Using Linux? You do have audio options!

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idragosani
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Using Linux? You do have audio options!

Post by idragosani »

I'm kinda new to Moho, but...

Despite the lack of audio support on the Linux versions of Moho (which is strange, considering the excellent multimedia support available for Linux now), you do still have a lot of options for adding audio to your animation.

If you export to Targa (which is a good idea, it's a high-quality true color format), you can use the utilities available as part of the Kino project to convert your sequence of images to raw video:

http://kino.schirmacher.de/

One of the projects available from this site is called smilutils, and it has tools for converting various types of images sequences into raw digital video which can then be imported into Kino. Kino is a non-linear digital video editor, and with it you can edit sequences of video clips, add effects, audio, etc. You can also export to various compressed video formats (like mpeg2) or export the raw video to AVI or Quicktime.

Another option is to use Cinelerra to edit your video and audio sequences. Cinelerra does require the video to be in Quicktime format, but you can do that with Kino, and Cinelerra offers a lot more options for editing and syncing with audio than Kino.

Cinelerra can be found at:

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Maybe sometime soon Moho will support audio directly on Linux -- libsndfile is an excellent option since it can read and write all of the major file formats. And there is also Quicktime4Linux...
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thatguy
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Cinelerra

Post by thatguy »

Actually Cinelerra has very good image sequence import.. you just have to edit up a config file that describes your sequence.

The best way to figure out the format of the Cinelerra image sequence is to take a video in cinelerra and have it render a image sequence - then find that sequences text file - open up in text editor and then put your moho sequence in it.. and then use that file to import into Cinelerra. Hope that makes sense..

I've done this successfully for a few projects. Just make sure you have the image size set correctly or Cinelerra crashes..
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idragosani
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Re: Cinelerra

Post by idragosani »

thatguy wrote:Actually Cinelerra has very good image sequence import.. you just have to edit up a config file that describes your sequence.

The best way to figure out the format of the Cinelerra image sequence is to take a video in cinelerra and have it render a image sequence - then find that sequences text file - open up in text editor and then put your moho sequence in it.. and then use that file to import into Cinelerra. Hope that makes sense..

I've done this successfully for a few projects. Just make sure you have the image size set correctly or Cinelerra crashes..
Yep, that's quite doable as well... never tried it myself, though. I've found it easier to use the tools I mentioend above (although it does requirea few more steps). If smilutils had a way to write quicktime files, it would be easy to pipe together several tools to go from Targa files to quicktime.

However, I think transcode and mjpeg tools also have quicktime support via their tools (libquicktime)
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jorgy
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Post by jorgy »

Thanks for starting out a great thread!

I'm new to most of this, and so having the sound *inside* of moho is really helpful to me, especially as it relates to syncing up audio and animation. It's not too hard to get the audio and video together after the fact - I have generated PNG with moho and then used mjpegtools to create mpeg files.

The other problem I have with moho on linux, is the ability to pre-render animations with an alpha channel. Even though there is the ability to export PNG images with an alpha, I'm not aware of any method to generate a video file with alpha that can then be imported back into moho as another layer.

Having these for linux would be killer!
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idragosani
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Post by idragosani »

jorgy wrote:Thanks for starting out a great thread!

I'm new to most of this, and so having the sound *inside* of moho is really helpful to me, especially as it relates to syncing up audio and animation. It's not too hard to get the audio and video together after the fact - I have generated PNG with moho and then used mjpegtools to create mpeg files.

The other problem I have with moho on linux, is the ability to pre-render animations with an alpha channel. Even though there is the ability to export PNG images with an alpha, I'm not aware of any method to generate a video file with alpha that can then be imported back into moho as another layer.

Having these for linux would be killer!
Moho only supports importing of Quicktime files? You'd have to take a look at what Cinelerra can do with sequences of images that have an alphachannel (see further up in the thread for details on how to get stuff into Cinelerra).
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jorgy
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Post by jorgy »

idragosani wrote:Moho only supports importing of Quicktime files? You'd have to take a look at what Cinelerra can do with sequences of images that have an alphachannel (see further up in the thread for details on how to get stuff into Cinelerra).
I'm sorry I wasn't quite clear. Moho for Windows (and Mac) will import quicktime, linux will not. This is a problem because of the way I have set up my workflow.

I draw and animate most of my works using the linux version. Then, on a windows XP system (running in VMware on the same hardware), I turn the moho file into a quicktime animation, with alpha channel. This is one piece of my movie, which I compost in moho. I break up my animation into "chunks" like this, and prerendering like this makes it much quicker. An example of this is a scene from my first animation, "Audrey the bow-legged chick."

http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1272

The "thought bubble" was a complete moho animation that I drew using the linux version, rendered with the windows version. I drew the rest of the animation, and then did the final render on windows, importing the previously generated though bubble section as a video layer.

So cinelerra can help me put it all together linearly, but for pre-rendering and then importing back into moho, only windows (or Mac) moho will work.

But I am interested in alternatives, so that I can avoid using qucktime and still be able to import into moho with an alpha channel.

Nice to have more linux users around!
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idragosani
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Post by idragosani »

jorgy wrote: But I am interested in alternatives, so that I can avoid using qucktime and still be able to import into moho with an alpha channel.

Nice to have more linux users around!
Hmmm... I guess if you want a 100% Linux workflow, using Cinelerra may be the only way to go, if the Linux version of Moho doesn't allow for importing of any kind of video file. I'm new to Moho so haven't worked out the details of this yet for my own projects, but I am striving for a 100% Linux workflow.
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