Hi, I just read through these plans for an API to the cinelerra functionality, and I'd like to share my views a little.
First of all, I do believe that everyone should hack whatever he wants to, as long as he does it for fun. ;-) Ok, now what I don't like. In my opinion there are already plenty of options for doing scripted or programmatical video editing. I remember that I did that a long time ago using shell and imagemagick. And even today, I find it fairly easy to hack up simple video tools using libquicktime and gavl. I agree though that this might require a little creativity and programming experience, but I guess you'd need that too for any vision of libcinelerra. So a duplication of efforts here IMHO. On the other hand I do like to imitate and recreate other peoples software too, so if you feel you can make a difference, go ahead and do it. :-) On the other hand, I do have a couple of ideas that I feel would not only make a difference, but could be fun too. This is just I list of random stuff that I think is missing in the free and open source video editing space, and that would be useful to a number of projects, including, but not limited to cinelerra. 1) Image-based Autodetection for Interlaced Video and 3:2-Pull-Down Sources. required Skills: C or C++ Image Processing and Analysis Algorithms Tasks: create a simple set of libs and commandline tools for the purpose named above, in a fashion that they can be reused by a number of diverse open-source video-editing and conversion applications. Why: While converting between different formats is use case that is widely implemented in the open source space, there are limited tools for "professional" formats, that is formats used by people how produce media contrary to consuming media. Interlaced And Telecined Video is such a category that is mostly neglected by common tools, and even if implemented there are plenty of occasions where users could screw up, so strong autodetection features would certainly be useful. especially because not all devices and formats apply flags media files to specify exactly what kind of source is used. (Example: Camcorders exporting 24p as Telecine, or distingishing between 25i and 25p DV-Files) 2) Color Corrector Reverse Engineering: required Skills: Solid Understanding of Color Correction and LUTs Access to various Color Grading Apps Knows how to use test images and histograms to conclude from UI-Interaction to color computation. No Programming required. Tasks: Use, analyse and document commen User-Interfaces and commerzial tools, with the aim to recreate the user interface, to make it easier for users to switch to other tools and platforms. Remember: The algorithms for color transformations are mostly trivial, it's the more advanced user interface that provides access to these features. Imagine if you would combine a selection of different cinellera plugins for brightness, gamma, colors, saturization into a single plugin with an interface using colorwheels and all the stuff the windows-kids like. 3) Interoperability Engineering: required Skills: Experience with SDKs and Plugin-Development on Popular Commercial NLE Software C/C++ Tasks: Port Plugins and Technology developed in the Tasks above as Open-Source and Free Software to other Platforms, Applications and Plugin-Specifications, to promote Interoperability, Free Software, and to help people switch to Free Software by giving them a preview on the available Technology. And to promote the idea and friendliness of Free Software in Communities around non-free Applications. Example: Exactly reimplement a color-corrector plugin for a commercial/non-free video editing app in open-source, and then port that open-source plugin to the plugin-interface of the non-free App, and then step by step replace a non-free up with FLOSS plugins, until it's only a hollow and undermined platform, that can be replaced by a free and open source plugin host. Sneaky, subversive and fun approach to FLOSS Market Domination IMHO. ;-) These were just a couple of my ideas, I think I do have some more of them. ;-) Have fun, -Richard -- Are you teaching the What and the How but without the Why and the When? _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list [email protected] https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
