No liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and other
content at your own risk. As this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors and inaccuracies, that may of course be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely, the authors do not take any responsibility for that.
All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in
this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.
You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.
The following peope have been helpful in getting this HOWTO done:
This document is targeted at the Linux user interested in learning a bit about veejay and trying it out.
Version 1.0
You will find the most recent version of this document at veejay.sourceforge.net/veejay-HOWTO.html.
If you make a translation of this document into another langauge, let us know and we'll include a reference to it here.
We rely on you, the reader, to make this HOWTO usefull. If you have any suggestions, corrections , or comments , please
send them to us ( veejay-users@lists.sourceforge.net ), and we will try to incorporate
them in the next revision. Please add 'HOWTO veejay' to the Subject-line of the mail.
Before sending bug reports or questions, please read all of the information in this HOWTO, and send detailed information about the problem.
If you publish this document on a CD-ROM or in hardcopy form, a complimentary copy would be appreciated. Mail us for our postal address.
Also consider making a donation to the Veejay Project to help support free video editing software in the future.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts , and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of this license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Veejay is a video tracker/editing and live performance tool for Linux. It provides a graphical interface for video editing and mixing as well as a keyboard interface for direct user interaction (in a performance environment).
Veejay is a small collection of utilities build arround veejay, it has an optional graphical interface gveejay which provides (remote) non linear editing. Veejay provides sample based editing and will provide tracker style compositing of video in the future. Sample based editing means dividing your video material into short loops and then to process them individually by setting up properties or adding effects/transitions on the sample's effect chain. All these actions can be applied in realtime, showing immediate effect on your video. It provides mechanisms to mix multiple video sources in realtime.
Veejay requires at least a linux kernel 2.4.x or later, a lot of diskspace and a fast CPU.
Depending on the speed of your machine, your milage may vary. See the list below for
a few systems veejay was reported to work on:
Before you install Veejay, make sure you have the following dependencies installed:
After downloading the source package , decompress and untar the file by typing:
$ tar -zxvf veejay-0.5.x.tar.gzChange to the directory containing veejay's source's:
$ cd veejay-0.5.xFirst, you have to compile FFmpeg's avcodec which is included in the package;
$ cd ffmpeg $ ./configure $ makeFFmpeg is included in the source distribution to avoid version problems.
$ ./configureOn completion it will summarize the results of the ./configure script
veejay 0.4.6 build configuration :
- X86 Optimizations:
- MMX/3DNow!/SSE enabled : true
- Using fast memcpy : true
- cmov support enabled : true
***********************************************************************
* NOTE: *
* The resultant binaries will ***NOT*** run on a K6 or Pentium CPU *
***********************************************************************
- video4linux recording/playback : true
- software MJPEG playback : true
- XML C library for Gnome libxml2 : true
- movtar playback/recording : false
- Quicktime playback/recording : false
- DirectFB support : true (>= v0.9.17)
- libDV (digital video) support : true (>= v0.9.5)
- glibc support for >2GB files : true
If the lists includes everything you need type
$ makeFollowed by
# make install
After downloading the source package 'gveejay' , decompress and untar the file by typing:
$ tar -zxvf gveejay-0.4.x.tar.gzChange to the directory containing veejay's source's:
$ cd gveejay-0.4.xNow, run the configure script and build gveejay:
$ ./configure $ makeAnd install it by typying:
$ make install
First of all, you need to have Video For Linux enabled in your kernel configuration.
Make sure that V4L information in proc filesystem is enabled; veejay uses the proc file
system to find out what vloopback output can be used to read from from.
If you have no Video4Linux devices you can only stream from vloopback or from a yuv4mpeg stream.
You still need to have the above mentioned items if you want to use vloopback.
If you have one or more Video4Linux devices, you should load these devices prior to loading
the vloopback module. The example below loads the vloopback module with a device offset parameter
so it will not conflict with your Video4Linux devices:
# insmod vloopback.o pipes=4 dev_offset=2On typing the command
# dmesgyou should see something like this:
Mar 31 23:41:01 dev kernel: vloopback.c: Video4linux loopback driver v0.90 Mar 31 23:41:01 dev kernel: vloopback.c: Loopback 0 registered, input: video2, output: video3 Mar 31 23:41:01 dev kernel: vloopback.c: Loopback 1 registered, input: video4, output: video5 Mar 31 23:41:01 dev kernel: vloopback.c: Loopback 2 registered, input: video6, output: video7 Mar 31 23:41:01 dev kernel: vloopback.c: Loopback 3 registered, input: video8, output: video9Refer to chapter 5. Popular Packages for using a video source.
Veejay uses by default a SDL window to play a video file or video stream,
all the keybinding in veejay depend on SDL; if you move your mouse over to the
SDL windows to focus it , you can press the keys explained in 4.3 The keyboard interface.
On focussing the terminal in which veejay is running, you can type short commands (followed by a Return or Enter)
for saving / loading samplelists , to activate other video sources and much more, see
4.2 The console interface.
You must provide a video file to use with veejay; it will not run without a video file.
Veejay has a number of playback modes, each playback mode is unique and defines more or less
a different functionality:
| Mode | Description | Navigation | Looping | Speed | Effect Chain |
| Plain | Default mode, playback of video | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Sample | Sample mode, playback of video samples. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tag | Tag mode, playback of video streams | No | No | No | Yes |
The console interface takes commands from STDIN , the commands you can give apply to:
| Description | Examples |
| Load a samplelist from file | sl /tmp/my_samplelist |
| Save a samplelist to a file | ss /tmp/new_samplelist |
| Open a video4linux device for input | vi /dev/video0 |
| Open a vloopback pipe for input | li 0 |
| Open a yuv4mpeg stream to dump video | ft |
| Close the yuv4mpeg stream | ft |
| Open a vloopback pipe to stream out | lo 1 |
| Close a vloopback device that is streaming out | lc |
$ man veejay
The keyboard interface takes keypresses (events) from SDL, almost all keys on
your keyboard have a function in veejay.
Typically, the keys on your numeric keypad can be used for navigation (play forward, play backward,
skip frames, skip to end , skip to start , etc).
The keys a,s,d,f,
g,h,j,k and l can be used to increase speed from 1 (normal) to
9 (fast)
Here is a quick overview for the most commonly used keys, if applied in order you will end up
with a newly created video sample looping in some way (depending on how many times you press the asterix key)
| Description | SDL key | In plain english |
| Set the starting position of a new sample | SDLK_LEFTBRACKET | Left bracket |
| Set ending position and create a new sample | SDLK_RIGHTBRACKET | Right bracket |
| Select and play sample 1 | SDLK_F1 | F1 |
| Set playback speed to 3 | SDLK_d | d |
| Change looptype | SDLK_KP_MULTIPLY | asterix on numeric keypad |
| Play backward | SDLK_KP_4 | Cursor left on numeric keypad |
| Play forward | SDLK_KP_6 | Cursor right on numeric keypad |
| Skip 1 second | SDLK_KP_8 | Cursor up on numeric keypad |
| Switch playmode to Plain | SDLK_KP_DIVIDE | Divide on numeric keypad |
| Print information about sample | SDLK_HOME | Home |
$ man veejay
You can output video to a yuv4mpeg stream by using the ft console command
or by using the Grab Video button in gveejay.
veejay will automatically create a new file when you toggle the output stream
It is possible to start veejay headless and have it write all video data to
a (special) file for further processing.
Refer to chapter 5.3 for some examples.
Currently there are 2 extra utilities yuv2rawdv and rawdv2yuv included in the veejay package for encoding
a Y'CBCR 4:2:0 stream to raw DV and vice versa.
yuv2rawdv takes input from STDIN and outputs to STDOUT, we illustrate this with
a few examples.
When loading yuv2raw dv without parameters you will see:
This program reads a YUV4MPEG stream and puts RAW DV to stdout
Usage: yuv2rawdv [params]
where possible params are:
-v num Verbosity [0..2] (default 1)
-l num Clamp Luma (default 0)
-c num Clamp Chroma (default 0)
If you use the clamp parameters, it will clip (not scale!) a pixel into a valid range,
the resulting video could be for example a bit darker if the input stream has values for
Luminance exceeding the maximum of 235.| Channel | Range (Clamp) | Byte range (no clamping) |
| Y (Luminance) | 16 - 235 | 0 - 255 |
| Cb (Chroma Blue) | 16 - 240 | 0 - 255 |
| Cr (Chroma Red) | 16 - 240 | 0 - 255 |
$ cat yuv4mpeg-file.yuv | yuv2rawdv | playdv
$ cat yuv4mpeg-file.yuv | yuv2rawdv -l 1 -c 1 | playdv
This program reads a raw DV stream from stdin and puts YV12/I420 to stdout Usage: rawdv2yuv [params] where possible params are: -v num Verbosity [0..2] (default 1) -x Swap Cb/Cr channels to produce IV12 (default is I420) -n num Norm to use: 0 = NTSC, 1 = PAL (default 1) -q DV quality to fastest (Monochrome) -h Output Half frame size -c num clip offrows of frame (for use with -h) must be a multiple of 8
$ cat raw.dv | rawdv2yuv -h | yuvplay
$ cat raw.dv | rawdv2yuv -h -c 8 | yuvplay
Usefull software (in no apparant order):
$ effectv -device /dev/video0 -channel 1 -norm pal -vloopback /dev/video2If everything goes well you should see your camera input in EffecTV; continue loading veejay:
$ veejay -a0 -v2 /tmp/my_video_file.aviType the command li in the veejay's console, hit ESC and press Insert to toggle the stream on or off.
$ veejay -a0 -v2 /tmp/my_video_file.avi -vloopback /dev/video2If everything goes well you see your video file beeing played back. Type the command lo to start streaming to the vloopback device, continue starting EffecTV by typing:
effectv -device /dev/video3 -norm pal -size 352x288If everything goes well you see veejay's output in EffecTV.
Mplayer is the movie player for linux, it has support for different types of output You can use mplayer to play a DVD or some MPEG4 file and stream it into veejay. First, create a named pipe
$ mkfifo stream.yuvContinue with starting mplayer
$ mplayer -vo yuv4mpeg -ao null -zoom -x 352 -y 288 -vop scale yuy2 /tmp/mpeg4_movie.aviIf everything goes well, mplayer waits until a frame has been read from the named pipe. Mplayer uses by default the filename stream.yuv, if you specify another mplayer will create a stream.yuv.
The Mjpeg tools are a set of tools that can do recording of videos and playback, simple cut-and-paste
editing and the MPEG compression of audio and video under Linux.
You can use the EditLists from this package in veejay.
Here are a few examples for processing video data:
1. Start veejay headless:
$ mkfifo /tmp/special_file $ veejay /video/video.avi -O3 -o /tmp/special_file
$ cat /tmp/special_file | yuv2rawdv -v 2 > rawdv
$ cat /tmp/special_file | yuv2lav -v2 -f 0 -I 0 -q 90 -o video-mjpeg.avi
Transcode is a Linux video Stream Processing Tool, it can convert between different types of video formats
Encode a file to mjpeg with no audio and rescale the output video to 352x288:
$ transcode -i input_file.avi -o new_mjpeg_file.avi -y mjpeg,null -Z352x288
There is a mailing list for veejay which is hosted by Sourceforge. The address is veejay-users@lists.sourceforge.net
End of the Veejay HOWTO. (You can stop reading here.)
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