Black Data Processing Associates Detroit Chapter

Black Family Technology Awareness Week

February 26, 2012

Open Source Technology

Instructor Information

William E. Bowen CIAP MSCIS Security+ E-mail: wbowen05@yahoo.com Web developer and IT Specialist for the Federal Government. Adjunct Professor for the Computer Information Systems Program at

the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) Group Exercise Instructor for the UDM Fit Zone Member of the Black Data Processing Associates and TAC

committee member. Member of the Detroit Alumni Extension of the National Society of

Black Engineers. I am also the Co-Faculty Advisor for the UDM Chapter

Plan to start a PhD program in the near future.

Open Source

The idea of Open Source refers to the idea of taking something that was started or written by someone who is willing to share their knowledge and from there allow others to contribute to continue or improve their current work.

In terms of open source software one individual or group starts to write code and allow others to add their contributions to it.

The following presentation will explore some of these technologies that you can use in your day to day lives.

Open Source Office Software

One of the best free suites for office applications if LibreOffice.

This software is used for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and simple web pages.

It can be downloaded from: http://www.libreoffice.org/ Web Pages can also be made with Kompozer which

can be downloaded from: http://kompozer.net/

Open Source Media Players

VLC Media Player is a cross-platform multimedia player that can be used for DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various audio and video formats such as AVI, MPG, MPEG-2, MP3, MP4, WMV, OGG, H.264, DivX, etc.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ SongBird is an Open Source media library player for

both Windows and Mac that works with various MP3 players: http://getsongbird.com/

Nightingale is a fork of SongBird for Windows and Linux: http://getnightingale.com/all-versions.php

Open Source Media Players

Miro is an open internet TV application that is able to capture video channel and podcast feeds from different sources and allows users to view programs and podcasts when they are done downloading.

www.getmiro.com

Free Software Audio/Video on Windows

While MS Windows may not be free and in fact very expensive there are quite a few open source programs that can be usefulSome applications such as MediaCoder and VirtualDub are only available for Windows, but there are also other applications that are only available for certain versions of UNIX, certain versions of Linux, or OS X

Burn is an example of an OS X only application to burn CDs and DVDs

Kdenlive is a an example of a Linux only application for video editing

From my personal experience I found OpenShot in Linux to be the most beneficial video editing program.

Suggested Plug-ins for Video Editing

Before using the software mention in the following slides, please download and install the following:–LAME

Windows Version: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

Other Operating Systems: http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php

–XviDSource Code: http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.43.0.html

Mac and Windows Binaries: http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/

Video Conversion

The process of converting a video file from one format to another is known as encoding

–The faster the CPU the faster the encoding process

The amount of compression used and the compression algorithm used are also factors which determine the length of this process

MediaCoder

An open source audio/video batch transcoder for Windows It uses many different open source codecs and tools to make it

possible to convert video files into also any format that the user wants. http://www.mediacoderhq.com/

Currently it supports: MP3, Vorbis, AAC, WMA, RealAudio, WAV, Xvid, DivX 4/5, MPEG-2, AVI, CD, and DVD

To ensure compatibility I highly recommend using Xvid with AVI as the container and MP3 audio for PC and home entertainment center playback. While not the most file size and quality efficient, they provide high compatibility and quality that’s very close to DVD– This format also makes it quicker and easier to edit later in VirtualDub,

because you won’t need to wait for it to transcode

Capturing Video

In order to edit video you need to get it on your computer first.

Most newer digital camcorders save your videos on an SD card as an MPEG file.

From here you can simply copy the file to your computer.

However, there are times where you will want to edit and use video from an analog source, such as a VCR or game console.

Capturing Video

In Windows you can use VirtualDub which is a free open source program used to capture and make simple edits to video.

– It can be downloaded from: http://www.virtualdub.org/download.html

Linux users can use software like Kdenlive. If you have a newer digital camcorder most computers

will see the memory card as an external hard drive and you can simply copy the files to the hard drive you normally edit videos on.

VirtualDub

An open source application made for Windows to handle video capturing and recording, as well as linear processing– Linear processing involves selecting, arranging and modifying

sound and images from a recorded source. VirtualDub has many features and even copy, cut, paste capabilities to

make this process easier

– It also has good hardware support for most software based video capture cards and almost all sound cards that support audio in, as well as, numerous A/V codecs.

– It supports AVI files by default for input and only AVI for output

MediaCoder and VirtualDub Demostration

Convert prerecorded video from MPEG-2 to Xvid AVI using Mediacoder

Editing the AVI file in Virtual Dub

Audacity

• An open source audio editing program• You can edit different sound clips

• Copy, cut, paste features• Add effects

• Can be used to record any audio that your computer provides as output

• Also supports different audio formats such as .wav and .mp3

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Audacity

Demonstration of Audacity to record analog audio to a digital source

–Can be done with an audio cassette

–Recording and editing the start and end points

–Editing out hissing and background noise associated with analog recordings

Image Editing

One of the best free and open source programs to edit pictures with currently is GIMP.

It has almost all of the functionality of programs such as Photoshop and in some instances more with the use multiple plugins available.– Some of the plug-ins also make it possible to create animations

It's available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX. It can be downloaded from http://www.gimp.org/ Quick run through of editing photos in GIMP

Putting the Pictures and Sound Together

You can mix the pictures and audio files you create into slide shows and photo motion videos.

PhotoFilm Strip is an excellent program to handle it. It's a free open source application available for both Windows and

Linux. It can be downloaded from: http://www.photofilmstrip.org/4-0-

Download.html Quick run through of PhotoFilm Strip.

Preparing Videos for the Web

It is highly recommended to reduce larger files before placing them online.– For example if you create something into a full DVD compliant

MPEG-2 file compress and convert it to a smaller AVI or MP4 (MPEG-4) file that is small enough to place online, yet with a high enough bit rate to retain a decent quality.

– Likewise using the smaller MP4 file also makes it easier for users play on portable devices such as the PSP, iPhone/iPod/iPad, GP32, GP2X Caanoo, Android phones, etc.

Preparing Videos for the Web

Some sites even have web tools which can take videos you made and convert them into Flash for you regardless of what format the submitted files are in.

This is common on sites such as YouTube; Vimeo; BlipTV; etc.

– BlipTV even allows users to create podcasts versions for use with iTunes, Miro, and other Audio/Video RSS Feed software

DVD Authoring

I will now go over 2 open source DVD editing programs DVD Flick for Windows and DVD Styler for Windows and Linux.

DVD Flick

DVD Flick is a simple open source DVD authoring tool for Windows.

– It currently supports most container formats such as: AVI, MPG, MOV, WMV, FLV, ASF, and MP4

– It also supports most codecs including: XVid, DivX, etc

– Can create ISO files which can be burned by other programs after the encoding process is complete

http://www.dvdflick.net/

DVD Flick

While its easy to use with a drag and drop interface it does have a few disadvantages.– Its currently bare bones and does not give the user

the ability to add features or menus.– Its encoding algorithm seems to be slower than those

used in better known competitive commercial programs, because the process seems to take twice as long as Nero.

DVD Styler

A DVD authoring program used to process digital video files into a DVD format that can be played on mostly any stand alone DVD players and even PS2 and Xbox game consoles.

It includes all of the features mentioned with DVD Flick, but it supports less video formats for input.

DVD Styler

However, unlike DVD Flick it supports DVD Menus and DVD scripting for the menus to control navigation.

The menus can also be customized with text and buttons like most commercial DVD authoring programs, however it does not support motion menus.

It can be downloaded from: http://www.dvdstyler.de/ Walk through of DVD Styler.

Open Source Music

As briefly discussed earlier the term open source can be applied to various things even music.

In regards to open source music listeners can download and/or trade tracks from individuals who have given permission to freely alter and mash-up their existing tracks.

Open Source Music

Two good sites to check out are: Archive.org Open Source Audio

(http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio) OpSound (http://opsound.org/music)

Webdistortion.com has an article that talks about this in further detail:

(http://www.webdistortion.com/2009/02/21/11-awesome-open-source-music-sites-for-digital-creatives/)

Open Source in Other Areas

Information regarding open source movies can be found here: (https://soosck.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/20-open-source-

movies-edit-redistribute-free/)

Likewise the same rules of have to obtain someone else permission and the ability to alter a work are the same here as they are for music.

Finally one more fun note is that it even crosses over into fitness where communities share information on how they are able to achieve there fitness goals

One prime example of course, to a certain level of extreme, would be crossfit (http://www.crossfit.com/)

Questions?????

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

I have more information regarding OpenSource software and computer related how to videos on my Vimeo web page: http://vimeo.com/user1958537