If you want to use Linux to stream video over the Internet, you might have to fight your way through a jungle of codec alphabets. The available software is anything but intuitive. This article will help you pick the options that best fit your needs.

Linux users who edit videos on their computers have so far been restricted to the fairly simplistic Kino program and the functional monster Cinelerra. LiVES steps up to fill the gap.

Realistic computer-animated movie scenes have been around for years, but hair, water, and fire are still difficult for 3D programs to handle. The new Maya 8.5 stands above the crowd.

One of the first things you notice about the free video-editing software Jahshaka is its unconventional controls. But once you master the learning curve, Jahshaka turns out to be a useful tool with professional features.

Video jockeys (VJs) are a by-prod-uct of music TV. Instead of juggling with LPs, VJs projected colored images onto the screen. Today, all you need to be a VJ is a standard PC and the right effects program. To get started, you just need a couple of snippets of original video material and the free effects program, Veejay. According to the ads on the project homepage, Veejay “allows you to ‘play’ the video like you would play a piano.”

Programming multimedia applications in Linux used to be a tedious process, demanding specialized libraries and even custom code for addressing hardware directly. The OpenML library offers a simpler approach.

New releases of the two competing Web technologies, Flash and Silverlight, have just become available. While version 10 of the new Flash Player runs on three platforms, the Silverlight implementation, Moonlight, is designed exclusively for Linux systems.

In the scope of the Open Screen project Adobe has facilitated the use of Flash on mobile devices. At the same time, Adobe now offers the SWF and FLV specifications as a PDF download.