Same ole permissions problem

[Douglas Pollard]

    I have been up and down on this a couple of weeks now and am no 
farther ahead. I must really be thick. :-(
    I am trying to get going on making video in Cinelerra. I have had a 
lot of help from this group.
    I was trying to change permissions and ownership to ( me user) 
Ubuntu crashed or at least locked up.  I rebooted and got a message that 
there was a problem and I would have to reboot as Root.  Apparently 
there was no user file.
    I could not run so could not get on line help.  Never thought to run 
ubuntu off a cd to get help.  OH well!!  I reinstalled Ubuntu.
     I have captured video with Kino and it presently belongs to root as 
It was captured using sudo. I need to give it to  Doug ( user) and 
change permissions so that I don't have to be root to run these videos.
       I have one more problem I have files that came from xp on an  
nstf formated drive. If I move them to my homefile everyone has 
permission to read write and execute this needs to be fixed.     
         I moved one file to my home file and everyone has permission. 
That has to be changed. 
        Linux forums offers  Chmod 755 myfile.  What goes in place of 
myfile. I replaced with doug, the reply I get from bash is no such file 
or directory. If I can get past these stumbling blocks I can start doing 
video.
                                                                         
               Doug