Linux For The Rest Of Us 9: Klaatu Talks Linux And Creativity

Direct MP3 Download: Linux For The Rest Of Us 9: Klaatu Talks Linux And Creativity


A podcast for those of you wanting to learn about LINUX but need a little push.  Hosted by Steve McLaughlin and Steve Cherubino.

Interview with Klaatu

The show kicks off with the question of how did you get into linux?

Klaatu reponded, that he found linux through a film trade magazine, an article which mentioned a film studio that uses linux to render its video.

He likes the freedom that linux affords him to create his art.

He works with FFMPEG and then mentions using command line tools to edit video, however that more effective when the film is ready to be put together as opposed to the very beginning in the video editing process.

Discussion turns to VLC, it is more than just a video/audio player can also be used as a video forensics tool.  With VLC, you can actually get details of a video clip, everything from length of time, which format  it was recorded in, time of creation, etc.  A huge benefit for VLC, it will play anything, any format.

The interview then turns to Creative Commons and what that means to the artist.  Essentially creative commons (or CC) give the artist, musician complete control over their work.  There are different flavors of CC, for details please check out the creative commons website – http://creativecommons.org/choose/

An example of successful use of this license – Cory Doctrow.  He puts his works online and people are free to download, however there is a pay option for his work as well and he makes more money from this model than he would have going through a publishing house and distribution centers for his work.  Monty Python is another example, they put all of their works on youtube and then released all their material on DVD and it outsold every DVD in the market that year.

Next up, the Media Sprint.  The media sprint was put together to collect creative commons items with the intent of locating this material in one source location.  The results yeild over 2 gigs of material (compressed of course) and you can get them in one of two places:

http://www.slackermedia.info/downloads.html – Klaatu manages this website.

OR

http://www.skyehaven.net/blog/linux-multimedia-sprint/downloads/ – Hosting donated by a supporter of this project.

NOTE** you can pick and choose what you would like to download from the skyhaven site as opposed to downloading the entire contents from the slackermedia site.

The turnout for the media sprint was much better than expected, Klaatu was thinking he and maybe one other person would take part but ultimately there were many people involved.  This event was coordinated through IRC.  The second media sprint is slated for later this Fall, he hopes to better coordinate and to thank the individuals who participated in this event.  He has already started the ground work for the second event.

Klaatu also has his own podcast which can be found on his website – http://thebadapples.info/

As a heads up, the show is relased in just two formats – ogg & speex.  When asked why those two formats, because he tries not to use proprietary codecs. He likes the flexibility ogg gives him.  It is not tied to just one operating system.  For more information on the ogg format, check out – http://www.vorbis.com/

For windows – http://www.vorbis.com/setup_windows/

For Macs – http://www.vorbis.com/setup_osx/

The discussion returns to video editing, Klaatu prefers using Blender.  He feels this is more robust than other video editors available through linux.  However he does suggest that the average user checkout KDEnlive.  This is a very user friendly video editor and the learning curve is not as steep as KDEnlive.

Klaatu also mentions the need to go out and get a book, because you really need a reference when editing videos.

Lynda.com for video tutorial

Last item mentioned is Ardour, its as close to professional software as it gets!  All of this without paying over $1200 for Protools!

unixporn.com Not a porn site, its actually screen shots of users desktop.  The is called that because it started more as a unix based desktop shots.  Its all inclusive, which also brings linux screenshots as well.

If you have any questions or are interested in other projects that Klaatu is involved in, his websites and contact info are below.

www.slackermedia.info

www.thebadapples.info

or e-mail him

Klaatu at hackerpublicradio . org

notklaatu at jabber . org