Blog

29 Sep

Written by on .

I am pleased to announce the PPA for OpenShot Video Editor (instructions below). We have been hard at work on this feature for a while, and it took a lot of effort for us to get to this point. But thanks to TJ (our packaging expert) and lots of hard work from everyone on our team, we finally got there.

What in the world is a PPA you ask? It is an acronym for Personal Package Archive. Here is how our friends at LaunchPad define it:

"Using a Personal Package Archive (PPA), you can distribute software and updates directly to Ubuntu users. Create your source package, upload it and Launchpad will build binaries and then host them in your own apt repository.

That means Ubuntu users can install your packages in just the same way they install standard Ubuntu packages and they'll automatically receive updates as and when you make them."
This is now the preferred way to install OpenShot for Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10. If you use an older version of Ubuntu, you will still have to use our .DEB installers. Also, I highly recommend uninstalling any existing version of OpenShot before you install via the PPA.

WARNING: Our PPA uses a special version of FFmpeg, which does not work with VLC & Totem, and a few other movie players. This is due to how we are packaging FFmpeg in our PPA. We are working to fix this, but if you install via the PPA, you will not be able to run VLC at this time.
Instructions

Step 1: Copy the first line from the above list (Be sure to choose the correct version of Ubuntu). The line that start with "deb http://ppa..."

Step 2: On your Ubuntu computer, open System > Administration > Software Sources.

Step 3: Click the Third Party Software tab.

Screen shot of the top tabs in the Software Sources app

Step 4: Click the Add button.

Step 5: Paste the line you copied in step 1 and click the Add Source button.

Step 6: Now copy the second line from the above list and paste it in just as you did in steps 4 and 5.

When prompted, reload the software sources information. Don't worry if you see a warning about unverified software sources; we're going to fix that next.

Telling Ubuntu how to authenticate the PPA

Now Ubuntu knows about the PPA. It also needs to know how to check the software hasn't been tampered with since Launchpad built it.

Step 7: Open your terminal and enter:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys B9BA26FA

Step 8: Finally, tell Ubuntu to re-load the details of each software archive it knows about:

sudo apt-get update

Step 9: You're now ready to install OpenShot from the PPA! To install OpenShot, either use Synaptic and search for openshot (note: use the "search" button, not the "quick search"), or you can install it from the command line:

sudo apt-get install openshot

It's important to mention that this PPA also contains the latest versions of the dependencies that OpenShot requires, such as FFmpeg, MLT, Frei0r, and x264. Every time we update OpenShot, you will be prompted to update to the newest version. It's a great way to test our latest features.

Please help us spread the word about OpenShot. The Linux world still doesn't know about OpenShot for the most part. By the way, if you post an article or blog entry about OpenShot, please let me know and I will try and collect up many of the URLs and share them with all of our readers!