SMILE 0.8.8 doesn't work

Hi, I have SMILE 0.8.8 installed and all the other dependencies.My Ubuntu is 8.10, and SOX is 14.0.1. I just don't get it why I have those msgs on the screen and it is just slow and doesn't work at all:confused:. Can somebody help please? thanks a lot! The last black and white mess is when I click "play".

annietc said: Hi,

I have SMILE 0.8.8 installed and all the other dependencies.My Ubuntu is 8.10, and SOX is 14.0.1. I just don't get it why I have those msgs on the screen and it is just slow and doesn't work at all:confused:. Can somebody help please? thanks a lot! The last black and white mess is when I click "play".

Hi Annie,

1. Can you let me know the specs on your machine?

1. Do you move anything across or in front of the application while it's running. One of the things I found (and others - check the home page on KDE-Apps:

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/SMILE?content=83276)

is that with my other machine (not the home super-computer :)) if I move anything across the screen or minimise the application or even have another application of any kind covering the face of the application while creating and generating the slideshow, I get black boxes and other <insert/technical/name/for/black/boxes/etc> covering the output.

'fraid I can't be very helpful, but check out the home page above and maybe write to the guy.

For slide-shows you can also use Kino...I do. I also use Digikam, but this unfortunately is limited to one transition.

Another option is http://www.thugsatbay.com/tab/?q=software

the Zs4 has a great zooming and panning feature. I would recommend CLOSELY following the tutorials...it is very NOT intuitive, but has great output.

Hey 4ebees, great to see you here!

1 erh.. what kind of specs i need to tell ? Hmm...RAM is 512M,erh..what else? Frankly I didn't deal with those stuff before, like configuration I really don't know what I need to make it work. >.<

2 At the beginning I was running music, amule, webpages and stuff.. then I closed it all and only ran this but I still got those. Can Kino do slideshow? I tried that one but I didn't know where to begin. What about transition? and music ?

annietc said: Hey 4ebees,

great to see you here!

1 erh.. what kind of specs i need to tell ? Hmm...RAM is 512M,erh..what else? Frankly I didn't deal with those stuff before, like configuration I really don't know what I need to make it work. >.<

2 At the beginning I was running music, amule, webpages and stuff.. then I closed it all and only ran this but I still got those. Can Kino do slideshow? I tried that one but I didn't know where to begin. What about transition? and music ?

:)

My apologies for not getting back to you earlier.

I'm not getting e-mail about this post and so have only just noticed your post :((

Again, sorry.

I'll have a read through the details and see what I can find.

1. RAM is good :) 512 is a little underpowered for video creation/editing, but should suffice for simple editing work and slideshows. The low RAM just means it will be very slow.

What sort of CPU do you have in the machine?

I have a sneaky feeling that it requires a fair bit of RAM and a reasonable CPU to hold the application and composite the images.

Oh, the other thing is...I only do a few images at a time, i.e. up to three. I don't do a huge collection at once. I tend to create the video out of smaller pieces. Sooooooooo, how many images where you including in your slideshows?

1. Kino can do slideshows, music, etc. If you want to know how to use it for this, PM me and I can send you some info. I'm going to be putting together some video editing blogs for Kino etc, so I can include you in my e-mail if you wish (they'll be on cookingwithlinux.com).

Hey there, thanks a lot!No worries. I have actually used Window Movie Maker to finish my project as it has to be before Christmas. Though it's good to know how to do it in Linux so later I might finish things under Linux.

Here is my CPU Info in the pic.

I had about 30 images and an mp3 music.. if you count the black screens inserted between then the number of images are doubled.By the way if you're interested in the video here is it, so you can have an idea what I wanted to do and whether it could be successful done by my laptop under Linux. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad1_QlehWts

That'll be great if you send me a very simple and detailed tutorial on using Kino for Slideshow. I had it but just didn't know how to use it!

annietc said:

I had about 30 images and an mp3 music.. if you count the black screens inserted between then the number of images are doubled.By the way if you're interested in the video here is it, so you can have an idea what I wanted to do and whether it could be successful done by my laptop under Linux. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad1_QlehWts

That'll be great if you send me a very simple and detailed tutorial on using Kino for Slideshow. I had it but just didn't know how to use it!

Hi Annie, I'd say that your machine wouldn't be able to do that many images in SMILE!

It's rather a precious piece of software, but is brilliant when it does.

:)))

Kino...NO PROBLEMS.

I'll send you a short how to...

Ooops. Forgot to mention...love your video.

Thanks! Great that you like the video. ^_^

I will PM you my email.

annietc said: Thanks! Great that you like the video. ^_^

I will PM you my email.

Hi Annie,

I'm working on the site at the moment, but while you're waiting check out this:

http://www.yourmachines.org/tutorials/kino.html

It's quite good. I'm considerin writing to the guy with some ideas and maybe linking my site to his for the basics.

Regards,

Patrick

This is what I sent you 4ebees: "Sorry for sending a private message but it seems that on sundays the server doesn't cope with the overload and I couldn't post in the forum. I've got Win 2000 and ubuntu 8.10 and I'm trying to make a simple video with a still image and an audio track (like a one image 'slideshow' with audio). In Win2K there's NO program for that (the only one is Slide Show Movie Maker but it wouldn't import my WAV files). I understand Kino doesn't do it either (how to make a still image last 70 s ?). Blender VSE doesn't work (guess it's something with FFMpeg that doesn't work). I found that LiVES DOES it, but I'm unable to download it for ubuntu (I could have a look a the site but since then it doesn't connect..maybe later). It's for YouTube and I managed to do something with AV Karaoke Maker in Windows but it doesn't extend the output more than the duration of the sound track and actually cut a bit at the end (it's a speech, so must not be cut), but I would like to find a program for this. I also realize it's somewhat simple for a software, isn't it? Have you any help for me? Thank you very much." So I managed to download LiVES (attention: it's ubuntu package is still very problematic). I created an AVI in Blender without audio, imported to LiVES, trimmed a bit (the video generated had a margin in one of the sides), added the audio track (added silence to the beginning in Audacity) and made the clip. Besides being quite huge (I think it was mjpeg + mp3 output) it degraded the image (already low res in original). So I eventually added silence to the end of the track too in Audacity, went to Windows and made the clip in AV Karaoke Maker (result: dropped from circa 50M to 4M, with better quality).

AV Karaoke Maker outputs in AVI through DivX codec.

4ebees said: Hi Annie,

I'm working on the site at the moment, but while you're waiting check out this:

http://www.yourmachines.org/tutorials/kino.html

It's quite good. I'm considerin writing to the guy with some ideas and maybe linking my site to his for the basics.

Regards,

Patrick

Hi Patrick, ah that's very useful! I will check that out later when I have more time. ^_^ Annie

Hi ikisham,

I thought I would post the e-mail I sent back to you, just to help out anyone else who read the post.

*********************************

Hi Isisham,

EEEEEEEEEEEEK!

:)

That was an awfully long and difficult path you just took. Well done for persevering. I'm seriously impressed.

PM'ing me is fine. No probs.

Kino can do this easily.

Here's a quick 'How to'

Check out the images I've sent with this e-mail.

Open Kino and click on the "FX" tab on the right hand side of the window.

Your screen should now look like image 1.

Now, check out image 2.

Then click on the tap "Create" on the left hand side of the screen and below that tab select "From File".

Click on the file icon and select the still image you wish to use. Then select the number of frames you wish to use

Please note that at the bottom left of your screen there is an option to change 'Time' from 'Frames' to 'Seconds' etc. I generally use Frames, but you can change it whenever you wish.

So, choose the image file (as stated above) and then just above that you'll see (in image 2) you can choose the number of Frames or seconds etc you wish to make the still image last for. There are 25 frames per second (fps) in PAL (and 29 in NTSC, I think)

Make your selection and then hit 'Render' on the bottom right hand side. Done!

You can add audio by using the selections on the same page at the top right. Select the Tab 'Audio Filter' and off you go. You'd want 'Dub' to add a new sound.

Hope this helps.

Get back to me if you're still stuck.

Oh, I nearly forgot. To export, select the 'Export' icon Tab at the bottom right hand side of window. Then choose the place you want to export the video to (e.g. /home/<your/name>/Desktop/my_new_video) and the type of video format you wish to export to.

Let me know how you go.

Thank you very much 4ebees, I managed to do it..but it would be hard to realize it by myself (you know, it first slowly creates the vid in .dv format, then one has to export it and only then I could actually watch it..). Yes, that certainly will be useful for others since you're the first one that answered this question. Btw, I've found this pretty little software to create slideshows : http://jslideshow.sourceforge.net/ someone had posted it in another thread somewhere. Only it looked so simple and straightforward, both the program and how to install it but missed some points for newbies (I downloaded it and couldn't even start it since I don't know even where to create a folder for it, then while pretending to try to install - hehe - ffmpeg by hand it stuck in something also like creating proper directories...) But I was pretty curious since ffmpeg codec doesn't work for me in Blender (appears that by installing by hand that is cured) and also besides LiVES installation through the deb packages being yet notoriously bugged I think it's malfunction got something to do also with ffmpeg not working properly. I was kind of nesting the disposition to write the author for a solution but I think it'll wait until I really need it. Thanks again.

Just fyi, 4ebees. I didn't receive any email nor PM. Cheers.