[needs-packaging] LVE - Linux Video Editor

[Tree MendUs]

URL: http://lvempeg.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=97090

Description:

Linux Video Editor (lve)

LVE provides frame and GOP accurate editing of MPEG1/2 files. Video scenes are handled as thumbnails movable by drag and drop. Final videos can be build with or without re-encoding. Tools for shrinking and DVD authoring are also available.

Features ;
- frame and GOP accurate editing of MPEG1/2 video files. different mpeg formats are supported.
- lve can do hard cuts only, effecting transitions are not planned !
- The lve-GUI
- lve can load up to 128 different media-files with mixed formats like MPEG2,
  MPEG1 or different frame sizes (720x576, 352x288, ...) all together.
- The scenes are displayed as thumbnails.
- A realtime preview of the collected video in edit-list can be done at every
  time.
- On a running preview, scenes which contains the displayed video will be selected
  automatically ("yellow cursor" will follow the video).
 - The scene collection of the media-list can be saved as a media-list file
  and can be reloaded on a other session. same is possible for edit-list as
  edit-list files (projects).
 - some further tools allows to build the final video from source material
  without re-encoding (and using the edit-list). if working with GOP accurate
  cuts the result won´t have any distortions on cut points, whereas with
  frame accurate cut scenes there may be artifacts during the transition.
- DVD Authoring of processed videos will be explained in "DVD-Authoring.txt"
- The actual status will be autosaved in background, if lve is idle for more
  than 3 seconds. So after a restart of lve you can continue with your work in
  just a few seconds.
- sources are available for free (GPL license), but you should have some
  experiences with linux (and developing) to get lve to work.

Min PC requirements ;
500 MHz CPU with min. 128MB RAM, decoding with audio needs more speed !!!
  recommended up to 1 GHz CPU.

Developer:
"Gerhard Monzel"
ref http://linux.softpedia.com/developer/Gerhard-Monzel-16387.html

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
- see http://lvempeg.sourceforge.net/Readme and http://www.linuxsoft.cz/en/sw_detail.php?id_item=566

Notes:
get the DVD authoring tools as well.
Beta stage.

Also, can backports be made for other currently supported versions of ubuntu?

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

Not packaged, so too early to request a backport.

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

Information has bee transferred from Bug #260969 (later duplicate).

[Fabrice Coutadeur (fabricesp)]

This application has not been updated since 2005 (a least, in the link you send), and it seems that no support i given in the forum (no answer since 2006).

So is it worth adopting a package that won't have upstream maintenance?

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

The forum appears to be still running in 2008 at http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=336768

Developer contact email got from Freshmeat's listing is <email address hidden> (but this may be out of date).

[Fabrice Coutadeur (fabricesp)]

The forum is running, but no answer is given to problems . And also, a comment on the forum seems to confirm that it's an dead app: https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4758502

[Fabrice Coutadeur (fabricesp)]

unsuscribing backport until this app goes into ubuntu

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

An extract from the link https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4758502 includes the following;

"
There is one big advantage of LVE, though: it has a real preview, i.e. you can watch the video you are about to edit, including sound. ProjextX allows for browsing throught the movie, but offers no preview/play possibility and doesn't play sound either. Furthermore LVE outputs a simple MPEG file whereas in ProjectX you have to use mplex (http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net) or similar tools for multiplexing the edited video (.m2v) and audio (.mpa) files together.
"

No where on that page did it say that the project is "dead".

It is also dated as (2008-02-04) ;

"RE: (k)ubuntu 7.10 Install
By: Jürgen Lange (lamprete) - 2008-02-04 12:38"

so the link that has been exampled earlier (ie http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=336768)
shows there has been plenty of forum activity between then and well after that date.

For a "dead" project, it is quite popular.

(maybe it should be resurrected ;-)

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Tree MendUs - You completely ignored the first sentence from that extract you gave (I don't know if that was intentional or not):

"there doesn't seem to be any support / further development on LVE :-("

Whatever you say doesn't change the fact that this project is dead and unmaintained. Unless an Ubuntu contributor is willing to take on the role of upstream development and maintenance of this I don't see the point in packaging it, where it will just end up in the pile of other unmaintained cruft.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

And yes, the forums are defaintely active and alive. It's a shame that the only messages I could find were spam though. I couldn't find any from any users.

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

I did not ignore the first sentence - I emphasized the last (concluding) paragraph.

The first sentence says ;

"
there doesn't seem to be any support / further development on LVE :-(
"

this does not state that the project "Is dead", but merely speculates that it "seems" to not have any further support.
Also, the emoticon conveys how sad the person is that is making the speculation.

=====================

You are quite correct (and I agree) - there Is a lot of spam!
Time for a rinse out there.
Most of the recent topics have jibberish titles, and submitted by "nobody".
They contain multiple links to non-relevant (to say the least) sites.
Earlier spam postings used real words in their titles but soon changed to jibberish.
The most recent real postings that I found are at ;

(k)ubuntu 7.10 Install
By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody) - 2008-02-02 15:15
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1929383&forum_id=336768

and the most recent real response is at ;

Gnu video FX - HollywoodFx-like for linux
By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody) - 2007-12-05 11:47
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1885666&forum_id=336768
This was responded to on the 2008-02-11 01:54 by Jurgen Lange , as per the reference from Fabrice,
and there has been no comment on that speculation since it was made, nor other "real" submissions to the forum.
I agree that it Is looking quiet, but I have not found any formal statement from the developer saying the project has been stopped.

I am now going to do a search for recent information -
The developer is/was "Gerhard Monzel"
ref http://linux.softpedia.com/developer/Gerhard-Monzel-16387.html

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

To me, the sentence "there doesn't seem to be any support / further development on LVE" translates to "LVE is pretty much dead", and it doesn't really get much clearer than that.

The links to what seems like the only 2 non spam-bot threads on their forums don't really prove anything. The only response to the first thread was the same statement basically saying that LVE is unmaintained, and the second thread was just someone trying to advertise their own library (spam)

Ideally, packages in the Ubuntu repositories should be actively maintained upstream so that we benefit from bug fixes etc. While it may sometimes be acceptable to package an unmaintained project, these cases should be simple and mature projects that are going to be low-maintenance for the Ubuntu community. This will be neither, so I'm going to close this bug report for now. Feel free to reopen it if you can find someone to volunteer to maintain it and provide bug fixes etc.