Open Movie Editor News

Sure, there are some issues with HTML and CSS compatibility, but at least developers and users are aware of the problem and working on it.

However, in the case of internet video, we are far from a solution. There is even an alarming lack of awareness about what is wrong. Even in communities that should know better.

Some time ago, before the dawn of youtube, there were three options available for internet video: Quicktime, Real Player and Windows Media. And the problem then was that all of those were incompatible with each other. So eventually you needed to install all of them to be able to view most videos on the web. Imagine if you would need to install Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari Browser to view all webpages available.

So, fast forward to today. Youtube uses flash for video playback, as does everyone else. Flash is available for almost all computers, problem solved, everyone is happy.

Everyone? No, flash is controlled by one company (Adobe) and 3rd party implementations are sparse and incomplete. If you want to implement or improve flash for some kind of mobile device like a smart phone, you have to beg adobe for help and permission, you cannot just do it on your own.

Adobe however, is not the sole offender here, quite on the contrary, since it happened to adopt the h264 video format for its latest edition of flash. And h264 is a recognized standard, with a number of implementations. Even Quicktime does h264.

So now everyone is happy?

No! There is quite a vocal crowd in the open source and free software community, that continues to rub your nose on the fact that ogg vorbis/theora is the one true way to internet video, and that everything else is pure evil.

While those claims have their merits, they also lack a clear vision and strategy of how this will solve our current problems of interoperability. At least I haven’t found any kind of strategy in those claims.

Ok, back to h264. It is a nice, high quality format. It is widely adopted and there are fine open source implementations available. It is the ideal format for internet video. Except that it is considered to be NOT royalty free. This is a major show stopper. There is a certain consortium or whatever that demands protection money from you as soon as you are big enough, so that they will not sue you.

I can deliver as much HTML, CSS, JPEGs, PNGs over HTTP, TCP and IP as I want to, and for video in h264, I suddenly have to pay? I have to pay if I deliver a product that does h264?

How is this fair? They did not even write the code of the available open source implementations like x264, but they want the money.

What kind of a fucked up situation is this?

To FREE video on the web, we need a situation where charging royalty fees on protocols and standards is simple unacceptably and unnecessary. And where diverse implementations prove interoperability. (This is what I like about HTML, CSS, HTTP, TCP, IP!)

Spread the word, and help make it happen.

Cheers
-Richard

Hi,

check out the following tutorial about how to use the Scale0Tilt filter for a simple “Picture in Picture” function:

Have fun,
Cheers
-Richard

Hi,

I’ve prepared a new release of the Open Movie Editor that adds some nice new features:

Additionally to the stretchable scrollbar, there are also zoom buttons for the timeline, because for new users it wasn’t immediately clear how the scrollbar worked.

Then there is the possibility to detach the preview window from the main window, which is useful, if you are working with a dual screen setup.

A new color grading tool was added, its called “Lift, Gamma, Gain” and it is a three-way color picker.

And there is also an improvement in the node editor, where you can add images by dragging them from a filemanager into the canvas, and you can also add preview nodes to examine intermediate steps in your composition.

Its available from the Open Movie Editor Download Page

Installing will be a little difficult, because it demands the most recent versions of libquicktime and gavl, but this is to encourage distribution packagers to update those dependencies, so if you have problems file a bug or complain to your distribution vendor.

btw. If you are a packager yourself, and you need help or hints to create the perfect OME package, be sure to subscribe to the Open Movie Editor Packagers Mailinglist.

Cheers,
and have fun
-Richard

This is long overdue, so I better get it going.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent me books from my amazon whishlist.

I’ve enjoyed sharpening my vision and “management” foo while reading “Dreaming in Code”. It’s really an interesting and also useful book, because it reminds my about the reasons why I pursue the Open Movie Editor project the way I do. In a freewheeling, yet effective style and workflow.

As you can see by the redesign of the Open Movie Editor Homepage, I’ve put the copy of “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design”, to good use. Of course I recognize that beauty is surely a matter of personal preference, and I for one prefer a slightly “quirky” look, with smooth and not to flashy colors, and a little rounded border and drop shadow here and there.

Other than that I am currently working through “Why Programs Fail, A Guide to Systematic Debugging”, which has already sparked some fancy ideas, here.

So thanks, everyone, I hope I did not leave anyone out.

Cheers,
and have fun,
-Richard

PS.: I’m not going to depart Planet Earth to make way for a hyperspatial express route.
PPS.: Thanks again for “The Business of Software” too,

no, seriously, you want one.

Sure, its a little pricey at $1500, but its the development platform for a truly free Video Board, and if you are into FPGA programming you definitely want one. FPGAs can offer quite drastic performance improvements, especially for image processing and video stuff. And considering that the OGD1 is not only one such a beast but also has two DVI connectors, it is surely a great platform for any kind of Video-Editing Acceleration Hardware.

And if all of that cannot convince you, just take a look at that marvelous layout:

Have fun!

Available from Traversal Technology. More information about the Pre-Orders here.

More information about the Open Graphics Project.

Spread the word,
Cheers
-Richard

PS.: Unless you are able to program VHDL or you can hire an Engineer to do it for you, you probably don’t want one of those.

Hi,

I’ve just added four new fancy Title Templates from Marquitux to the Open Movie Editor Title Page.

Check out the other cool things that Marquitux is doing on GVFX.

Cheers, and have fun,
-Richard

PS.: Here a little preview of the new Designs:

Hi,

I’ve created three new Open Movie Editor Mailinglists, because I feel that the “One List to rule them all” approach is not sufficient any more.

There is the USER Mailinglist:

This List is for Support issues, if you have trouble installing Open Movie Editor, if you are unsure about how some feature might work, and everything else to using and installing the software.

For issues such as Support there are also the Forums, which are quite popular too, so depending on what you prefer, you might want to give them a try: Open Movie Editor Web Forums

There is the PACKAGERS Mailinglist:

This Mailinglist is very important, and I hope it will be used vividly. If you are maintaining an Open Movie Editor Packages for your distribution, be it Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, Fedora, etc. Pleeeeeeaaase subscribe to this list. It will help you to deliver the best and highest quality Open Movie Editor releases to your users.

You will be notified of upcoming releases, of changing dependencies, and you will get hints for tricking out Open Movie Editor and its dependencies for best possible performance and compatibility. And any problems or bug reports that you have will get a high priority treatment.

PS.: If you subscribe and you are a Member of a specific Distribution, be sure to send a quick Mail to the List to introduce yourself and mention the Distribution you are working on.

There is the DEVELOPERS Mailinglist:

This List is for anything programming related, you can ask questions about how stuff in the Open Movie Editor internals work, you can send patches, discuss Ideas and everything else related to the improvement and further development of Open Movie Editor.

So, thats all for now. By the way, if you are only interested in information about new releases of the Open Movie Editor, you may want to subscribe to Open Movie Editor on Freshmeat.

And if you are also interested in new releases of Video Filters/Plugins for Open Movie Editor, subscribe to the frei0r Project.

Cheers and have fun,
-Richard

Today some rather interesting announcements came from the FLTK project.

As you might know, FLTK is the graphical user interface toolkit, that is used for the Open Movie Editor, and good news for FLTK mean good news for Open Movie Editor.

Open Movie Editor uses FLTK not only because it is very fast and saves resources, but also because it has been extremely stable, with no backwards incompatible changes in its 1.1.x branch. This is nice, because the Open Movie Editor Programmer prefers to spend his time working on real features rather than porting his software to a new release of the next whiz-bang GUI toolkit.

So today, FLTK 1.1.8 was released, and they’ve fixed a lot of bugs. This is great. Kudos to the FLTK devs.

And additionally the start of the development for a future version of FLTK was announced, namely FLTK 1.3.0. And because the FLTK devs are sane people, they seem to put just the right features on their priority list, the biggest one being UTF-8.

This will also have an influence on the Open Movie Editor roadmap, especially when it comes to i18n, better known as internationalization and translation.

I’ve already got some offers from very nice people to help in translating Open Movie Editor into different languages. Unfortunately I couldn’t provide the necessary support infrastructure (gettext), because I am still working on things that are further up in my priority list.

Another reason for me for postponing translation work was that the layout and the words in the UI of the Open Movie Editor are still very much subject to change, and this would mean for translators that they would need to play catch up all the time, adjusting the translations to major UI changes.

But anyways, since some time will still be spent perfecting OMEs user interface, and since it will probably take some time for the FLTK devs to release a stable UTF-8 supporting version, I suggest to wait with translating until this release of FLTK is ready, because this will give us a much nicer starting point for bringing OME to all those fancy and cool languages that we have available.

Cheers
-Richard

The support that Microsoft Windows provides for Video Codecs per default is pathetic, fortunatly ffmpeg can create files that work with Windows out of the Box:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -f asf -vcodec wmv2 -b 8000k -acodec wmav2 -ab 192k output.wmv

Those settings should create a file with resonable quality that should play back under any recent Windows machine.

If you want to convert DV video created from a standard camcorder, you can use the following command line, which also deinterlaces and scales the image to compensate for the slightly non-square pixels of DV. (This example works for PAL, NTSC has a slightly different resolution)

ffmpeg -i input.avi -deinterlace -f asf -vcodec wmv2 -b 8000k -acodec wmav2 -ab 192k -cropleft 10 -cropright 10 -s 768x576 output.wmv

Cheers
-Richard

Hi,

I am setting up a new “News” Page for Open Movie Editor, this is the first Article, to make this space a little less empty.

Cheers
-Richard