Linux Movie Editing Tools

on opensource

Background

On April 22nd, 2015, I had the privilege of giving a presentation on “Adding Spark to Your Hadoop” to the Baltimore Hadoop User Meetup Group at the wonderful AOL spaces on McDonnell Street at Brewers Hill.

We captured the presentation on video but it was impossible to read the slides or follow the demo. So I needed to do some video work to splice in the slides and smaller desktop-captured demos. The result is uploaded to YouTube here.

Open source Tools Used

Once again the open source community made this project relatively easy for someone who had no background in video editing. After some internet searching I selected the following tools:

  1. OpenShot Video Editor - create and export video
  2. Poppler-utils pdftoppm - export PDF slides to PNGs
  3. Kazam Screencaster - record desktop demo
  4. Shutter Screenshot Tool - capture screen shots

Exporting PDF slides to PNG

At first, I used Shutter to take screenshots of each slide but realized quickly that some automation was needed. This AskUbuntu answer provided the solution:

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils
pdftoppm -rx 300 -ry 300 -png presentation.pdf prefix

OpenShot

  1. Added the original mpeg recording to Project files/video
  2. Created a title (this became Track 1)
  3. Added the mpeg (Track 2) right after the title
  4. Import all slides as PNGs (Image - right-click - Import Files)
  5. As relevant slides come up, use “Add marker” to mark the start
  6. Add PNG slides and desktop movies at their markers
  7. Use audio from the mpeg recording

Once done:

  1. File - Export Video - Profile Web
  2. Target: YouTube-HD
  3. Video Profile: HD 720p 25fps
  4. Quality High

YouTube

Until verified, YouTube limits a user to 15 minute video length. After uploading the long video there was a link to verify identity. After upload the video was available on YouTube here.