--- layout: default title: Video Timeline Setup ---

No configuration is required if you intend to run everything on a single machine, and if you acquired Ardour from http://www.ardour.org, everything is pre-configured and included with the download/install.

Single Machine

If you compile Ardour from source, or have installed it from a 3rd party repository, additional tools will need to be installed manually.

There are three separate standalone tools which are used by Ardour to provide video features.

Ardour requires xjadeo ≥ version 0.6.4, harvid ≥ version 0.7.0 and ffmpeg = 1.2.

The ardour-dev team is in control of the first two applications. ffmpeg can be a bit of a problem. To avoid conflicts with distribution packages, ardour looks for ffmpeg_harvid and ffprobe_harvid.

All four applications need to be found in $PATH (e.g. $HOME/bin or /usr/local/bin). For convenience the binary releases of harvid include ffmpeg_harvid and ffprobe_harvid, but if your distribution provides suitable ffmpeg commands you can also just create a symbolic link from ffmpeg → ffmpeg_harvid and ffprobe → ffprobe_harvid.

Binary releases are available from ardour.org as well as an installer script: install_video_tools.sh.

The easiest way to install the video-utilities is by running the following line in a terminal:

sh -c "$(curl -s -L http://git.io/tVUCkw)"

Studio Setup

Please read the info in the previous section to familiarize yourself with the tools involved first. Setting up a proper A/V post-production studio can be a complicated task. As much as we streamline and simply the single machine setup, the studio-setup is focused on modularity.

TODO

Ideally the machines have a common shared folder (NFS or similar). Ardour's import (audio-extract) and export (mux) functionality depends on having access to the video file. Also ardour video-import transcodes the file into a suitable proxy-format that allows reliable seeking to any frame…