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Summary
The latest version of Kino fixes a number of bugs while improving the user interface and adding support for Quicktime DV files and dv1394.



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Audio Encoding
This release fixes a number of audio encoding issues, which also requires libdv version 0.99. Kino 0.6.3 will still use libdv 0.98, but libdv 0.99 is required to completely fix it. Movie projects with mixed audio formats work better now not only in FX. In addition, with mixed audio format projects, new resampling options in Export provides a more consistent stream to IEEE 1394 devices or DV output files.

Audio Crossfade Effect
Also, while speaking of audio, the FX/Audio/Transition/Switch has been changed to a Cross Fade with user-definable spline-based controls for the fade out of clip A and the fade in of clip B.

dv1394
This release adds support for dv1394. dv1394 is optional and is not the default for both capture and export. As a result, Preferences has changed quite a bit to accomodate this change. If you have previously had trouble exporting DV back to your camera because your camera did not accept the signal, then you should try dv1394. It reportedly works for nearly everyone where video1394 would not work. dv1394 is a new module in kernel 2.4.19 and later, or you can get it from Linux 1394 Subversion. A special new feature with dv1394 is a "Preview on external monitor" preferences display option. With this enabled, as you work in Edit or Trim, all video preview is also output using dv1394! Carefully, read the new dv1394 help page at http://www.linux1394.org/dv1394.html before attempting to use it.

Quicktime
The release also adds support for Quicktime DV that is compatible with Heroine Virtual's Broadcast 2000 or Cinelerra. This is native support meaning you can capture to it, edit it, and export it using Export/DV File. You must explicitly configure Kino for Quicktime using the --with-quicktime configure option.

Capture
A major bug affecting Capture and AV/C was located and fixed. Enabling AV/C would start a thread to poll for transport status and timecode. There was a bug in the timecode routine that can deadlock the thread. For some devices AV/C has not worked well. This was addressed partly with libavc1394 0.4.1 but Kino has made some improvements as well (including the above bugfix :-). One additional improvement, which seems to help, is the AV/C Poll Interval in preferences. The polling thread appears to be too intensive for some devices. The default is now 200ms, which is a fairly safe value, but you can try increasing it up to 999. On the other hand, my camera handles the lowest value of 10ms just fine. Also, now Kino waits for 3 failures to retrieve this information in a row before giving up and resetting the state of Kino's transport buttons.

Eye Candy
There is some nice new user interface features too. First, there is the More Info panel that expands to show detailed information about the file, video format, and audio format for the current frame. Second, in the scene strip on the left of the window, the current scene highlights. The previous two additions only work when timecode update is enabled, so if you are constrained on CPU power, you can leave all these things disabled for better performance although the overhead is very slight on and, for example, an AMD 800MHz shows no penalty. Third, there is a newly designed scrub bar and trim control. Finally, a convenient command reference window is available under the Help menu or by pressing Ctrl+F1.

MPEG Export
A cleanup option is added to Export/MPEG that is enabled by default. Disable the option to prevent the exporter from deleting temporary files in case mplex fails. Also, there is a bugfix to properly split into separate mpeg files for each scene--this option does not use mplex splitting, so this works very good for creating multiple chapter DVDs with dvdauthor.

Jog/Shuttle Controller
If you are a USB Jog/Shuttle user, then we now use the HID driver and not custom modules. We do not know if this works OK with the Sony controller. If you use the Sony controller, let us know. It it still easy to compile Kino for use with the custom modules. However, the HID driver works good with the Contour ShuttlePRO, loads nicely with hotplug, making this a more simple ready-to-use option for users.Using a shuttle controller in conjunction with the new Preview on External Monitor feature is very nice! Note that keymappings have changed some with the move to the HID driver; however, key mappings are now configurable in Preferences. One can press the key (combinations too!) on the controller with the dialog open to select it.

FFMPEG Libavcodec
If you are trying to use Kino on a PowerPC, you can try to enable FFMPEG libavcodec using the --with-avcodec options. The libavcodec DV decoder adds accelleration for PowerPC whereas libdv does not. See configure --help or the README for more information. We will not be embedding any libavcodec source code at this time to avoid any legal ramifications. Therefore, this option may be out of sync with the latest libavcodec API from time-to-time.






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