[LAU] A made-in-linux audio project (was: Re instructional videos ?)

[ I try sending again as it seems my first message didn't get through
maybe due to attached screenshots]

Ok, sorry for the delay but yesterday I had a little time to write and
recollect on this.

The project consisted in the sonification of about 9 minutes from a
Russian silent film made in 1924.

My hardware set-up is pretty simple: HP laptop with ubuntu (9.04
currently), ZOOM H4 digital recorder, headphones, speakers.
Software-wise: jack (qjack control), Ardour, Rosegarden, Pd-extended,
various plugins (from the ready-made ubuntu packags), lots of other
audio-related stuff not used in this project, video applications (see
below).
I built Ardour and Rosegarden myself due to the ubuntu packages
notoriously being out of date for such applications.
I made the mistake of compiling ardour with vst support which wasn't
really necessary (I ended up not using any vst at all, having so many
nice 'native' ones) and seemed to make it more crashy (all the crashes I
got where Wine). Otherwise it was very stable. Anyway, fortunately I
always had the 'ctrl+s tick' and Ardour has a very good undo/redo
support amongst its many features, which keeps memory even through
closing and reopening sessions.

Audio + video (jack) - My first issue was to find a way to perfectly
sync audio and video for use with jack-transport-aware applications
(Ardour of course has no support for video - I think that's good).
Research lead to basically two options for jack-transport and video:
Openmovieeditor and Xjadeo, Because I wanted to use Ardour I was more
attracted by xjadeo's minimal interface (basically a video window
controlled by jack transport); I tried building xjadeo after discovering
there was no package for ubuntu but couldn't successfully play video so
used Movie Editor for quite a while; eventually someone created a
launchpad repository for xjadeo and that did work (after transcoding the
clip in the right format).
I created a suitable qjack control profile and a simple script for
launching the video in xjadeo, after which my fixed set-up was ardour
and the small xjadeo window "always on top" - see screenshot-2.png -
notice ardour was perfectly in sync with the video which was a must for me).

Some of the material I had recorded with the H4 recorder and then
trransfered as wav file directly to ardour or PD for editing/processing.
Rosegarden and Pd were simply plugged into ardour via Jack, and usually
recorded "live" (for Rosegarden I also used transport). Many sounds were
created in Pd and recorded/edited in Ardour.
I also used Pd as a stereo delay effect with a patch I made for some
music composed in Rosegarden, I had some out of sync problems in this
case, but easily solved them by manually realigning the clip. It may be
I had something wrong in the configuration, but I wanted to get "the job
done" so didn't investigate on the problem.
In ardour I made massive use of volume and pan automation.

Finally I exported the audio from ardour and imported both audio and
video in Cinelerra where I added some titles and translations in English
for the inter-titles in the silent film (the originals are in Russian,
but the DVD edition I had was in Italian) and rendered the whole thing.

I hope this might be helpful. I guess I wasn't very methodical in my
description so if something isn't clear or you'de like more information
don't hesitate to ask anything.

Kind regards to the list,
Lorenzo.
PS: I plan to upload the video somewhere, but first I'de like to find
out the best option (i.e. probably not youtube)

Lorenzo wrote:
> I'm finalising a lab project for an electronic music course which
> consisted in the sonification of a silent film portion. All was done
> in ubuntu linux.
> If it is of interest I can write down some details, and I also have a
> few screenshots.
>
> Kind regards,
> Lorenzo.
>
> Leigh Dyer wrote:
>> James Stone wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting.. How do vocals work in a tracker environment?
>>>
>>
>> If you want an example, there's a free album (someone posted on the list
>> back when it came out, so full credit for my knowing about it goes to
>> them!) produced entirely in Renoise that's available as both MP3s and
>> the original Renoise files:
>>
>> http://hunz.com.au/2009/05/new-album-is-out-now-its-free/
>>
>> If nothing else, it's a great example of the kinds of things (including
>> vocals) that you can produce with Renoise.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Leigh
>>
>>
>>> What's the situation with plugins for renoise under Linux at the moment?
>>>
>>> How does midi control work?
>>>
>>> James
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>>

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Received on Mon Sep 14 16:15:06 2009