I have some questions for anyone who has done video production on Linux. Portland Community Media is automating its facility this summer by abandoning tape playback in favor of using servers to play MPEG files. I need to put together a system that can take NTSC S-Video from a switcher and audio from an audio mixer, record them, perform some very simple editing tasks, and then convert the edited results to MPEG for burning onto a DVD-R (or possibly even just a CD-R). I don't need DVD authoring tools, as burned discs won't be played on consumer DVD players. My most important questions are detailed below.

Video Capture Device: Cards based on the BT878 seem to be a popular choice because that chip is well-supported. However, I have read some complaints about the quality of the digitized video. Do any of you have experiences with these cards, and if so, what is the video quality? I have found that some of these BT878 boards do not include an audio input and instead expect that audio capture will be handled by the computer's sound card. Can I go this route with the Linux video capture software that is currently available? Is it very tricky to synchronize the audio with the video?

Video Capture Software: What programs are available? I can deal with command-line tools (I'm no weenie :-) ).

Video Editing Software: What programs are available? My needs are very modest: I have to be able to do what was once called "assemble" editing, and I need some kind of character generation capability.

Hardware requirements: Can I use a computer with a CPU speed of 1 GHz or less? I have a bunch of older systems in the 500MHz - 1GHz range, and I would like to put one of them to good use.

I notice that AVerMedia has a beta Linux driver for the little USB HDTV tuner/Video capture dongle that I have, if you want to try it:

http://www.avermedia.com/avertv/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?Id=431&tab=APDriver

Linux isn't up my alley, but video editing is. If you don't already know, a slower computer will be most noticeable if you do a lot of rendering. Likewise, if there's a lot of edits in a "simple" editing program, it can get buggy and slow to a crawl. I've seen this happen with 1GHz.

But the biggest issue I have with trying to capture/edit/produce video on the cheap is the potential for dropped frames. Too much of a headache for me to deal with. It might not be an issue for your needs.

Is it very tricky to synchronize the audio with the video?

I've never had to deal with synching two different captured files like what you're talking about, however, I can say this -- quite a few submissions at film festivals are "rejected" because of mismatched audio/video.

http://www.videohelp.com
On the left, go to other, Forum, and go down the thread list. You will see a complete section on Linux with answers to your questions.

"Can I use a computer with a CPU speed of 1 GHz or less?"

Capture: You will have issues in any platform.

Simple Editing: Yes

Encoding/Compression: You will have issues in any platform.

CPU Speed, Bus speed and amount of ram are all critical when capturing and encoding. I've run into this issue in Win and Mac, and did a lot of reading back then when I did including Linux forums and the conclusions were all similar ... on the verge but not quite there. Newer software in any platform generally assumes current hardware. My advice, don't waste your time with anything less than 1.4 GHz Pentium4 or AMD equivalent. If you possibly can buy a new motherboard and 2+GHz. CPU, you will have a lot less issues getting up and running.