This article is about Video-monitoring in the ardour3 Digital Audio Workstation.
Synchronous video playback has been available for use with JACK and thus Ardour since ~5 years. Even though it is being used in profession environments there was little to no integration into the Ardour GUI.
The goal of the “video-timeline patch” is to integrate an easily accessible video-track and video-monitor into ardour3 Digital Audio Workstation.
ardour1: xjadeo only ; CMT-version
ardour2: aicsd - first video-track using CMT-patches.
ardour3: icsd - full integration
ToDo:
–videotimeline to become default.. and use–novideotimeline to explicitly disable it.see the /tools/videotimline/README file.
future: ardour-NLE ?!
In order to decode the video, Ardour connects to an external video server. Video-monitoring is provided by [X]Jadeo and transcoding video is done with ffmpeg. The latter two are optional but recommended.
The external software is available for OSX and GNU/Linux.
icsd (>=alpha-11) and optionally ffmpeg, ffprobe and xjadeo (>= 0.4.12).localhost TCP-port 1554 (required for communication between ardour and the video-server).Ardour will launch the video-server, ffmpeg and [X]Jadeo for you.
ardour3 is not yet available as binary. You must compile it from source.
| GNU/Linux | OSX | Win32 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ardour3 w/vtl-patch | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| video-server: icsd | here1) | here2) | here |
| video-monitor: xjadeo | get it from your distributor | sourceforge | sourceforge |
| transcoder: ffmpeg | get it from your distributor | included in icsd 3) | ? maybe here? |
Until the patch gets merged upstream, build-instructions are as follows:
git clone git://rg42.org/ardour3 cd ardour3/ ./waf configure --videotimeline ./waf
..OR..
svn co http://subversion.ardour.org/svn/ardour2/branches/3.0 ardour3 cd ardour3/ curl "http://rg42.org/gitweb/?p=ardour3.git;a=commitdiff_plain;hp=master;h=videotl" | patch -p1 ./waf configure --videotimeline ./waf
you can either install ardour3 after building it, or launch it directly from the source-folder:
./gtk2_ardour/ardev
see the ardour build instructions for more information.
The video-server is a bit tricky to compile due to its dependencies (note that there's a static binary available - see above):
git clone git://rg42.org/sodankyla cd sodankyla autoreconf automake --add-missing ./configure make src/icsd
If you do not install icsd on your system using sudo make install or by copying the icsd binary into $PATH, Ardour will ask for its location.
Note: on OSX configure it with
CFLAGS="-fnested-functions" ./configure
and don't forget to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH to where the dependent libs can be found.
The source-code is available from http://xjadeo.sf.net and http://ffmpeg.org.
Please refer to the xjadeo manual and ffmpeg's build-instructions.
If you run the video-server on the same host as ardour, no further configuration is required. Just make sure there's no firewall on localhost port 1554 (NOTE: on OSX icsd fails to bind to localhost/127.0.0.1 only → you need to choose 0.0.0.0.)
When opening the first video, ardour3 will ask for the path of the video-server binary (unless it is found in $PATH) and also allows you to change the TCP port number.
Transcoding is only available if ffmpeg and ffprobe are found in $PATH (fallback on OSX: /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg_sodankyla - provided with icsd.pkg). The video-monitor likewise requires xjremote in $PATH or /Applications/Jadeo.app/Contents/MacOS/xjremote to be present. xjremote comes with xjadeo and Jadeo respectively.
The video-server can be run on a remote-machine with ardour connecting to it. In this case you need to start-up icsd on the server-machine and configure ardour to access using Menu→Edit→Preferences. You should have a fast network connection (>=100Mbit/s, low latency (switch is better than router) and preferably a dedicated network) between the machine running ardour and the video-server.
While not required for operation, it is handy to share the video-server's document-root filesystem with the machine running ardour. It is however necessary to make use of
Sharing can be done using any network-file-system (video-files reside on the server, not the ardour workstation) or using NAS. Alternatively a remote replica of the ardour-project-tree that only contains the video-files is an option. The local project folder only needs a copy of the video-file for displaying a video-monitor monitor.
The document root configured in ardour is removed from the local absolute-path to the selected file when making a request to the video-server.
…
run ./icsd –help
It is be pretty much self-explanatory.
OLD README file..
+++ INSTALLATION
When Ardour3 is configured with
./waf --videotimeline
it can display a (surprise) video-timeline. It looks like:
http://rg42.org/_media/wiki/a3vtl3.png
In order to decode the video, Ardour connects to an external video server,
which is currently in the making: git://rg42.org/sodankyla
A statically linked binary is available from
http://rg42.org/_media/oss/sodankyla/icsd-static-alpha11.tgz
and a prototype-test server PHP-script is described below.
Make sure you don't have a firewall on 'localhost:1554' (default IP/port for
'icsd'). You don't need to install or start 'icsd'. Ardour3 will ask where it
is located (unless it's in $PATH) and start it for you.
If xjadeo (http://xjadeo.sf.net/) is found in the PATH it can be launched
from within Ardour to provide a full-screen video monitor. The option is
presented when opening a video file for the timeline and is later available
from the 'View' Menu. (Note: it works with xjadeo > 0.4.0 but you need a
recent version of xjadeo >= 0.4.12 to get full session-save/restore, also
the non-JACK video-sync mode requires >= 0.4.12 otherwise the reaction-speed
is quite slow.)
The video-server can also be installed on a different machine. In this case
you need to start it yourself and configure its URL in Ardour's Preferences
If you want to use file-selection dialog and xjadeo integration, you should
export the remote-filesystem (eg via NFS ) to the machine where ardour runs on.
+++ SOURCE AND BUILD INSTRUCTIONS
until it is merged upstream, the build-instructions are as follows:
git clone git://rg42.org/ardour3
cd ardour3/
git checkout -b videotl origin/videotl
./waf configure --videotimeline
./waf
..OR..
svn co http://subversion.ardour.org/svn/ardour2/branches/3.0 ardour3
cd ardour3/
curl "http://rg42.org/gitweb/?p=ardour3.git;a=commitdiff_plain;hp=master;h=videotl" | patch -p1
./waf configure --videotimeline
./waf
start Ardour3:
cd gtk2_ardour/
./ardev
or `./wav install` it and launch it the usual way.
+++ USAGE
It is be pretty much self-explanatory.
Menu->Session->Open Video
Menu->View->Rulers->Video (or right-click the ruler/marker bar -> Video)
Menu->View->Video Monitor (xjadeo)
Menu->Session->Properties->Video (video-server settings)
Menu->Session->Video maintenance-> ... (manual video server interaction)
+++ PROTOTYPE VIDEO SERVER
There is a prototype PHP script can act as video-server in this folder.
Copy (or link) 'vseq.php' to your document-root (eg /var/www/ on GNU/Linux;
/Library/Webserver/Documents/ on OSX) so that it can be reached by
http://localhost/vseq.php
(this is currently the default URL, you can change it in the a3 preferences)
The script requires a recent version of 'ffmpeg' & 'ffprobe'. (ffmpeg.org)
and 'convert' (imagemagick.org). Paths to those executables can be set at
the top of the PHP script.
You can test with a web-browser, fi.
http://localhost/vseq.php?file=/tmp/tsmm-25.avi&mode=info
http://localhost/vseq.php?file=/tmp/tsmm-29.97df.avi&frame=10&format=png
where file=<absolute-path-to-a-video-file>
NOTE that this PHP script-solution is veeeeerrrryy slooooow! It does not
caches frames, and even opens the video-file twice for each decoded frame.
Furthermore the PHP/Web user who runs the script must be have read-access
to the video-file(s).
+++ DETAILS
The video-server understands the following URL request parameters:
file=<FILE-NAME> # needs to be readable by the PHP script.
frame=<frame-number>
w=<width in pixels> # default 80
h=<height in pixels> # default 60
format=<output-format> # default "rgb" ; possible: "png", "jp[e]g", "rgb[a]"
/vseq.php/info?..
# special mode which uses file=XXX and
# returns information about the file separated by a newline '\n'
#
# Protocol Version number (currently 1)
# FPS (float)
# duration (in frames)
# start-offset (in seconds)
# aspect-ratio
/vseq.php/status?..
# special mode which returns server status info.
For testing, files with the time-code rendered on each frame
eg. video-frame number 0 displays the text "Frame: 0" and "00:00:00:00"
in various formats/codecs are available from:
http://tux.gareus.org/torrents/tsmm_mpeg4-mov_10mins.torrent
http://tux.gareus.org/torrents/tsmm_mjpeg-avi_10mins.torrent
http://tux.gareus.org/torrents/tsmm_h264-avi_10mins.torrent
http://tux.gareus.org/torrents/tsmm_h264-mov_10mins.torrent
each torrent contains files with framerates
23.976, 24, 24.976, 25, 29.97df, 30, 59.94 and 60 fps.
The video-server already works but is changing rapidly and
somewhat tricky to compile due to dependencies:
- libjpeg, libpng, libav*/libswscale, libltcsmpte (http://ltcsmpte.sf.net/)
- optionally: libsqlite3, liblo, libjack, SDL, openGL, gavl/gmerlin
git clone git://rg42.org/sodankyla
cd sodankyla
autoreconf
automake --add-missing
./configure
make src/icsd
./src/icsd [-C 512] <docroot>
on OSX configure it with
CFLAGS="-fnested-functions" ./configure
and don't forget to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH :)
Use '/' as docroot or configure it in Ardour3: Edit->Preferences->Video
The server URL is 'http://localhost:1554/' and the docroot '/' (unless you
override these defaults with icsd command line args).
NOTE: Make sure to add the trailing slash for a folder
eg. use '/tmp/' - not '/tmp'
as document-root in both Ardour preferences and the setting for icsd.
+++ CONTACT
ardour-dev@lists.ardour.org
robin@gareus.org