thanks for responding so quickly, from the looks of things, I really like the way things are done around here!
ANDREAS WROTE: "I think there is a strong need for a open source thumbnail based video editor like imovie08. I don't think we need to go into to much about apple's video editor, I'm sure you know what it does (and what it doesn't)" -evidently I do, sorry for not elaborating. imovie doesn't actually recieve the credit it deserves, it tends to be considered "simple" (but I ask what is wrong with that??) The old imovie was crap, but the new imovie has been written from the ground up seems like a very intuitive, and probably a very small program, designed to be useful. imovie creates a duplicate set of clips for editing purpose made of much smaller files. -much smaller, in fact I believe even the audio is separated to make it possible for a completely nonlinear experience, complete with apples "scrubbing" techniques. this "scrubbing" should just be called "skimming" and since scrubbing is probably patented, I won't be calling it that anymore.. effectively allows the user to scan through the clip from beginning to end by waving the mouse across the clip left-to-right and backwards right-to-left. Now what is really cool is that you can edit an entire movie in imovie 08, really quickly. Once you have finished you can export the xml to final cut pro, and "fine-tune" your project. this means fixing fade transparacy between clips, keying and colour correcting. HERMAN ROBAK WROTE: "He is not referring to proxies (as I understand it), but rather for working with clips as discrete, untrimable units, the way the "Thumbnail" view in iMovie works..." Sounds to me like Herman is spot on. untrimable to me means "unfuckupable" -and the original media will always be in tact. I have uploaded to my website two sample thumbnail from apple's imovie 08, this should give you some kind of an idea about what it is doing. I don't say anyone should clone apple, apple is 10percent linux and 90percent bullshit, but that 10percent could be useful... The files are definitely not fullscreen visible, in fact they are pretty bad (but I never noticed that before in imovie, it always looks great in the tiny preview window) HERMANN WROTE: "what is described here is often referred to as "storyboard mode". This feature is very common in video editors adressing rather beginners. It is indeed a valuable feature, because it helps keeping focussed to the narrative structure, similar as the act of drawing a storyboard does." exactly. the idea behind video editing is story telling. what better method of storytelling is there? video allows us (when we're not waiting for it to render or load) to communicate with our words, with our sounds, and with our images. I don't think its for "beginners" but for "beginning" beginning a project, I like the idea of being able to set the ins and outs of a thumbnails, arrange them together on a track, and finish the rough edit in a few minutes. If a clips inpoint or outpoint is too long or short, you can adjust it without rendering, making tedious edits much easier. In circumstances where video colour and light effects are used. -the software can call upon a frame of the original video for level adjustment. this insures that the effects will look correct on the higher definition clips. HERMANN WROTE: "...the problem is ...reducing a whole take to a single frame (mentally), which is the frame used to represent it as a still immage.... and there is no "best" choice. I think we should include a feature to select this pivot frame for any clip, causing this pivot frame to be used as thumbnail to represent the clip in the clip bins and in the timeline. In any case, such a thumbnail representation would be vastly superiour to taking just the first frame (which is usually rather misleading) or to printing a strip of frames, (which is just too much / unneccessary information in many cases)." I agree absolutely. this is why apple imovie uses the "skimming" technique, which makes it possible to scan an entire clip. in fact you can change the size of the thumbnail, to represent the entire clip, or 30 second per inch of thumbnail, or 10 seconds, or 5 seconds... making it easier to skim with more attention detail. This is also helpful in selecting the length of the clip, because you can wave your mouse across the x-axis of the thumbnail to the point of where the "in" mark should be set; click your mouse, then drag it across the x-axis to the point where the "out" mark should be set. -selecting just the amount of the clip you wish to use, you can move that fraction of the thumbnail directly to the timeline, and continue editing. The sheer potential and use of this feature in the visualization process for the human editor is apparent. This utilization of "skimming" and "skimming-based selection" in the gui is essential to the thumbnail editor's success. Well thats all I have to say for today, -here is the link to my two actual imovie thumbnails on my website (the two that aren't stockhausen's soupmovements dot mp4) http://narwallagram.com/narwal/movies/ and heres a youtube clip of imovie in action. I know a lot of you might not have flash working properly in your linux box, but hey this is 2008, shits available, and it can... so if you can't watch youtube on your linux box.... -I can't helpya... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Gp7ua5_0Y sorry about his threateningly calm tone... _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list [email protected] https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
