Open source digital video manipulation and performance for Linux
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Overview

The VFX package contains various programs for manipulating digital video.

The main programs in the package are:

System Requirements

You need a reasonably modern PC running Linux. If you want to use vfx-performer you need an Nvidia graphics card.

vfx-compositor and vfx-viewer should run on anything, though they might be unusably slow.

For vfx-recorder you need a Firewire card and a DV source (usually this'll be a camcorder but the software shouldn't care).

vfx-performer

This program mixes together video clips in real time. It's intended to be broadly similar to commercial VJ packages such as VJamm or Arkaos.

vfx-performer plays back MPEG video streams which can be processed and blended together in various ways. Its output can be directed to the second head of a dual-head card for connection to a projector.

Video clips can be triggered from the keyboard or the mouse and their playback speed and direction can be altered. Several keyboard mappings can be loaded at once, and new video clips can be loaded while the output is running.

vfx-performer also supports live video input from a capture card (2.6 kernel required).

Despite the early stage of development, vfx-performer is reasonably stable and has seen 'real world' use at several gigs and parties.

This program requires a hardware accelerated OpenGL implementation. I know I'll get flamed for this but at the moment only Nvidia cards are supported, so you'll need a binary kernel driver to get this program to work. I hope to change this eventually!

vfx-compositor

A program for manipulating video in order to create interesting material for vfx-performer to play.

vfx-viewer

A simple video player that I wrote partly to test the underlying libraries and partly because xine etc. don't have speed and loop controls.

vfx-recorder

This program captures DV video from a digital camcorder or other Firewire device, with various useful features:

The user interface to vfx-recorder unfortunately hasn't been written yet.