Cinelerra for Grandma
Basic HOWTOs for very beginners
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Pre-requisites
 
Installation
Compilation
 
Cinelerra in 30'
 
Preparing media
Adjusting settings
 
Loading media
First editing
Second editing
Titles
Transitions
Effects
Compositing
Colour correction
Rendering
 
Making animations
Making a DVD
Subtitles
 
Troubleshooting
Glossary
Table of Contents
Italian Translation

CinelerraHV and CinelerraCV are not included in the software list normally available in Ubuntu because of license issues.

CinelerraHV is availble as Ubuntu package or source code at the original website.

CinelerraCV can be easily installed following the procedures described here.

How to install a CinelerraCV precompiled package

Using the Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Thanks to the good work of Paolo Rampino (akirad) installing Cinelerra on Ubuntu is now extremely easy. You just need an internet connection.

  • Double click on the following link:

http://akirad.cinelerra.org/pool/addakirad.deb

  • A dialog will open saying: Opening addakirad.deb. What should Firefox do with this file?

  • Make sure the default options are checked. They are: Open with → GDebi Package Installer (default)

  • Click on OK. It will open the Package Installer window, describing the akirad.deb package (a quick tool for enabling the akirad repository)

  • Click on Install

  • Open the Synaptic Package Manager from the System→Administration menu.

  • Click on the Reload button to update the information on the repositories.

  • Click on the Search button and enter cinelerra in the text field. The search will give plenty of results. Your package is called cinelerracv.

  • Click on the corresponding checkbox to mark it for installation. Click on Apply to effectively install the package. During installation the akirad.deb package will greet you. It’s a harmless request to support the akirad project, run by volunteers. You might consider a small donation.

  • Cinelerra is now available in the Applications → Sound & Video menu.

You might be interested in installing also the cinelerra-swtc package that contains extra Shape Wipe Transitions. (see the Transitions page.

Note:
If you are are the administrator of your system you might see two icons in the menu: Cinelerra for normal use and Cinelerra hi-pr (only admin) for running the application as root. To prevent unwanted troubles it is recommended you use only Cinelerra unless you have very good reasons to run her as root.

Using the Command Line (CL)

Cinelerra can be installed using the terminal.

1. Add the akirad repository to your sources list and autenticate it

Copy and paste the following looooong command, depending on your release:

For Karmic 9.10:

echo deb http://akirad.cinelerra.org akirad-karmic main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/akirad.list && wget -q http://akirad.cinelerra.org/dists/akirad.key -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

For Jaunty 9.04:

echo deb http://akirad.cinelerra.org akirad-jaunty main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/akirad.list && wget -q http://akirad.cinelerra.org/dists/akirad.key -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

For Intrepid 8.10:

echo deb http://akirad.cinelerra.org akirad-intrepid main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/akirad.list && wget -q http://akirad.cinelerra.org/dists/akirad.key -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

For Hardy 8.04:

sudo wget http://akirad.cinelerra.org/dists/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/akirad.list && wget -q http://akirad.cinelerra.org/dists/akirad.key -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Press ENTER to make the command run.

For older releases, refer to the Manual.

2. Choose the right package

In the akirad repository there are several packages available for installation. See the CinelerraCV website.

Grandmothers are known to use the package called just cinelerracv.

3. Install Cinelerra

Install Cinelerra with the following command:

sudo apt-get install cinelerracv

Cinelerra is now available in the Applications → Sound & Video menu.

How to open and close Cinelerra

To open (or start or launch or run) a program you can use either the GUI (menu) or the CL in the terminal. Using the GUI is quicker but using the terminal you get helpful error messages everytime something goes wrong.

Using the Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Go to Applications → Sound & Video and click on Cinelerra. Don’t worry if Cinelerra opens with an error message.

Too save a couple of mouse clicks you can move the Cinelerra button to the panel of the menus. To do that, go to Applications → Sound & Video and right click on Cinelerra. Select Add this launcher to panel.

To close the program click on the cross at the top right of the Program window. If the Program window is minimized, right click on the Program icon in the bar where Ubuntu keeps all the minimized windows, that is by default at the bottom of the screen. Select Close from the popup menu.

Using the Command Line (CL)

To open a terminal click on Applications → Accessories → Terminal. Then type

cinelerracv

and press ENTER.

Don’t worry if Cinelerra opens with an error message.

To close the program use the command for stopping terminal operations, that is with the focus on the terminal, hold down the CTRL key and press c.

How to approach the Cinelerra error message you get at start up

When you start Cinelerra you get an error message saying:

  The following errors occurred:
void MWindow::init_shm0: WARNING:/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax is 0x2000000, which is too low.
Before running Cinelerra do the following as root:
echo "0x7ffffff">/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax

Actually this message is not an error, but rather a reminder.
shmmax is a configurable kernel parameter that defines the system-wide maximum allowable shared memory. Shared Memory (shm) is an efficeint means of passing data between programs. One program will create a memory portion which other processes can access. This error message asks you to increase the shared memory allocated by default on the Linux kernel.

What to do?

Option 1:

Ignore this message. You won’t get in any trouble because of this.

Option 2:

Do what you are told. That is open a terminal and type:

sudo echo "0x7ffffff">/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax

This command will increase the shared memory during your work session.

Option 3:

Open a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

This command will open a configuration file you can edit as root in Gedit Text Editor.
Copy and paste the following line at the bottom of that file.

kernel/shmmax=0x7fffffff

Save the change.

In the terminal, type:

sudo sysctl -p

This way you have increased the shared memory permanently.

How to run Cinelerra in a non-English language

Cinelerra was born in American English. Her interface has been translated in many languages. Here is the list of the available languages and the relative language code:

  • Basque (eu_ES)

  • Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)

  • English (en_EN)

  • French (fr_FR)

  • German (de_DE)

  • Italian (it_IT)

  • Russian (ru_RU)

  • Slovenian (sl_SI)

  • Spanish (es_ES)

If you are lucky or if you installed the package made by Akirad, Cinelerra will open in the language you set as default for your computer.

In the likely event of bad luck, try troubleshooting following the Manual.

How to run Cinelerra in a non-default language

To run Cinelerra on a language different from the one selected on your system, you must temporarily change your locale settings.

Using the Command Line (CL)

Here is the terminal command for running Cinelerra in Italian on non Italian systems:

LANGUAGE="it_IT:it" LANG="it_IT.utf8" cinelerra

Adjuste it according to your language.

For language troubleshooting see the Manual.

Using the Graphical User Interface (GUI)

To open Cinelerra in another language using the GUI, you have to change some menu settings. Go to Applications → Sound & Video and right click on Cinelerra. Select Add this launcher to panel. You should now have a Cinelerra icon on the same panel of the menus. Richt click on the just created icon and select Properties from the menu options. In the Command field replace

cinelerra

with

LANGUAGE="it_IT:it" LANG="it_IT.utf8" cinelerra

Close the Properties box and click on the Cinelerra icon on the panel. Cinelerra will open in Italian.

For other languages, replace the language codes.

For language troubleshooting see the Manual.

How to get oriented in the 4 windows Interface

Screenshot

It is considered normal to feel uncomfortable when looking at Cinelerra interface for the first time.
She looks quite unwelcoming, I know. In fact she is much easier than it looks.

Screenshot-Glossary .

The interface is made of 4 windows:

  • The Program window, that is the main window. It contains your project.

  • The Compositor window, that displays what is in the Program window

  • The Resources window that contains all the loaded media, as well as Effects and Transitions

  • The Viewer window that displays the media of the Resources window.

Screenshot-Glossary

To use this tutorial you need to know a few terms to understand how to move in the Program window.

  • Timeline: contains video and audio tracks. Video tracks represent your video with thumbnails (called picons), that are samples of what is located at that particular instant on the timeline. In the example I screenshot for you there are two edits, the first representing a green meadow, the second representing a paragliding landing. Note the different picons representing the different positions of the paragliding in time. Audio tracks reprensent the audio part of your video with green waveforms. Silence is represented as a flat thin line.

  • Patchbay: contains the controls to enable features specific to each track.

  • Menu Bar: contains the menus to control most of the behaviour of Cinelerra

  • Control bar: contains transport controls for playback and buttons to make menu operations quicker.

  • Timebar: represents the time passing. It 's like a ruler, marking hours, minutes, seconds, …

  • Zoom panel: contains the zooms to control the size of some parameters of the timeline.

  • Status Bar: contains informations about the corrent operation or the last operation made.

  • Insertion Point: the flasing vertical white line. It is a cursor, a movable mark of the position in time.

How to remove cinelerra from your system

Packages

You can remove a package using Synaptic. Similary to what you did for installation you can mark the package for Removal or for Complete removal (to remove ~/.bcast too).

Compiled version

To remove the compiled version you have to delete all the executable files that you built. You can use the following commands:

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo rm -I cinelerra mpeg3cat mpeg3dump mpeg3toc mplexlo

Always use the rm command with care.

Troubleshooting

For problems running Cinelerra see the Troubleshooting page.