manual/include/video-timeline-and-monitoring.html

<p>
  Ardour offers a <dfn>video timeline</dfn> and <dfn>video monitoring</dfn>
  for convenient audio mixing and editing to video, in order to produce
  film soundtracks and music videos, or perform TV postproduction tasks.
</p>
  
<p>
  The video capabilities are:
</p>
<ul>
  <li>Import a single video and optionally extract the soundtrack from it.</li>
  <li>Provide a video monitor window, or full-screen display, of the 
  imported video in sync with any of the available Ardour timecode
  sources.</li>
  <li>Display a frame-by-frame (thumbnail) timeline of the video.</li>
  <li>Allow for a configurable timecode offset.</li>
  <li><em>Lock</em> audio regions to the video.</li> 
  <li>Move audio regions with the video at video-frame granularity.</li>
  <li>Export the video, trim start and end, add blank frames and/or
  multiplex it with the soundtrack of the current session.</li>
</ul>

<p>
  The setup of the video subsystem is modular and can be configured 
  in different ways, including:
</p>
<ul>
  <li>One machine for all video decoding, video monitoring and audio editing
  tasks</li>
  <li>Two machines, one for video monitoring, one for Ardour</li>
  <li>Three machines,  separate video server (for timeline decoding 
  and file archive), dedicated video monitor, and Ardour</li>
</ul>

<p>
  Ardour does <em>not</em>:
</p>
<ul>
  <li>allow for more than one video to be loaded at a time.</li>
  <li>provide video editing capabilities</li>
</ul>