Cinelerra CV Manual

1. Introduction

1.1 About Cinelerra

For years, some people have wanted a way to edit their audio and video in one place as fluidly as writing text. Cinelerra tries to be a single location for all your audio and video editing needs. All the recording, editing, and playback are handled here. It can be used as an audio player. It can be used to record audio or video. It can even be used as a photo retoucher.

There are two types of moviegoers: producers who create new content and revisit it for further refinement, and consumers who want to acquire the content and watch it. Cinelerra is not intended for consumers. Cinelerra has many features for uncompressed content, high resolution processing, and compositing. Producers need these features in order to retouch many generations of footage, which makes Cinelerra very complex. Consumers should consider other tools such as Avidemux (http://www.avidemux.org/), Kino (http://kinodv.org/) or Kdenlive (http://kdenlive.org/).

Quote from Miro's Wiki (http://www.mitvwiki.org/Cinelerra):
"The key difference between Cinelerra and many of the commercial editors is that Cinelerra hides much less from the user, exposing much of the inner workings to direct interaction. This can be harder to use, but does make it tremendously powerful, and for some operations blistering fast."

1.2 The two versions of Cinelerra

There are two branches of Cinelerra. One can be found at http://www.heroinewarrior.com and the other at http://cvs.cinelerra.org. This documentation is focused on Cinelerra-CV (Community Version).

The official Cinelerra source code is developed "upstream" by Heroine Virtual, Ltd (HV). HV shares its code base with a community version of Cinelerra (Cinelerra-CV), but does not actively participate with the community of developers responsible for Cinelerra-CV. HV likes to work on its own copy of Cinelerra, releasing code on a periodic basis every 6 months or so.

Cinelerra-CV was founded by developers who wanted to extend the functionality and fix bugs inherent in the HV code base. They decided to develop Cinelerra in a community fashion and not create a separate fork of the original HV code. So, the Cinelerra CV code is very similar to the official release. CV coders apply bug fixes (http://bugs.cinelerra.org), enhancements to the SVN and compliance fixes. Programmers occasionally send patches upstream. In this way, Cinelerra CV has a number of features that the official version does not.

Unlike other programs, the HV release can not be described as "stable". After HV's Cinelerra is released, there are often bugs or unusable new features. When there is a new release, a CV member (j6t) merges HV's code with Cinelerra CV code, taking the enhancements from HV and reformatting the CV code (white spaces, function naming, directory naming) to be more similar to HV's with slight changes to implementations. After the merge, the latest Cinelerra CV release is a little unstable as users find bugs. Time permitting, the CV programmers will address as many of these bugs as possible. In this way, Cinelerra CV can be seen as the community's attempt to stabilize HV's release.

As mentioned, the community adds new enhancements to the HV source. Members will comment on each other's implementations in order to create a more fully functional and stable product. Occasionally, HV will give feedback on implementations that the members of the CV submit to it. However, not all of the enhancements that the community create make it upstream; for example, YUV pipe rendering.

Given the above discussion, obtaining the SVN just before a merge will generally be more stable than a post-merge CV version. Be aware that existing project description files, or Edit Decision Lists (discussed below), may not be compatible with the newly merged CV version. With any version of Cinelerra, the task of finding bugs is relatively easy. However, clearly and concisely documenting these bugs for the community that fixes them is a task that we ask of all users of the software. The community is very responsive. Please help them by creating well-formed bug reports. You may join our mailing list at http://cvs.cinelerra.org.

1.3 About this manual

This manual edition is 1.55.EN, for Cinelerra CV version 2.1. You may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This manual originates from "Secrets of Cinelerra", an excellent primer written by Adam WILLIAMS from HEROINE VIRTUAL LTD. In 2003 Alex FERRER created a Wiki based on that manual and added many screenshots and topic descriptions. At that time, Cinelerra CV still did not have its own manual and information regarding the Community Version of Cinelerra was scattered across the Internet (mailing-list, IRC, websites, wiki, etc). In 2006, Nicolas MAUFRAIS combined the original "Secrets of Cinelerra" with the contents from Alex FERRER's Wiki into a unified document.

Cinelerra-CV documentation maintainers:
English: Nicolas MAUFRAIS (coordinator), Raffaella TRANIELLO (apprentice sorcerer)

Manual translators: French: Jean-Luc COULON
Brazilian Portuguese: Flavio SOARES (maintainer), Willie MARCEL
Spanish: Alberto RAMALLO, Gustavo Iñiguez GOYA (chapter 17 - Keyframes)
Basque: Iñaki Larrañaga MURGOITIO "Dooteo".

Other contributors: Alexandre BOURGET, Kevin BROSIUS, Carlos DAVILA, Cillian DE ROISTE, Rafael DINIZ, Pierre DUMUID, Mike EDWARDS, Martin ELLISON, Graham EVANS, Alex FERRER, Scott FRASE, Joe FRIEDRICHSEN, gour, Gus Gus, Terje HANSSEN, Mikko HUHTALA, Ben JORDEN, Nathan KIDD, Marcin KOSTUR, Joseph L., David MCNAB, Valentina MESSERI, Sean PAPPALARDO, Paolo RAMPINO, Herman ROBAK, Dana ROGERS, Jim SCOTT, Andraz TORI, Raffaella TRANIELLO, Hermann VOSSELER, Norval WATSON.

Thanks to the GNU project team, and particularly to Karl BERRY, maintainer of GNU Texinfo, for the precious help he gave us during the elaboration of this manual.

The sources of the manuals are Texinfo files. They are in the same SVN repository as Cinelerra's source code (hvirtual/doc folder). They can be converted in many formats. The doc/README_en file contains instructions for building the manual in PDF, HTML (single page) HTML (one page per chapter, in a folder), plain TXT, TXT in DokuWiki sintax (one file per chapter, in a folder), Docbook.

You can participate on editing this manual by making changes in the Cinelerra-CV wiki:
http://cvs.cinelerra.org/docs/wiki/doku.php

If you would like to translate this manual in your language, see the doc/TRANSLATIONS file and contact the Cinelerra CV Community.

1.4 Getting help

Help can be found at:

• IRC channel: #cinelerra on Freenode
• Mailing list: https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
• Cinelerra CV website: http://cvs.cinelerra.org

1.5 Tutorials

Some Cinelerra tutorials are available on the internet:

• Cinelerra Tutorial - Getting Started, by Rob FISHER
  http://www.robfisher.net/video/cinelerra1.html
• Cinelerra video tutorials, by The Source - tutorials (talk and screencast) inside The Source Show
  http://www.thesourceshow.org/node/11
  #1 is in Episode 6 "The Return Of The Pixel" from min 45 to min 60 (Introduction to Cinelerra and non linear editing, the 4 windows interface, project attributes, loading files).
  #2 is in Episode 1 "The Filesystem Menace" from min 32 to min 54 (Arming tracks, sample zoom, selection boxes, two screen editing, cut and paste editing, adding and moving tracks, drag and drop editing, trimming, transitions).
  #3 is in Episode 2 "Attack Of The Elephants (Dream)" from min 45 to 1:12 (Keyframes, camera and projector, masks, titles, effects).
• Edicion de video bajo GNU/Linux (Cinelerra), in Spanish, by Gustavo Iñiguez GOYA
  http://kutxa.homeunix.org/cinelerra
• Guide d'utilisation de Cinelerra, in French
  http://www.funix.org/fr/linux/cinelerra.htm
• Faire un montage video French tutorial for beginners on Cinelerra HV, by Laurent BELLEGARDE
  http://laurent.bellegarde.free.fr/lprod/tutoriels/tutoriel_cinelerra_niv1_debutant.pdf
• Capturando e editando video usando Software Livre, in Portuguese, by Rafael DINIZ
  https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/Cinelerra
• Tutorial Cinelerra, in Portuguese, by Leo GERMANI
  http://www.estudiolivre.org/tiki-index.php?page=Cinelerra
• Cinelerra is very easy, Introduction to Cinelerra, for beginners, by Paolo RAMPINO
  http://project.akirad.net/node/12

1.6 HOWTOs

Some HOWTOs for specific needs are available on the internet:

• Beginner's Guide to Exporting Video from Cinelerra, by Scott FRASE
  http://content.serveftp.net/video/renderTest/guideToCinExport.html
• Capturing desktop screens in Cinelerra, screencast by Scott FRASE
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhaOgNQ0Bbc
• HOWTO use the Chromakey (HSV) plugin, by Jerome CORNET
  http://jcornet.free.fr/linux/chromakey.html
• HOWTO make professional looking Scrolled Credits in Cinelerra, by David MCNAB
  http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/cintitles/
• Crear títulos diferentes con Cinelerra in Spanish, by Gustavo Iñiguez GOYA - how to add effects to titles. With downloadable sample projects.
  http://kutxa.homeunix.org/bloga/2007/08/13/crear-titulos-diferentes-con-cinelerra/#more-246
• SimAV's HOWTOs, by Simeon VOLKEL - How to create a picture in picture effect, How to create overlays, How to change theme.
  http://g-raffa.eu/SimAV/
• Tips for Transcoding Cinelerra Compatible Video with FFmpeg, MEncoder, by Alexander GRUNDNER
  http://www.alexandergrundner.com/2007/07/19/tips-for-transcoding-cinelerra-compatible-video-with-ffmpeg-mencoder
• FFMPEG compatibility - HOWTO produce videos that can be played in common proprietary multimedia players
  http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/compat.html

1.7 Miscellaneous links

Miscellaneous links:

• Interlacing
  http://neuron2.net/LVG/interlacing.html
• What is Deinterlacing? Facts, solutions, examples
  http://www.100fps.com
• MPEG-2 FAQ
  http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/frame/research/mpeg/mpeg2faq.html
• "Exporting edited HD content back to the camcorder" (HDV related)
  http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=76674
• A Quick Guide to Digital Video Resolution and Aspect Ratio Conversions
  http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/conversion
• Colour specification and image coding
  http://www.poynton.com/notes/colour_and_gamma/ColorFAQ.html
• DVD Video - about DVD structure
  http://wlug.org.nz/DVDVideo
• Creating DVD videos on Linux and Unix - an excellent high level overview of DVD authoring in general on Linux
  http://womble.decadent.org.uk/talks/dvd-ukuug06/dvd-talk-ukuug06-paper.html
• lprod - Libre Production a French Wiki full of resources for Open Source video editing, especially for Cinelerra HV (among them an Ubuntu package)
  http://fr.lprod.org/wiki/doku.php
• Cinelerra CV Glossary for newbies
  http://g-raffa.eu/Cinelerra/cin_glossary.html

2. Installation

This is the general contents of all Cinelerra packages.

• Foreign language translations - These go into `/usr/share/locale'
• Cinelerra executable - This goes into `/usr/bin'
• Cinelerra plugins - These go into `/usr/lib/cinelerra' in 32 bit systems and `/usr/lib64/cinelerra' in 64 bit systems.
• soundtest - Utility for determining sound card buffer size.
• mplexlo - Multiplexing of MPEG elementary streams without standards conformance but more efficiently.
• mpeg3cat - Utility for reading an MPEG file from a certain standard and outputting it to stdout.
• mpeg3toc, mpeg3cat, mpeg3dump - Utilities for indexing and reading MPEG files.
• mpeg3peek - Utility for displaying the byte offset of a frame in an MPEG file.

2.1 Hardware requirements

Cinelerra is demanding on all PC subsystems, as reading, decoding and playing video can be quite taxing. Thus, performance and usability of Cinelerra are directly proportional to the video format (SVCD/DV/HDV/HD/etc) used and the CPU and I/O bus speeds and video and memory bus architecture of your hardware. Therefore, it stands to reason that a less powerful system will be sufficient for users working with audio only or lower resolution video formats. However, that same system may slow down considerably when playing back a higher resolution format, such as DV video. Effects and several tracks of audio will compound these problems. Given these constraints, here are some suggestions for running Cinelerra:

• CPU speed
  At least 500 MHz CPU speed, anything less would be useless. Dual-core and SMP processors greatly improve Cinelerra speed.
• Memory
  When working with video, a large amount of free memory available can help speed up operations by avoiding unnecessary disk swaps and keeping material ready accessible. Have at least 256 Megabytes of memory. To really use Cinelerra for higher resolution video formats and larger projects, greater than 1 Gb memory space is suggested.
• Storage
  Video editing can be quite I/O intensive. Storage requirements are based on your particular video editing needs. If you expect to produce long pieces in uncompressed or larger resolution formats, you should have large (>200 Gb) and fast (<10ms) disk drives. For example, DV uses about 3.5 Megs per second, or 12 Gigs per hour. For smaller projects you might get away with 1 Gb. RAID0 (stripe set), RAID1+0 (striped/mirrored) or RAID5 (stripe set with parity) will also speed playback
• Video adapters
  Since version 2.1, Cinelerra benefits from OpenGL hardware acceleration. Make sure the video card you use supports OpenGL 2.0 in order to benefit from that acceleration. Nvidia series 7 (ie. 7600GS) are known to work well. Unfortunately, ATI's Linux drivers do not support a complete implementation of OpenGL 2.0. If you are going to send a composite signal directly to a TV or video recorder, make sure your video card supports it.
• Multiple monitors
  You can use XFree86's Xinerama features to work on multiple monitor heads. This feature can be a very effective way of increasing productivity.
• TV-Out
  If your Adapter supports a TV-Out option, connecting a TV or S-Video monitor to it is a great way to view your material as it will be seen on TV screen.
• Video grabbers
  If you have an analog video camera, or want to grab video from a trusty old VCR, you need some sort of video grabber. Video grabbers are supported through Video4Linux in Cinelerra.
• Firewire
  Firewire is the fastest way to download material into your system. Unless you will be importing your media from a CD, any other pre-captured format or use an analog video grabber, you will need firewire on your system.
• DV cameras
  There is an large variety of DV cameras that can be used with Cinelerra. Almost any camera that can connect using firewire will work. Be sure to set the appropriate parameters on the video grabbing system to match your particular camera. http://www.linux1394.org has a complete listing of supported cameras.

2.2 Software requirements

To install Cinelerra you should have a current version of GNU/Linux with the X Window System (e.g., X.org) and some audio management software properly running. You should also have the following libraries installed (partial list):

• a52dec
• dv
• faac
• ffmpeg
• fftw
• lame
• libavc1394
• libfaad2
• libraw1394
• mjpegtools
• OpenEXR
• theora
• x264

You will also need the headers for all required libraries. For many distributions, this means that you will need to install the "-dev" or "devel" packages that correspond to your installed library packages. In addition to the libraries listed here, be sure you have the X library headers. Missing headers will usually result in compilation failing with cryptic error messages.

2.3 Compiling Cinelerra CV

2.3.1 Usual compilation process

You can install Cinelerra CV by fetching the source code and compiling it. That is the method to use if you want to compile the most up-to-date version of Cinelerra CV.

The source code of Cinelerra-CV is available from a Subversion (SVN) repository. Subversion is available for download at http://subversion.tigris.org/, but most likely your distribution has prebuilt packages. Complete documentation of subversion is available at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/index.html.

1. First you have to fetch Cinelerra CV's sources from the SVN repository (approximately 170Mb or 60Mb for a read-only checkout). Run the following command:
   svn checkout svn://svn.skolelinux.org/cinelerra/trunk/hvirtual
   The svn command above will create in your current working directory a directory hvirtual that contains the sources.
2. Go to the hvirtual directory:
   cd hvirtual
3. Create the `./configure' file by running:
   autoreconf -i --force
4. Then run the `.configure' file:
   ./configure --with-buildinfo=svn/recompile
   This option makes the revision number to be shown in the About tab of the Preferences window. You can have a look at all the other options available by running:
   ./configure --help
   Most of the missing dependencies should be listed after running.
5. And run make:
   make
   If you wish to log the make output in order to search for errors, this command can be used:
   make 2>&1 | tee logfile
6. Install Cinelerra CV:
   sudo make install
7. Finally run as root (for first time compilation only):
   ldconfig

Notes:

• SMP machine:
  If you compile Cinelerra CV on a multiprocessor machine (SMP), we recommend you to add the `-j 3' option to make in order to benefit from the available CPUs.
• For x86 CPUs only:
  You probably want to enable MMX support. To do that, run ./configure with the `--enable-mmx32' option. If you do that, you may have to use the `--without-pic' option too, otherwise, compilation may fail.
• For Pentium-M:
  Here are some useful compiler flags:
  ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-x86 --enable-mmx32 --enable-freetype2 --with-buildinfo=svn/recompile CFLAGS='-O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-all-loops -falign-loops=2 -falign-jumps=2 -falign-functions=2 -ffast-math -march=pentium-m -mfpmath=sse,387 -mmmx -msse'
• For 64bits:
  As root, run:
  ./autogen.sh
./configure
  Replace `-prefer-non-pic' with `-fPIC \' in your
  `quicktime/ffmpeg/libavcodec/i386/Makefile.am' file.
  make
make install
  
• Updating the source code:
  If you already fetched the sources of an out of date revision, you can update to the latest revision by running:
  svn update
  
• Installing old revisions:
  If you wish to fetch an old revision, run:
  svn checkout -r <revision> svn://svn.skolelinux.org/cinelerra/trunk/hvirtual
• Installing several revisions:
  If you wish to install several revisions of Cinelerra CV on your computer, create a `/usr/local_cinelerra' folder, and use the following options with ./configure (replace `xxx' by the number of the revision you are compiling):
  `--prefix=/usr/local_cinelerra/rxxx --exec-prefix=/usr/local_cinelerra/rxxx --program-suffix=_rxxx'
  You will have to run Cinelerra CV from the directory in which it is installed:
  cd /usr/local_cinelerra/rxxx
./cinelerra_rxxx
  If you install Cinelerra using this method, the translated `.po' files do not get installed correctly. If you want to run Cinelerra in another language, See section Environment variables, for specific instructions.
• Automake version:
  You need automake version 1.7 to build. 1.4 will not work. Autoconf 2.57 is also required to build.

2.3.2 Compiling with debugging symbols

When Cinelerra CV crashes, one can compile it with debugging symbols and run it inside gdb. The information displayed by gdb is far more detailed and will help CV developers find bugs faster.

First, fetch the SVN sources as usual. Then, run the following commands:
cd hvirtual
nice -19 autoreconf -i --force
mkdir ../hvdbg
cd ../hvdbg
nice -19 ../hvirtual/configure CXXFLAGS='-O0 -g' CFLAGS='-O0 -g' --with-buildinfo=svn/recompile
cd quicktime/ffmpeg
nice -19 make CFLAGS='-O3'
cd ../..
nice -19 make
nice -19 make install

See section Reporting bugs, for information about running Cinelerra inside gdb.

2.4 Running Cinelerra

The simplest way to run Cinelerra is by running /usr/bin/cinelerra
Command line options are also available by typing cinelerra -h These options are described in several sections below. For rendering from the command line See section Rendering files.

If you get this error message when running Cinelerra for the first time:

WARNING:/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax is 0x2000000, which is too low

See section Freeing more shared memory, for details.

2.5 Live CDs

You can try and use Cinelerra on a computer without having to install it on your system. This is possible by using Live CDs, that are GNU/Linux distributions which boot from a CD, without installation on a hard drive. Here are some of the Live CD's known to contain Cinelerra:

• Knoppix - the "original" Debian-based LiveDistro - http://www.knoppix.org
• dyne:bolic - for multimedia production - uses Window Maker window manager - http://www.dynebolic.org
• Elive - Debian based live CD using Enlightenment window manager - http://www.elivecd.org
• x-evian - Debian based live CD for multimedia creations - http://x-evian.org
• Mediainlinux - Knoppix based - http://www.mediainlinux.org/
• Musix - Knoppix based live CD for audio production, graphic design and video editing - http://musix.org.ar
• pho (garbure) - dedicated to video editing - http://garbure.org/pho/
• Slo-Tech - based on Debian and Morphix - http://linux.slo-tech.com
• ArtistX - Debian based live CD, Gnome or KDE. For multimedia productions - http://artistx.org

2.6 Arch Linux

Cinelerra CV is included in the Arch Linux community repository.
To install the cinelerra package enable the community repository first (See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_User_Guidelines for more info).
Then run the following command from the command line:
pacman -Sy cinelerra-cv

2.7 Ark Linux

Cinelerra CV is included in the Ark Linux package repository.
To install the cinelerra package use the Install Software tool in Mission Control or run the following commands from a command line:
apt-get update
apt-get install cinelerra.

2.8 Debian

2.8.1 Debian binaries

Andraz TORI maintains build rules for Debian Sid. He also makes binary .deb packages for Sid. They are built from the unofficial SVN releases. Debian Sid packages can be found here:

• Apt source for i386:
  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~minmax/cinelerra/builds/sid/ ./
• Apt source for Pentium4 (optimized):
  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~minmax/cinelerra/builds/pentium4/ ./
• Apt source for Pentium-M (optimized):
  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~minmax/cinelerra/builds/pentiumm/ ./
• Apt source for AthlonXP (optimized):
  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~minmax/cinelerra/builds/athlonxp/ ./

Valentina MESSERI built also

• Apt source for Opteron (AMD64) (optimized):
  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/debian64/ ./

Christian MARILLAT makes binary Debian packages, built from the unofficial SVN releases, for stable, testing and unstable.

• Apt source for amd64, hppa, i386, ia64, powerpc (not optimized):
  deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org BRANCH main

Note: BRANCH = stable, testing or unstable
Note: Install debian-multimedia-keyring to add in your keyring Marillat's gpg-key.

Note: If Cinelerra produces the following error:
cinelerra: relocation error: /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.0.4.8: undefined symbol: faacDecOpen
You can solve the problem by entering the following command as root:
apt-get install --reinstall libfaad2-0=2.0.0-0.5

2.8.2 Debian prerequisites

Standard development packages

These are packages which might be considered "standard" development pacakges. The chances are, though, that you wouldn't have them installed by default, so you will probably need them:

• libtool
• nasm
• x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev - needed if you get error: X11/extensions/xf86vmode.h: No such file or directory
• libxv-dev - needed if you get error: X11/extensions/Xvlib.h: No such file or directory
• libxxf86vm-dev - needed if you get /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lXxf86vm

Extra Debian packages

These are development packages which are "non-standard", and you'll almost certainly have to install them if you want to compile Cinelerra:

• libogg-dev
• libvorbis-dev
• libtheora-dev
• libopenexr-dev
• libdv-dev
• libpng-dev
• libjpeg62-dev
• libtiff4-dev
• libfreetype6-dev
• libfaad-dev
• libsndfile1-dev
• uuid-dev

Some packages which may or may not be required:

• libavutil-dev
• libmpeg3-dev
• libavcodec-dev

External packages

You need some prerequisites which are not found in Debian's official repositories. You should add in your `/etc/apt/sources.list' the following line, which is Christian Marillat's repository:
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ sid main

You will need to apt-get install the following packages:

• libx264-dev
• libfaac-dev

2.9 Ubuntu

2.9.1 Ubuntu packages repositories

For Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron:

• for all x86 (full working on 32 and 64 bits), by Paolo RAMPINO:

  deb http://repository.akirad.net akirad-hardy main
  

  Installation notes:
  - To add this repository in your sources list use the following terminal command:
  sudo wget http://repository.akirad.net/dists/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/akirad.list
  -Installations from this repository need an authentication key. Add it by typing the following command in your terminal:
  wget -q http://repository.akirad.net/dists/akirad.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  - Cinelerra package is available in 5 variants:
  cinelerra (x86 and x86_64 without opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-generic (all x86 and x86_64 with opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-k7 (amd32 without opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-k7gl (amd32 with opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-k8 (amd k8 optimized with opengl 2.0 video card)
  - Cinelerra must be set to work with PulseAudio. Open Cinelerra and go to Settings->Preferences->Playback->Audio Driver. Select ESound and set the following parameters:
  Server:
  Port: 7007
  - These packages set shmmax to 0x7fffffff and add non-English language support for Cinelerra.
  - Please, report any package bug to akir4d at gmail dot com

For Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon:

• for all x86 (full working on 32 and 64 bits), by Paolo RAMPINO:

  deb http://repository.akirad.net akirad-gutsy main
  

  Installation notes:
  - To add this repository in your sources list use the following terminal command:
  sudo wget http://repository.akirad.net/dists/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/akirad.list
  -Installations from this repository need an authentication key. Add it by typing the following command in your terminal:
  wget -q http://repository.akirad.net/dists/akirad.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  - Cinelerra package is available in 5 variants:
  cinelerra (all x86 and x86_64 without opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-generic (all x86 and x86_64 with opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-k7 (all amd32 without opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-k7gl (all amd32 with opengl 2.0 video card)
  cinelerra-k8 (all amd64 with opengl 2.0 video card)
  - These packages set shmmax to 0x7fffffff and add Cinelerra non-English language support on Ubuntu.
  - Please, report any package bug to akir4d at gmail dot com

• for i386 (not working on amd 32 bits), by Valentina MESSERI:

  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntu32 ./
  

• for AMD64 (and also Core Duo Intel64), by Valentina MESSERI:

  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntu64 ./
  

  Note:
  - If your package manager complains that it does not have the right version of libfaac (1.25) you can install:
  http://www.debian-multimedia.org/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/package/libfaac0.php

For Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn:

• for i386, optimised for UbuntuStudio, with OpenGL, by Valentina MESSERI:

  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntuopengl/ ./
  

• for AMD64 (and also Core Duo Intel64), by Valentina MESSERI:

  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntu64 ./
  

• for AMD64, with OpenGL disabled, by Valentina MESSERI:

  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntu64NOopengl/ ./
  

• for i386, by muzzol:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~muzzol/cinelerra/feisty-i386/ ./
  

• for i686, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/feisty/cinelerra/i686/ ./
  

• for athlonxp, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/feisty/cinelerra/athlonxp/ ./
  

• for pentium4, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/feisty/cinelerra/pentium4/ ./
  

For Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft:

• by muzzol

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~muzzol/cinelerra/edgy-i386/ ./
  

• by Valentina MESSERI:

  deb http://giss.tv/~vale/ubuntu32 ./
  

For Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake

• necessary mjpegtools ubuntu backport, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/dapper/mjpegtools ./
  

• for pentium4, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/dapper/cinelerra/pentium4/ ./
  

• for i686, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/dapper/cinelerra/i686/ ./
  

• for athlonxp, by Jure CUHALEV:

  deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalf/ubuntu/dapper/cinelerra/athlonxp/ ./
  

2.9.2 Instructions for Ubuntu packages installation

Chose a repository from the ones above according to your release and CPU type and install the package.
Here are 3 ways of doing that:

With Synaptic Package Manager:

Open the Software Sources Window.
You can do it in two ways:
- Go to System -> Administraton -> Software Sources
- Inside Synaptic Package Manager: Go to Settings -> Repositories.
Make sure you have universe, multiverse and restricted sources checked in the first tab.
Click on tab Third Party. Click on the Add button and enter your chosen repository.
Clicking Add Source will display the new repository enabled in the Software Sources window.
You should now see Cinelerra in the list of packages available in Synaptic.
Follow Synaptic instructions for installation.

With the command line:

Edit directly your `/etc/apt/sources.list' file.
Make sure you have universe, multiverse and restricted sources enabled by checking you have the following line uncommented:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe multiverse restricted

Add the complete APT line of your chosen repository.
Install Cinelerra by typing in your terminal:

apt-get update

and then

apt-get install cinelerra

With GDebi Package Installer:

Send Firefox to the web address of the repository
(e.g. http://www.kiberpipa.org/~muzzol/cinelerra/edgy-i386/.)
Click on the .deb link for your chosen Cinelerra package
(e.g. cinelerra_2.1.0+svn20070109-0ubuntu1_i386.deb)
A dialog window will ask you to confirm your intention to open this file with GDebi Package installer.
Clicking OK will start the download.
If during the process you get errors about not satisfiable dependencies, try installing the problematic library with the same method from the same webpage.

HOWTOs for package installation or compilation from source code

• Installation of Ubunty Feisty AMD64 Cinelerra package:
  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CinelerraOnFeistyAMD64
• Compilation from source code on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (for beginners):
  http://www.g-raffa.eu/Cinelerra/cin_compilation.html
• Compilation from source code on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon:
  http://lab.dyne.org/cinelerra/Gutsy
• Compilation from source code on Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft:
  http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=320701&highlight=cinelerra
• Compilation from source code on Ubuntu Breezy:
  http://placide.home.sapo.pt/cinelerra02.html
• Compilation from source code on Ubuntu (for beginners, in Italian):
  https://faberlibertatis.org/wiki/Cinelerra_CV_su_Ubuntu

2.10 Gentoo

Installation for Gentoo GNU/Linux is very straight forward. Simply type:

emerge cinelerra-cvs

as root and it should install and run without any problems. Note that you may need to put cinelerra-cvs in your `/etc/portage/package.keywords' file in order to unmask it:

echo "=media-video/cinelerra-cvs ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3&chap=3 for details. If you are running on an architecture other than x86 e.g. amd64, you will need to replace ~x86 with the relevant architecture e.g. ~amd64.

You may also want to adjust the USE flags. First run

emerge -av cinelerra-cvs

to see what flags are available and then add the relevant ones to `/etc/portage/package.use':

echo "media-video/cinelerra-cvs ieee1394" >> /etc/portage/package.use 

This would enable support for firewire devices.

2.11 Fedora

Cinelerra is included in the Freshrpms repository at http://freshrpms.net. The easiest way to install packages from Freshrpms is to include the repository in the yum configuration. Also make sure that the Fedora Extras repository is enabled. This is the case by default on Fedora 5 and 6, and Core and Extras are merged into one on Fedora 7.

For Fedora 8 see http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/index.php/archives/install-cinelerra-on-fedora-8/

On Fedora 6, as the user root do:

rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/6/\
freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

On Fedora 5, do:

rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/5/\
freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

Then type:

yum -y install cinelerra

to get and install Cinelerra and all the dependencies, including ffmpeg and mjpegtools. If it does not work, check the `/etc/yum.conf' file and make sure that the Freshrpms config gets included from the `/etc/yum.repos.d'.

Notes:

• The package collection of Freshrpms may overlap and/or conflict with other third-party repositories such as Livna, which may also carry audio and video libraries and Cinelerra. It may be a good idea to stick with one repository and not mix packages from several different third-party repositories.
• The header files of the various libraries are needed for compiling Cinelerra from source. The header files are included in separate devel packages that are included in the Fedora and Freshrpms repositories and can be installed with yum. At least the following are required:
  OpenEXR-devel SDL-devel a52dec-devel alsa-lib-devel e2fsprogs-devel faac-devel faad2-devel ffmpeg-devel fftw-devel imlib2-devel lame-devel libXv-devel libXxf86vm-devel libavc1394-devel libdv-devel libiec61883-devel libogg-devel libraw1394-devel libsndfile-devel libtheora-devel libvorbis-devel mjpegtools-devel x264-devel xvidcore-devel
• If you want to compile Cinelerra from source on Fedora Core 6, detailed instructions on how to install the necessary dependent files can be found at: http://crazedmuleproductions.blogspot.com
  /2007/03/fedora-core-6-cinelerra-dependencies.html

2.12 Mandriva

Cinelerra packages for Mandriva are made by PLF are ready to install. Read http://plf.zarb.org/packages.php for more information.

2.13 Slackware

Rafael DINIZ build Slackware packages for Cinelerra.

• For x86:
  http://slack.sarava.org/packages/slackware/slackware-11.0/multimedia/
• For slackintosh:
  http://slack.sarava.org/packages/slackintosh/slackintosh-11.0/multimedia/

2.14 Suse

RPMs for SuSE 9 are built from SVN sources by Kevin BROSIUS, and available at http://cin.kevb.net/files/RPM/

RPMs for OpenSUSE 10.1 and 10.2, architecture i586 and x86_64, are built from SVN by Leon FREITAG at Packman. They are available at http://packman.links2linux.org/package/cinelerra/16413.

The RPM package(s) can be installed as root in a terminal using this command:

rpm -Uvh package_name.rpm

The following installation case shows four screenshots for a GUI based Cinelerra SVN installation on OpenSUSE 10.2 i586 using YaST2. First by adding packman's YaST2 repository as a YaST2 Installation source, and next the package installation with the YaST2 Software Manager.

Start the YaST Control center on OpenSUSE 10.2 and add the root password when requested:

Start the YaST2 installation source tool, select the HTTP protocol and add the servername for packman as shown. Synchronization with Zenworks may take some time, wait until it is finished.

Start the YaST2 Software Management. Enter "Cinelerra" in the left search field and next check the checkboxes for the Cinelerra packages in the right window. If an older version of Cinelerra is installed on beforehand visible with a lock symbol, delete it, possibly try an update first.

Click Accept to start the package installation and afterwards Next to finish.

2.15 MacOSX

FIXME

3. Configuration

Because of its flexibility, Cinelerra cannot be optimized without special configuration for your specific needs. Unfortunately, very few parameters are adjustable at compile time. Therefore, runtime configuration is the only option for most users because of the multitude of parameters available.
Below are configuration options as well as the supported API's in GNU/Linux.
In Cinelerra, go to settings->preferences to see the options.

3.1 Environment variables

In UNIX derivatives, environment variables are global variables in the shell which all applications can read. They are set with a command like set VARIABLE=value. All the environment variables can be viewed with a command like env. Cinelerra recognizes the following environment variables:

• LADSPA_PATH
  If you want to use LADSPA plugins, this must be defined: a colon separated list of directories to search for LADSPA plugins. These are not native Cinelerra plugins. See section Ladspa effects.
• GLOBAL_PLUGIN_DIR
  The directory in which Cinelerra should look for native plugins. The default is `/usr/lib/cinelerra' but you may need an alternate directory if you share the same executable directory among many machines via NFS. Plugins of different binary formats need to be in different directories.
• LANG and LANGUAGE
  Cinelerra can be localized to display menus and messages in many languages. Cinelerra language settings are normally read from your GNU/Linux language settings. To run Cinelerra on a language different than the one selected on your system just change the LANG and LANGUAGE environment variables.
  For example, open a shell and type: export LANG=es_ES LANGUAGE=es_ES, then run cinelerra from the same shell. It will open set on the Spanish language.
  Available languages are:
  • en_EN - English
  • es_ES - Espanol
  • sl_SI - Slovenian
  • fr_FR - Francais
  • eu_ES - Euskera
  • de_DE - German
  • pt_BR - Brazilian Portuguese
  • it_IT - Italian

  If your distribution has only UTF-8 support (like Ubuntu), first you must create the language charset with this command:
  localedef -c -i (language_prefix) -f (your ISO-8859 variant) (language_prefix).(your ISO-8859 variant)
  This is an example for Italian language:
  localedef -c -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-15 it_IT.ISO-8859-15

  Then you can run cinelerra with this command:
  env LANG=$(echo $LANG | sed -e s/UTF-8/(your ISO-8859 variant)/g) cinelerra
  This is an example for Italian language:
  env LANG=$(echo $LANG | sed -e s/UTF-8/ISO-8859-15/g) cinelerra

  In some cases (e.g. if you compiled Cinelerra specifying a `--prefix=' option different from `/usr/local') the translated .po files are not installed. If you can't run Cinelerra in your chosen language, try running the following commands before changing the LANG and LANGUAGE environment variables:
  cd hvirtual
./configure prefix=/usr
cd po
sudo make install
  

3.2 Audio drivers

The audio drivers are used for both recording and playback. Their functionality is described below:

3.2.1 Sound driver attributes

• Device path
  Usually a file in the `/dev/' directory which controls the device.
• Bits
  The number of bits of precision Cinelerra should set the device for. This sometimes has a figurative meaning. Some sound drivers need to be set to 32 bits to perform 24 bit playback and will not play anything when set to 24 bits. Some sound drivers need to be set to 24 bits for 24 bit playback.
• Port
  The IEEE1394 standard specifies something known as the port. This is probably the firewire card number.
• Channel
  The IEEE1394 standard specifies something known as the channel. For DV cameras it is always 63.
• Device
  The chosen device.
• Stop playback locks up
  This ALSA only checkbox is needed if stopping playback causes the software to lock up.

3.2.2 OSS

This was the first GNU/Linux sound driver. It had an open source implementation and a commercial implementation with more sound cards supported. It was the standard sound driver up to GNU/Linux 2.4. It still is the only sound driver which an i386 binary can use when running on an x86_64 system.

3.2.3 OSS Envy24

The commercial version of OSS had a variant for 24 bit 96 KHz soundcards. This variant required significant changes to the way the sound drivers were used, hence the need for the new driver.

3.2.4 Alsa

ALSA is the most common sound driver in GNU/Linux 2.6. It supports most of soundcards now. It takes advantage of low latency features in GNU/Linux 2.6 to get better performance than OSS had in 2.4, but roughly the same performance that OSS had in 2.0. Unfortunately ALSA is constantly changing. A program which works with it one day may not the next day. New wrappers are being developed on top of ALSA. We plan to support them at regular intervals, though not at every new release of a new wrapper.
ALSA is no longer portable between i386 and x86_64. If an i386 binary tries to play back on an x86_64 kernel, it will crash. For this scenario, use OSS.

3.2.5 Esound

ESOUND was a sound server that sat on top of OSS. It was written for a window manager called Enlightenment. It supports a limited number of bits and has high latency compared to more modern drivers, but it does have the ability to multiplex multiple audio sources. It is unknown whether it still works.

3.2.6 Raw 1394

The was the first interface between GNU/Linux software and firewire camcorders. It is the least reliable way to play audio to a camcorder and consists of a library on top of the kernel commands.

3.2.7 DV 1394

This is the second rewrite of DV camcorder support in GNU/Linux. This is the most reliable way to play audio to a camcorder and consists of direct kernel commands.

3.2.8 IEC 61883

The third rewrite of DV camcorder support in GNU/Linux. This is a library on top of RAW 1394 which is a library on top of the kernel commands. It is less reliable than DV 1394 but more reliable than RAW 1394. The next rewrite ought to fix that. Visit http://www.linux1394.org for more information and the latest drivers.

3.3 Video drivers

The video drivers are used for video playback in the compositor and the viewer.

3.3.1 Video driver attributes

• Display
  The interface is intended for dual monitor displays. Depending on the value of Display, the Compositor window will appear on a different monitor from the rest of the windows.
• Device path
  Usually a file in the `/dev/' directory which controls the device.
• Swap fields
  Make the even lines odd and the odd lines even when sending to the device. On an NTSC or 1080i monitor the fields may need to be swapped to prevent jittery motion.
• Output channel
  You may need a specific connector to send video out to devices with multiple outputs.
• Port
  The IEEE1394 standard specifies something known as the port. This is probably the firewire card number.
• Channel
  The IEEE1394 standard specifies something known as the channel. For DV cameras it is always 63.

3.3.2 X11

This was the first method of graphical display on any UNIX system. It just writes the RGB triplet for each pixel directly to the window. It is the slowest playback method. It is still useful as a fallback when graphics hardware can not handle very large frames.

3.3.3 X11-XV

This was an enhancement to X11 in 1999. It converts YUV to RGB in hardware with scaling. It is the preferred playback method but can not handle large frame sizes. The maximum video size for XV is usually 1920x1080.

3.3.4 X11-OpenGL

The most powerful video playback method is OpenGL. With this driver, most effects are done in hardware. OpenGL allows video sizes up to the maximum texture size, which is usually larger than what XV supports, depending on the graphics driver. To enable it you will need a binary built with OpenGL support. The configure option to enable OpenGL is `--enable-opengl'. You need a video card which supports OpenGL 2.0. Recent Nvidia video cards should work. You also need to use a video driver supporting OpenGL 2.0, such as Nvidia's binary driver. To know if your video driver supports OpenGL 2.0, type the following command: glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"

• Video driver supporting hardware OpenGL 2.0 rendering:
  OpenGL version string: 2.0.2 NVIDIA 87.74
• Video driver not supporting hardware OpenGL 2.0 rendering:
  OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.0.2 NVIDIA 87.74)

OpenGL relies on PBuffers and shaders to do video rendering. The graphics driver must support OpenGL 2.0 and Cinelerra needs to be explicitly compiled with OpenGL 2.0 support. This requires compiling it on a system with the OpenGL 2.0 headers. PBuffers are known to be fickle. If the graphics card does not have enough memory or does not have the right visuals, PBuffers will not work. If OpenGL does not work, try seeking several frames or restarting Cinelerra.

Limitations:

• OpenGL does not affect rendering. It just accelerates playback.
• X11-OpenGL processes everything in 8 bit color models, although the difference between YUV and RGB is retained.
• OpenGL does not work with frames whose size is larger than 4096x4096.
  Here is what is written in the console when working with large frames:
  BC_Texture::create_texture frame size <frame_width>x<frame_height> bigger than maximum texture 4096x4096.
• The scaling equation set in the preferences window is ignored by OpenGL. OpenGL always uses linear scaling.
• Project and track sizes need to be multiples of four for OpenGL to work.
• To get the most acceleration, OpenGL-enabled effects must be placed after software-only effects. All rendering before the last software-only effect is done in software. The core Cinelerra operations like camera and projector are OpenGL.
• Not all of the effects support OpenGL acceleration. The following effects support OpenGL: Brightness, Chromakey, Chromakeyhsv, Color balance, Deinterlace, Diffkey, Dissolve, Flip, Frames to fields, Freeze frame, Gamma, Gradient, Histogram, Hue saturation, Interpolate Pixels, Invert video, Linear blur, Overlay, Perspective, Radial blur, RGB601, Rotate, Scale, Threshold, Zoomblur.

3.3.5 Buz

This is a method for playing motion JPEG-A files directly to a composite analog signal. It uses a popular hack of the Video4Linux 1 driver from 2000 to decompress JPEG in hardware. Even though analog output is largely obsolete, newer drivers have replaced BUZ.

3.3.6 Raw 1394 video playback

This was the first interface between GNU/Linux software and firewire camcorders. It is the least reliable way to play video to a camcorder and it consists of a library on top of the kernel commands.

3.3.7 DV 1394 video playback

The second rewrite of DV camcorder support in GNU/Linux. This was the most reliable way to play video to a camcorder and consists of direct kernel commands.

3.3.8 IEC 61883 video playback

The third rewrite of DV camcorder support in GNU/Linux. This is a library on top of RAW 1394 and is less reliable than DV 1394 but more reliable than RAW 1394. The next rewrite ought to fix that. Visit http://www.linux1394.org for more information and the latest drivers.

3.4 Playback

3.4.1 Audio out

These determine what happens when you play sound from the timeline.

• Playback buffer size
  For playing audio, small fragments of sound are read from disk and processed sequentially in a virtual console. A larger value here causes more latency when you change mixing parameters but yields more reliable playback.
  Some sound drivers do not allow changing of the console fragment, so latency is unchanged no matter what the value.
  Previously, a good way of ensuring high quality playback was to read bigger fragments from the disk and break them into smaller fragments for the soundcard. That changed when the virtual console moved from the push model to the pull model. Since different stages of the rendering pipeline can change the rate of the incoming data, it would be difficult to disconnect the size of the console fragments from the size of the fragments read from disk.
• Audio offset
  The ability to tell the exact playback position on GNU/Linux sound drivers is poor, if it is provided at all. Since this information is required for proper video synchronization, it has to be accurate. The audio offset allows users to adjust the position returned by the sound driver in order to reflect reality. The audio offset does not affect the audio playback or rendering at all. It merely changes the synchronization of video playback.
  The easiest way to set the audio offset is to create a timeline with one video track and one audio track. Expand the audio track and center the audio pan. The frame rate should be larger than 24 fps and the sampling rate should be greater than 32000. The frame size should be small enough for your computer to render it at the full framerate. Highlight a region of the timeline starting at 10 seconds and ending at 20 seconds. Drop a gradient effect on the video track and configure it to be clearly visible. Drop a synthesizer effect on the audio and configure it to be clearly audible.
  Play the timeline from 0 and watch to see if the gradient effect starts exactly when the audio starts. If it does not, expand the audio track and adjust the nudge. If the audio starts ahead of the video, decrease the nudge value. If the audio starts after the video, increase the nudge value. Once the tracks play back synchronized, copy the nudge value to the audio offset value in preferences.
  Note: if you change sound drivers or you change the value of Use software for positioning information, you will need to change the audio offset because different sound drivers are unequally inaccurate.
• View follows playback
  This causes the timeline window to scroll when the playback cursor moves. This can bog down the X Server or cause the timeline window to lock up for long periods of time while drawing the assets.
• Use software for positioning information
  Most soundcards and sound drivers do not give reliable information on the number of samples the card has played. You need this information for synchronization when playing back video. This option causes the sound driver to be ignored and a software timer to be used for synchronization.
• Audio playback in realtime
  Back in the days when 150 MHz was the maximum speed for a personal computer, this setting allowed uninterrupted playback during periods of heavy load. It forces the audio playback to the highest priority in the kernel. Today, it is most useful for achieving very low latency between console tweeks and soundcard output. You must be root to get real-time priority.
• Audio driver
  There are many sound drivers for GNU/Linux. This allows selecting one sound driver and setting parameters specific to it. The sound drivers and their parameters are described in the sound driver section. See section Audio drivers.

3.4.2 Video out

These determine how video gets from the timeline to your eyes.

• Play every frame
  This causes every frame of video to be displayed even if it means that the playback of the video track(s) will fall behind. This option should always be enabled unless you use uncompressed codecs. As of 1/2007, most compressed codecs do not support frame dropping anymore.
• Framerate achieved
  The number of frames per second being displayed during playback. This is updated during playback only.
• Decode frames asynchronously
  If you have lots of memory and more than one CPU, this option can improve playback performance by decoding video on one CPU as fast as possible while dedicating the other CPU to playing back video. It assumes all playback operations are forward and no frames are dropped. Operations involving reverse playback or frame dropping are negatively impacted.
  Since this option requires enormous amounts of memory, Cinelerra may crash if the input frames are very large.
• Scaling equation
  This algorithm is used when video playback involves any kind of scaling or translation in the virtual console. This does not affect 1:1 playback.
  • Nearest neighbor enlarge and reduce
    Low quality output with fast playback. Produces jagged edges and uneven motion.
  • Bicubic enlarge and bilinear reduce
    High quality output with slow playback. Bicubic interpolation is used for enlarging, which blurs slightly but does not show stair step artifacts. A bilinear interpolation is used for reduction, which produces very sharp images and reduces noise. Bilinearly reduced images can be sharpened with a sharpen effect with less noise side effects than a normal sized image.
  • Bilinear enlarge and bilinear reduce
    When slight enlargement is needed, a bilinear enlargement looks better than a bicubic enlargement.
• Preload buffer for Quicktime
  The Quicktime/AVI decoder can handle DVD sources better when this is set to around 10000000. This reduces the amount of seeking required. When reading high bitrate sources from a hard drive, this tends to impair performance by slowing down decoding. For normal use this should be 0.
• DVD subtitle to display
  DVD IFO files usually contain subtitle tracks. These must be decoded with the MPEG decoder. Select Enable subtitles to enable subtitle decoding. There are usually multiple subtitle tracks indexed by number and starting from 0. Enter the index number of the subtitle track to be decoded in the "DVD Subtitle to display" text box or use the tumbler to increase the index value. Go to the asset corresponding to the MPEG file in the Resources window and right click. Click on Info. The number of subtitle tracks is shown at the bottom.
• Interpolate CR2 images
  Enables interpolation of CR2 images. Interpolation is required since the raw image in a CR2 file is a Bayer pattern. The interpolation uses dcraw's built-in interpolation and is very slow. This operation can be disabled and the Interpolate Pixels effect used instead for faster previewing.
• White balance CR2 images
  This enables white balancing for CR2 images if interpolation is also enabled. This is because proper white balancing needs a blending of all 3 primary colors. White balance uses the camera's matrix which is contained in the CR2 file.
  Disabling white balancing is useful for operations involving dark frame subtraction. The dark frame and the long exposure need to have the same color matrix.
  If you disable Interpolate CR2 Images and use the Interpolate Pixels effect, be aware the Interpolate Pixels effect always does both interpolation and white balancing using the camera's matrix, regardless of the settings in Preferences. Dark frame subtraction needs to be performed before Interpolate Pixels.
• Video driver
  Normally video on the timeline goes to the compositor window during both continuous playback and when the insertion point is repositioned. Instead of sending video to the Compositor window, the video driver can be set to send video to another output device during continuous playback. However, this does not affect where video is routed when the insertion point is repositioned.
  The video drivers and their parameters are described in the video drivers section. See section Video drivers.

3.5 Recording

The parameters here expedite the File->Record... function by allowing the user to pre-configure the file format. The file format is applied to all recordings. Also set here is the hardware for recording, since the hardware determines the supported file format (in most cases).

3.5.1 File format

This determines the output file format for recordings. It depends heavily on the type of driver used. The menu selections are the same as the rendering interface. See See section Rendering files. The Record audio tracks toggle must be enabled to record audio. The Record video tracks toggle must be enabled to record video. The wrench button left of each toggle opens a configuration dialog in order to set the compression scheme (codec) for each audio and video output stream. The audio and video is wrapped in a container format defined by the File Format menu. Different wrappers may record audio only, video only, or both.

Some video drivers can only record to a certain container. DV, for example, can only record to Quicktime with DV as the video compression scheme. If the video driver is changed, the file format may be updated to give the supported output. If you change the file format to an unsupported format, it may not work with the video driver.

3.5.2 Audio in

These determine what happens when you record audio.

• Record driver
  This is used for recording audio in the Record window. It may be configured the same as the Record Driver for video if the audio and video are wrapped in the same stream. Available parameters vary depending on the driver. Note that the drivers are the same as those available in Preferences->Playback. See section Audio drivers.
• Samples to write to disk at a time
  First, audio is read in small fragments from the device. Then, many small fragments are combined into a large fragment before writing to disk. The disk writing process is done in a different thread. The value here determines how large the combination of fragments is for each disk write.
• Sample rate for recording
  Regardless of what the project settings are, the value set here will be the sample rate used for recording. The sample rate should be set to the highest value the audio device supports.

3.5.3 Video in

These determine what happens when you record video.

• Record driver
  This is used for recording video in the Record window. It may be configured the same as the Record Driver for video if the audio and video are wrapped in the same container. Available parameters vary depending on the driver. Note that the drivers available are the as those available in Preferences->Playback. See section Video drivers.
• Frames to record to disk at a time
  Frames are recorded in a pipeline. First, frames are buffered in the device. Then, they are read into a larger buffer for writing to disk. The disk writing is done in a separate thread from the device reading. For certain codecs the disk writing uses multiple processors. The value set here determines how many frames are written to disk at a time.
• Frames to buffer in device
  This is the number of frames to store in the device before reading and determines how much latency there can be in the system before frames are dropped.
• Use software for positioning information
  Video uses audio for synchronization, but most soundcards do not give accurate position information. Selecting this options makes Cinelerra calculate an estimation of audio position in software instead of hardware for synchronization.
• Sync drives automatically
  For high bitrate recording, the disk drives you use may be fast enough to store the data but your operating system may wait several minutes and stall as it writes several minutes of data at a time. This forces the operating system to flush its buffers every second instead of every few minutes to produce slightly better real-time behavior.
• Size of captured frame
  This is the size of the recorded frames in pixels. It is independent of the project frame size because most video devices only record a fixed frame size. If the frame size given here is not supported by the device, Cinelerra may crash.
• Frame rate for recording
  The frame rate recorded is different from the project settings. This sets the recorded frame rate.

3.6 Performance

You will spend most of your time configuring this section. The main focus of the performance section is rendering parameters not available in the rendering dialog.

• Cache items
  To speed up rendering, several assets are kept open simultaneously. This determines how many are kept open. A number too large may exhaust your memory pretty fast and result in a crash. A number too small may result in slow playback as assets need to be reopened more frequently.
• Seconds to preroll renders
  Some effects need a certain amount of time to settle in. Checking this option sets a number of seconds to render without writing to disk before the selected region is rendered. When using the renderfarm, you will sometimes need to preroll to get seemless transitions between the jobs. Every job in a renderfarm is prerolled by this value. This does not affect background rendering, however. Background rendering uses a different preroll value.
• Force single processor use
  Cinelerra tries to use all processors on the system by default, but sometimes you will only want to use one processor, like in a renderfarm client. This forces only one processor to be used. In addition, the operating system usually uses the second processor for disk access. So this option is really a 1.25 processor mode. The value of this parameter is used in renderfarm clients.

3.6.1 Background rendering

Background rendering was originally conceived to allow HDTV effects to be displayed in real-time. Background rendering causes temporary output to be rendered constantly while the timeline is being modified. The temporary output is displayed during playback whenever possible. This is useful for transitions and previewing effects that are too slow to display in real time. If a renderfarm is enabled, the renderfarm is used for background rendering. This gives you the potential for real-time effects if enough network bandwidth and CPU nodes exist.

Background rendering is enabled in the Performance tab of the Preferences window. It has one interactive function Settings menu -> Set background render. This sets the point where background rendering starts up to the position of the insertion point. If any video exists, a red bar appears in the time ruler showing what has been background rendered.

It is often useful to insert an effect or a transition and then select Settings menu -> Set background render right before the effect to preview it in real time and full framerates.

• Frames per background rendering job
  This only works if a renderfarm is being used; otherwise, background rendering creates a single job for the entire timeline. The number of frames specified here is scaled to the relative CPU speed of rendering nodes and used in a single renderfarm job. The optimum number is 10 - 30 since network bandwidth is used to initialize each job.
• Frames to preroll background
  This is the number of frames to render ahead of each background rendering job. Background rendering is degraded when preroll is used since the jobs are small. When using background rendering, this number is ideally 0. Some effects may require 3 frames of preroll.
• Output for background rendering
  Background rendering generates a sequence of image files in a certain directory. This parameter determines the filename prefix of the image files. It should be on a fast disk, accessible to every node in the renderfarm by the same path. Since hundreds of thousands of image files are usually created, ls commands will not work in the background rendering directory. The browse button for this option normally will not work either, but the configuration button for this option works.
• File format
  The file format for background rendering has to be a sequence of images. The format of the image sequences determines the quality and speed of playback. JPEG is good most of the time.

3.6.2 Renderfarm

To use the renderfarm, set these options. Ignore them for a standalone system

• Use render farm for rendering
  When selected, all the file->render operations use the renderfarm.
• Nodes
  Displays all the nodes on the renderfarm and shows which ones are active. Nodes are added by entering the host name of the node, verifying the value of port and selecting add node. If you have hundreds of nodes, experienced users may be better off editing the `~/.bcast/.Cinelerra_rc' file rather than using configuration dialog. Remember that `.Cinelerra_rc' is overwritten whenever a copy of Cinelerra exits.
  Once nodes are created, select the ON column to activate and deactivate nodes. Nodes may be edited by highlighting a row and hitting apply changes.
• Hostname
  Edit the hostname of an existing node or enter the hostname of a new node here.
• Port
  Edit the port number of an existing node or enter the port number of a new node here.
• Apply changes
  When editing an existing node, select this to commit the changes to hostname and port. The changes will not be committed if you do not click this button.
• Add node
  Create a new node with the hostname and port settings.
• Delete node
  Deletes whatever node is highlighted in the nodes list.
• Sort nodes
  Sorts the nodes list based on the hostname.
• Reset rates
  This sets the framerate for all the nodes to 0. Frame rates are used to scale job sizes based on CPU speed of the node. Frame rates are calculated only when renderfarm is enabled.
• Total jobs to create
  Determines the number of jobs to dispatch to the renderfarm. The more jobs you create, the more finely balanced the renderfarm becomes.
  You can determine the total jobs to create by multiplying the number of nodes including the master node by some number. Multiply them by 1 to have one job dispatched for every node. Multiply them by 3 to have 3 jobs dispatched for every node. If you have 10 slave nodes and one master node, specify 33 to have a well balanced renderfarm.

3.7 Interface

These parameters affect purely how the user interface works.

• Time format
  Various representations of time are given. Select the most convenient one. The time representation can also be changed by CTRL clicking on the timebar.
• Index files go here
  Back in the days when 4 MB/sec was extremely fast for a hard drive, index files were introduced to speed up drawing the audio tracks. This option determines where index files are placed on the hard drive.
• Size of index file
  This determines the size of an index file. Larger index sizes allow smaller files to be drawn faster, while slowing down the drawing of large files. Smaller index sizes allow large files to be drawn faster, while slowing down small files.
• Number of index files to keep
  To keep the index directory from becoming unruly, old index files are deleted. This determines the maximum number of index files to keep in the directory.
• Delete existing indexes
  When you change the index size or you want to clean out excess index files, this deletes all the index files.
• Use thumbnails
  The Resource Window displays thumbnails of assets by default. Drawing asset thumbnails can take a while. This option disables thumbnail drawing.
• Dragging edit boundaries does what
  Cinelerra not only allows you to perform editing by dragging edit boundaries, but also defines three separate operations that occur when you drag an edit boundary. Here you can select the behavior of each mouse button. The usage of each editing mode is described in the editing chapter. See section Trimming.
• Min dB for meter
  Some sound sources have a lower noise threshold than others. Everything below the noise threshold is meaningless. This option sets the meters to clip below a certain level. Consumer soundcards usually bottom out at -65. Professional soundcards bottom out at -90. See section Sound level meters window.
• Max dB for meter
  This sets the maximum sound level represented by the sound meters. No matter what this value is, no soundcard can play sound over 0 dB. This value is presented merely to show how far over the limit a sound wave is. See section Sound level meters window.
• Theme
  Cinelerra supports variable themes. Select one here and restart Cinelerra to see it.

3.8 About window

This section gives you information about the copyright, the time of the current build, the lack of a warranty, and the versions of some of the libraries. Be sure to agree to the terms of the lack of the warranty.

4. Project attributes

4.1 Set format window

When you play media files in Cinelerra, the media files have a certain number of tracks, a certain frame size, a certain sample size, and so on and so forth. No matter what attributes the media file has, it is played back according to the project attributes. So, if an audio file's sample rate is different than the project attributes, it is resampled. In like fashion, if a video file's frame size is different than the project attributes, the video is composited on a black frame, either cropped or bordered with black.

The project attributes are adjusted in Settings->Set Format and to a lesser extent in File->New. When you adjust project settings in File->New, a new, empty timeline is created. Every timeline created from this point on uses the same settings. When you adjust settings in Settings->Format, media on the timeline is left unchanged. Also, every timeline created from this point uses the same settings.

Set Format window

In addition to the traditional settings for sample rate, frame rate, frame size, Cinelerra uses some unusual settings like channel positions, color model, and aspect ratio.

4.2 Presets

Select an option from this menu to have all the project settings set to one of the known standards.

4.3 Audio attributes

• Tracks
  

  Sets the number of audio tracks for the new project. Tracks can be added or deleted later, but options are provided here for convenience.

• Samplerate
  Sets the samplerate of the audio. The project samplerate does not have to be the same as the media sample rate that you load. Media is resampled to match the project sample rate.
• Channels
  Sets the number of audio channels for the new project. The number of audio channels does not have to be the same as the number of tracks.
• Channels positions
  The currently enabled audio channels and their positions in the audio panning boxes in the track patchbay are displayed in the channel position widget.

The channel position widget

The channels are numbered. When rendered, the output from channel 1 is rendered to the first output track in the file or the first soundcard channel of the soundcard. Later channels are rendered to output tracks numbered consecutively.

The audio channel positions correspond to where in the panning widgets each of the audio outputs is located. The closer the panning position is to one of the audio outputs, the more signal that speaker gets. Click on a speaker icon and drag to change the audio channel location.

The speakers can be in any orientation. A different speaker arrangement is stored for every number of audio channels since normally you do not want the same speaker arrangement for different numbers of channels.

Channel positions is the only setting that does not affect the output necessarily. It is merely a convenience, so that when more than two channels are used, the pan controls on the timeline can distinguish between them. It has nothing to do with the actual arrangement of speakers.

Different channels can be positioned very close together to make them have the same output.

See section Panning audio tracks.

4.4 Video attributes

• Tracks
  Sets the number of video tracks the new project is assigned. Tracks can be added or deleted later, but options are provided here for convenience.
• Framerate
  Sets the framerate of the video. The project framerate does not have to be the same as an individual media file frame rate that you load. Media is reframed to match the project framerate.
• Canvas size
  Sets the size of the video output. In addition, each track also has its own frame size. Initially, the New Project dialog creates video tracks whose size match the video output. The video track sizes can be changed later without changing the video output. See section The track popup menu.
• Aspect ratio
  Sets the aspect ratio. The aspect ratio is applied to the video output. The aspect ratio can be different than the ratio that results from the formula: h / v (the number of horizontal pixels divided into the number of vertical pixels). If the aspect ratio differs from the results of the formula above, your output will be in non-square pixels.
• Auto aspect ratio
  If this option is checked, the New Project dialog always recalculates the Aspect ratio setting based upon the given Canvas size. This ensures pixels are always square.
• Color model
  The project will be stored in the color model video intermediates selected in the dropdown.
  Color model is very important for video playback because video has the disadvantage of being very slow. Although it is not noticeable, audio intermediates contain much more information than the audio on disk and the audio which is played. Audio always uses the highest bandwidth intermediate because it is fast.
  Video intermediates must use the least amount of data for the required quality because it is slow, but video intermediates still use a higher bandwidth color model than video which is stored and video which is played. This allows more processing to be done with less destruction of the original data.
  The video is stored on disk in one colormodel, usually a YUV derivative. When played back, Cinelerra decompresses it from the file format directly into the format of the output device. If effects are processed, Cinelerra decompresses the video into an intermediate colormodel first and then converts it to the format of the output device. The selection of an intermediate colormodel determines how fast and accurate the effects are.
  Cinelerra colormodels are described using a certain packing order of components and a certain number of bits for each component. The packing order is printed on the left and the bit allocation is printed on the right.
  • RGB-888
    This allocates 8 bits for the R, G, and B channels and no alpha. This is normally used for uncompressed media with low dynamic range.
  • RGBA-8888
    This allocates an alpha channel to the 8 bit RGB colormodel. It is used for overlaying multiple tracks.
  • YUV-888
    This allocates 8 bits for Y, U, and V. This is used for low dynamic range operations in which the media is compressed in the YUV color space. Most compressed media is in YUV and this derivate allows video to be processed fast with the least color degradation.
  • YUVA-8888
    This allocates an alpha channel to the 8 bit YUV colormodel for transparency.
  • RGB-Float
    This allocates a 32 bit float for the R, G, and B channels and no alpha. This is used for high dynamic range processing with no transparency.
  • RGBA-Float
    This adds a 32 bit float for alpha to RGB-Float. This is used for high dynamic range processing with transparency.

  In order to do effects which involve alpha channels, a colormodel with an alpha channel must be selected. These are RGBA8888, YUVA8888, and RGBA Float. The 4 channel colormodels are slower than 3 channel colormodels, with the slowest being RGBA Float. Some effects, like fade, work around the need for alpha channels while other effects, like chromakey, require an alpha channel to do anything, so it is a good idea to try the effect without alpha channels to see if it works before settling on an alpha channel and slowing it down.
  When using compressed footage, YUV colormodels are usually faster than RGB colormodels. They also destroy fewer colors than RGB colormodels. If footage stored as JPEG or MPEG is processed many times in RGB, the colors will fade whereas they will not fade if processed in YUV.
  Years of working with high dynamic range footage have shown floating point RGB to be the best format for high dynamic range. 16 bit integers were used in the past and were too lossy and slow for the amount of improvement.
  RGB float does not destroy information when used with YUV source footage and also supports brightness above 100%. Be aware that some effects, like Histogram, still clip above 100% when in floating point.

5. Loading and saving files

5.1 Supported file formats

Here are most of the supported file formats that can be loaded and redered to, with notes regarding their compression. You may be able to load other formats not described here.
The format of the file affects what Cinelerra does with it. Edit decision lists stored in XML save the project settings. Formats which contain media but no edit decisions just add data to the tracks. If your project sample rate is 48 kHz and you load a sound file with 96khz, you will still be playing it at 48 kHz. If you load an EDL file at 96khz and the current project sample rate is 48 kHz, you will change it to 96 kHz.
Some file formats are very slow to display on the timeline. These usually have video which is highly compressed. Drawing highly compressed video thumbnails on the timeline (picons) can be very slow. Disable picon drawing for these files with the draw media toggle in the patchbay to speed up operations.

Supported file formats that Cinelerra can import and export are currently:

5.1.1 Quicktime

Quicktime is not the standard for UNIX but we use it because it is well documented. All of the Quicktime movies on the internet are compressed. Cinelerra supports some compressed Quicktime movies. If Cinelerra crashes when loading a Quicktime movie, it is most likely because the format was not supported.
Quicktime is a container for two streams, a video stream and an audio stream. These streams are compressed using separate encoding schemes. The preferred encoding for Quicktime output is MPEG-4 Video and MPEG-4 Audio. This format is compatible in the commercial players for Windows, has good compression quality and good output quality. For better compression, use H-264 video. Unfortunately H-264 decoding is so slow it can not play very large frame sizes.
Cinelerra supports two non-standard codecs: Dual MPEG-4 video and Dual H.264 video. These will not play in anything but Cinelerra and XMovie. They are designed for movies where the frames have been divided into two fields, each field displayed sequentially. The dual codecs interleave two video streams to improve efficiency without requiring major changes to the player.

5.1.2 MPEG-4 audio

This is the same as Quicktime with MPEG-4 Audio as the audio codec.

5.1.3 Still images

5.1.3.1 Loading still images

You can load still images on video tracks just like you do for any video file.
Supported file formats are mainly: PNG, TIF, TGA or JPG, EXR, raw digital camera images.

When loaded on the timeline, by default the image takes up one frame in length. To view the image, zoom in time (down arrow) on the timeline so you can see the single frame.
To extend the length of the image, drag its boundaries just as you would do with regular video media.
You can drag the boundaries of a still image as much as you want. Images in Cinelerra have the ability to be dragged to an infinite length.
Cinelerra lets you define the initial duration of the loaded images. The parameter is set in the Images section of the Settings->Preferences->Recording window.

Unless your original material comes from a digital source (like a digital photo camera), the first thing you have to do before you can use it is to somehow capture the assets into a usable digital medium.
For old photos, paper maps, drawings or diagrams, you might have to scan them into a file format like PNG, TIF, TGA or JPG files by using a digital scanner. You might want to use Gimp to post-process the images, clean damaged areas or color correct the assets.
If your assets come from a digital source like a digital camera or a screen capture, be sure to capture the material using the best resolution possible. This will allow you to get the best quality output from your Cinelerra project.

Rendering a video to a single image causes the final image file to be overwritten for every timeline position. The rendered file is a single still image of the last frame of the video. No table of contents is created. See section Images sequence.

5.1.3.2 Still images size

Imported images always stay at their original size. Therefore, you may need to scale your pictures before importing them in Cinelerra.
For resizing your picture to fit the project size you can use Imagemagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php)
Example:
convert inputfile.jpg -resize 720x576 outputfile.jpg

You have to take into account the aspect ratio of your video. For example, PAL images aspect ratio is 4/3, but 720x576 is 5/4. For your imported images to be displayed correctly, you have to rescale their horizontal size:
new horizontal size=(5 / 4) / (4 / 3) x original horizontal size
For PAL videos, you have to multiply the horizontal size of the pictures you want to import by a factor of 0.9375.
Here is a small shell script which, when ran from a folder containing jpg images, resize those images and put the new images in a `resized' folder:
Note: Make sure you have installed Imagemagick which provides the functions 'identify' and 'convert' used in the script.

#/bin/sh
mkdir resized
for element in `ls . | grep -i '\.jpe*g$\'`;
do
    size=`identify ${element}`
    width=`echo ${size} | sed '+s+.*JPEG ++' | sed '+s+x.*++'`
    height=`echo ${size} | sed '+s+.*JPEG [0-9]*x++' | sed '+s+DirectClass.*++'`
    let new_width=${width}*9375/10000
    convert -resize "${new_width}x${height}!" -quality 100 ${element} resized/${element}
done

When the size of your image is different from the size of your project, but the ratio is the same, you might want to keep the image at its original size, to load it on a dedicated track and adjust the display of it with the camera zoom. See section The camera and projector.

5.1.3.3 Open EXR images

You may not know about Open EXR. This format stores floating point RGB images. It also supports a small amount of compression.

Projects which render to EXR should be in a floating point color model to take advantage of the benefits of EXR. See section Project attributes.

Several compression options are available for EXR.

• PIZ: Lossless wavelet compression. This is the best compression.
• ZIP: Lossless gzip algorithm.
• RLE: Lossless run length encoding. This is the fastest, but worst compression.
• PXR24: Lossy compression where the floating point numbers are converted to 24 bits and compressed with gzip.

Select Use Alpha if the project colormodel has an alpha channel and you want to retain it in the file. Otherwise the primary colors are multiplied by the alpha channel.

5.1.3.4 Raw digital camera images

RAW digital camera images are a special kind of image file that Cinelerra only imports.
Once they are on the timeline, these must be processed in a floating point color space. Raw images from Canon cameras are the only ones tested. They need to have the Gamma effect applied to correct gamma. Because raw images take a long time to interpolate, they are usually viewed first in a proxy file and then touched up.

First apply the Gamma effect to a track of raw images and set it to automatic with 0.6 gamma. Then render the timeline to a Quicktime JPEG file. Append the Quicktime JPEG file in a new track and disable playback of the old track. Now the gamma corrected copy of each raw image can be previewed relatively fast in the same timeline position as the original image.

5.1.4 Images sequence

An images sequence is a series of ordered still pictures (e.g. the frames of an animated scene). They can be loaded as multiple files.

An image sequence can be represented in Cinelerra also by an image list file, called also Table Of Contents file (TOC). A TOC is a text file with a specific format containing absolute paths to every frame in the sequence plus additional information like image resolution, fileformat and sequence framerate. To get better performance, the table of contents can be loaded as a single asset instead of the individual images. A TOC is not a media file but it behaves like a video clip.

Cinelerra creates TOC files by rendering to "Images sequence".
When rendering a video to an images sequence Cinelerra creates a different image file for every timeline position and generates a TOC for this images sequence. This is useful to split video into frames as single stills.
When rendering a series of stills to an images sequence Cinelerra generates a TOC for the images sequence but also creates a different image file for every still. The source files are copied and renamed. The TOC file contains the paths to the new files. This is useful only when you want to create a list and change the format of your source files.
For creating a TOC file without creating new image files you can use external list generators like IMG2LIST 0.1.5. (by Claudio "malefico" ANDAUR) or Seven Gnomes (by Peter SEMILETOV). See http://cvs.cinelerra.org/user-tips.php.

Cinelerra can create TOCs with the following formats: JPEG, PNG, EXR, TIFF, TGA.
Images lists can be edited manually.

5.1.5 AVI

Because AVI (Audio-Video Interleave) is so fragmented with varied audio and video codecs, you may not be able to play all AVI formatted files.

5.1.6 MPEG files containing video

MPEG files containing video can be loaded directly into Cinelerra. If the file is supported, a table of contents is built. If the file is unsupported, it usually crashes or shows very short tracks. Unfortunately, this method of loading MPEG files is not good enough if you intend to use the files in a renderfarm.
To use MPEG files in a renderfarm, you need to run mpeg3toc in order to generate a table of c