Re: GUI converter frontends (was: MPEG encoders?)

On 7/1/05, Emile Snyder <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 09:58 -0700, Ramona Howard wrote:
> > On Friday 01 July 2005 05:09 am, Brett McCoy wrote:
> ...snip...
> > > been the philosophy of Unix for decades -- make one tool that does only
> > > one thing and does it very well so it can be used in combination with
> > > other tools that do their one thing very well.  It's easy enough to plop
> > > a GUI over top this kind of thing.
> ...snip...
> > We have found that most of our clients love the fact that they can take any
> > function(or tool) and use it aside from the GUI.  Kinda just the opposite of
> > where they were 4 years ago. Go figure....
> 
> Let me just preface this by saying that I am not a windows refugee who
> is still looking for crutches to help me with the old way of doing
> things.  I spend my days writing C++ and Python on Linux, and have used
> Linux workstations as my day to day platform since 1996.  They can have
> my find/xargs/locate/grep/perl/mutt etc.. when they pry them from my
> cold dead fingers.
> 
> That said, I think that a transcoding/encoding gui is sorely lacking in
> the free UN*X world (or at least I haven't found one that helps me
> much).  There are a truly bewildering number of video file formats, and
> an even more bewildering number of codecs that can be used inside the
> wrappers.  Resolutions, frame rates, interlacing vs not, etc. etc..  For
> us hobbyist dabblers in video who think "hmm, lots of spare CPU cycles
> these days, maybe I should give cinelerra a whirl again and try to make
> a little DVD" it quickly becomes apparent that this is not for the faint
> of heart.
> 
> I would truly love (and have often told myself I will find the time to
> research and write) a tool that focused on knowing not only how to turn
> one crazy format into another without user intervention, but also on
> making clear to the user what sort of format they need for various
> applications (VCD, SVCD, DVD, streaming, etc..)
> 
> Just my outsider $0.02

I agree that the tools are sorely lacking. About the only project I've
seen that aims to do it all (from input [edited] video to final
playable DVD) is QDvdAuthor (http://qdvdauthor.sourceforge.net/).

As author states on the mainpage, he'd like to roll in transcoding as
well, but I don't know if he's gotten around to it. Getting animated
menus working is a real chore in of itself, not to mention dealing
with the many video formats out there.

Really, it would not be that bad of a job using a command line tool
like FFMpeg, and that could integrate nicely into a GUI of sorts. It's
just a question of getting a project started.

> thanks,
> -emile
> 
> > Best of luck to all
> >
> 
> 
> BodyID:89391417.2.n.logpart (stored separately)
> 
> 


-- 
R. Douglas Barbieri
[email protected]


-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies
from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles,
informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to
speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idt77&alloc_id492&op=click