====== Ardour3 + VideoTimeline -- Live System ======
<note info>Work in progress.. feel free to edit this wiki-page if you can improve it.</note>

===== About =====

{{  :wiki:a3vtl3.png?300}}

//a3vtl.img// is a live-system to evaluate the [[wiki:a3vtl|Ardour3 video-timeline]]. Live-system - you run it from a [[wp>USB_flash_drive|USB flash drive]]. It won't touch your hard-disk and does not require installation.
It comes with a whole bunch of audio-software and can be used as //studio to go//, but you're better off to rely on a dedicated distribution for the latter (e.g. AVLinux, kxStudio, Ubuntu-Studio,...).

===== Prerequisites =====

  * x86 compatible PC
  * ≥ 1GB RAM
  * USB-flash-drive ≥ 2GB

===== Installation =====

You need to write the disk-image to a raw-device (USB-stick, CF-CARD,..) that your computer can boot from.

**Doing that destroys all data that is on the USB-drive!**

  - Download the disk-image [[http://rg42.org/d/a3vtl_20120805-1.img]] mirrored at [[http://robin.linuxaudio.org/a3vtl_20120805-1.img|linuxaudio.org]] (preferably download from the linuxaudio.org mirror - it offers better bandwidth and more simultaneous downloads).
  - and write it to a USB-drive -- _not_ save it as file _on_ the USB-stick, but write it as disk-image
  - boot from the USB-device

Regarding (**2.**):

on GNU/Linux this can be accomplished by various ways. The easiest is probably to use [[https://launchpad.net/usb-creator|usb-creator]] (usb-creator-gtk on Ubuntu or Arch-Linux).

The canonical way is to use ''dd'' on the commandline e.g. if your USB-device is ''/dev/sdb'' 

  dd if=/path/to/downloads/a3vtl_VERSION.img of=/dev/sdb

This also works on OSX, disk-devices are called ''/dev/disk1'', ''/dev/disk2'', etc instead of ''/dev/sdb'', ''/dev/sdc'',.. although you may prefer to use the //Disk Utility// GUI.

On windows: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ is the probably the easiest way to write a disk-image onto a USB-key.

===== Persistence =====

The disk-image is a read-only live-system. Every time you boot you will have a pristine system. None of your modifications are saved. 

In order to retain customizations, you can create a partition with the label 'live-rw' which will automatically be //overlaid//. The 'live-rw' partition can be on any medium, although it is convenient to keep it on the same disk as the OS. Say, if your USB-drive is 8 GB, you can use the remaining space of 6.5 GB (the live-system is ~1.5 GB) for storage and customizations.

Note: the live-rw partition only saves //modifications// done to the pristine system. It uses a rather smart technique called [[http://aufs.sourceforge.net/|AUFS]] to do so. It is not a data-partition per se and can only be used with a live-system of the same version. If you plan to do serious A/V work, store it on an external hard-disk.

===== Getting Started =====

Ardour3 is not [yet] documented. There are [[http://ardour.org/a3_features_midi|bits]] and [[http://ardour.org/a3_features_midi_editing|pieces]] of [[http://ardour.org/files/manual/index.html|floating around]]. If in doubt, ask for help via [[http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=ardour|IRC chat]].

In the ''$HOME'' folder, resides an example video for testing <tt>timecode25-test.mov</tt>, that can be loaded as video into Ardour3:
Launch Ardour3, create a new session and choose <em>File &rightarrow; Open Video</em> from Ardour's menu...

The [[a3vtl|video-timeline]] should be pretty much self-explanatory:

  * Menu->Session->Open Video
  * Menu->Session->Export->Video

  * Menu->View->Rulers->Video (or right-click the ruler/marker bar -> Video)
  * Menu->View->Video Monitor (xjadeo)
  * Menu->Edit->Preferences->Video
  * Menu->Session->Video maintenance-> ... (manual video server interaction)

===== Advanced -- Shell script to create USB drive =====

  #!/bin/bash
  # the disk-device to use: 
  DEVICE=/dev/sdb # or /dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/hdb ,...
  
  URL=http://robin.linuxaudio.org/a3vtl_latest.img
  URL=http://rg42.org/d/a3vtl_latest.img
  
  # Download the image and write it to the disk:
  curl http://rg42.org/d/a3vtl_latest.img | dd of=$DEVICE bs=64k
  
  ### OPTIONAL: ###  
  # re-read the partition-table after the image has been written
  partprobe $DEVICE
  # create a 2nd partition using the rest of the space on the device..
  echo -e "n\np\n2\n\n\np\nw\n" | fdisk $DEVICE
  # ..and create an ext4 filesystem on it, labeled live-rw'
  mkfs.ext4 -L live-rw ${DEVICE}2

Now boot from the prepared device..

{{tag>floss audio video}}