
6. “ATH_HAL….Hardware Revision Not Supported” – Error Message
7. Ubuntu Starts, plays music, loads Desktop. Wifi doesn’t work, ! on Network Icon on top right corner of page
8. I chose the Install icon on the desktop.
9. Wizard appears, I choose L.A as my city, takes me to the Partition Configuration Page where I choose to allocate 10GB for Ubuntu File System (/ mount point on ext3 fs) and another 2GB for swap.
10. Installation takes approximately 30 minutes.

After the I restarted my computer,

1. Wi-FI not working. Ubuntu asks me to install Restricted Driver for my ATI Graphics Card and the Atheros Wifi.
2. Ubuntu notifies of Updates. I update Ubuntu takes about an hour (~200-300 KB/s) to download files for Update. Downloads OpenOffice, Compiz Fusion, etc…
3. Update takes another 30 minutes to install. I install the restricted drive and restart Ubuntu.
4. This time, Ubuntu did not display the splash screen and my hard drive stayed silent until I pressed Alt + F1.
5. Took about a minute to load, wi-fi doesn’t work.

Getting it to work

So I finally see the cool effects (Compiz) work well with my Graphics Card. I was very glad at this moment. One more challenge to tackle, Wireless. I spend about a week looking for an alternative for the Madwifi driver that comes with Ubuntu. I finally found ndiswrapper.

1. Downloaded source file from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/
2. I followed instructions: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,installation/
3. Downloaded Windows XP Drivers for my car from the Acer Panam website. Acer 5100-3357 Drivers
4. Used terminal to install the driver. Didn’t work first time because I used 32 bit driver which was not supported by my version of Ubuntu x64. uninstalled Ndiswrapper, reinstalled it with the XP-x64 driver.
5. Wi-fi worked after a restart.

All the drivers work(with the exception of ACPI controllers such as Wifi-switch) which I rarely use.