I think some of the problems the open source movement has faced regarding multimedia apps in general is that don’t get feedback from professionals. Gimp is the only application i can think of that managed to have some sort of success, and it’s not much compared to its behemoth rival photoshop.
There’s already open source projects for NLEs, i believe Cinelerra is open source. You could volunteer to test and give feedback to the developers. The other problem would be support, in a business when time is a key factor you don’t want to be left on you own in case a problem happens.
It’s always nice to be able to call for help in case of apocalyptic failure.
On top of that there must a lot of proprietary tech that goes into managing the different formats used in video today.
Is that data readily available or do the current nle makers pay for a licensing fee to support a particular format ?
If they pay how does an open source project is going to resolve that issue.
For instance almost every linux distribution doesn’t ship with the capacity to play mp3 files out of the box, because the mp3 technology is still proprietary.
You can find Cinelerra there : http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
Posted by Corbor on 06/01 at 12:42 PM
All very good points. Support being the most important. But who do you call now if your Final Cut Pro system doesn’t work?
Posted by Terence Curren on 06/01 at 01:25 PM
Apple offers phone support just like Avid… just like Adobe… but you have to pay. I am fine with this… I’d rather pay extra for something I need than pay more for something I don’t want.
I know a lot of shareware, software, and big player developers…
Don’t mean to sound like a naysayer… but good luck…. you’ve suggested something that will take a LOT of effort for a very small audience.
There’s a reason video tools cost so much… the market size is much smaller than graphics tools and certainly many other type of programs. While Open Office can be a valid alternative to Microsoft Office… you’ve got a LOT of work to do to get things to work on a video side with very little play or user base.
Toss in the fact that you have proprietary drivers (P2, Red, etc….) and strategies initiatives… build an NLE, but just try to get it to work with the myriad of hardware options out there.
Posted by Richard Harrington on 06/01 at 03:57 PM
See, I can’t win. I suggest that NLEs can’t be too cheap or the R&D;won’t get done and I’m blasted for suggesting that. Instead I’m told the new ideas will come from a group of folks.
So I suggest a group of folks start working on this software and I’m told the market is too small.
Where in here lies the truth? I know but I’m still testing the waters…
Posted by Terence Curren on 06/01 at 08:33 PM
Well, anything can happen. Nobody predicted the success of linux and other open source applications in the networking industry.
Likewise firefox took the browser world like a storm.
So it could happen, and i agree with you, it should happen because as users we would benefit a lot from an open and free NLE.
The main motivation to make something like Linux or Apache was the need of the professionals for such tools.
In the NLE market there’s already two big players that are fightning to get user’s attention (Avid and Apple), plus a lot of outsiders waiting in the margin to get big (Adobe, Sony…).
But, as i said, anything can happen. I believe what a project like that would need is either significant financial support (à la Mark Shuttleworth/Ubuntu) or the demise of one of the big player that would lead to the release of its code base to the open source community (à la Netscape/Firefox).
Posted by Corbor on 06/01 at 10:07 PM
With open source the conventional wisdom is, if you want it, you write it. So Terence, why don’t you write it? Don’t know how? Not knowing how is not an excuse. Learn how.
If you want it it’s up to you to make it happen. To make it happen you’ll need some credibility in this area. How do you get credibility? Well, have you installed and used Cinelerra? If not, that’s got to be your first step. Then tell the developers what works and what doesn’t.
It’s up to you!
Posted by Rob on 06/02 at 12:34 PM
I don’t think it’s necessarily up to Terence to learn code-writing to do this… that’s like saying an experienced mechanic who called for a unique type of wrench must learn metal smelting and molding just to ask for a better wrench. That’s part of what a community is for. Now if no one answers the call then the caller gets nil ....
Posted by Scott Simmons on 06/02 at 02:54 PM
Something like Blender. They have the best model for open source and the program itself has a timeline you could edit on. The biggest problem would be working out codec issues.
Getting touch with the Blender community is the best way to make this work.
Posted by josh townsend on 06/02 at 05:41 PM
There are already a lot of open source NLE alternatives, although granted non of them are yet ready for “prodessional” use.
While Cinelerra has been named above, the next version of this software has been renamed Lumiera and is being worked on by a dedicated team of developers. For more information see:
http://pipapo.org/pipawiki/Lumiera
Blender, also mentioned above, does have quite reasonable NLE capabilities. Try it, you might be surprised. See:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Video_Sequence_Editing
Then there’s Open Movie Editor, which I personally use and is quite useful for general editing tasks, although lacking some key features such as key frames. It does, however, contain a useful node editor. OME is a great tool, but the loan developer could probably do with some more hands on the pump to move things forward:
http://www.openmovieeditor.org/
Others worth mentioning include:
Kdenlive: http://kdenlive.org/
LiVES: http://lives.sourceforge.net/
There’s already a few options out there, some showing considerable promise. Lumiera is probably a way in the future yet. Blender is quite good, but has a steep learning curve. If you want to get involved right now, contact the Open Movie Editor team and see what you can add. There’s a list of smaller enhancements that could make a real difference to this application if someone had the time to impliment them.
Posted by phillc on 06/03 at 04:21 AM
Thanks Phillc, great info.
Posted by Terence Curren on 06/03 at 07:34 AM
