[p2p-research] an update on technical open video projects

Wed Dec 16 17:42:00 CET 2009

from Valentin:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Valentin Spirik <valentin.spirik at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Subject: Re: Insight share a Participatory Video project
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
Cc: Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt at gmail.com>, Synnove Mathe <
synnove.mathe at gmail.com>, jose ramos <actionforesight at gmail.com>

Having been at the last Blender conference and following the development of
specially the Blender VSE (Video Sequence Editor) I am pretty optimistic
that most if not all points you mention (EDLs) will be there in Blender
either around June this year or a year later. Reason: the open movie
projects and the development roadmap. (The current stable Blender 2.49b now
already allows you to import FCP timelines!)

Blender 2.5 will be much easier to learn for new users (the interface now
really is "sexy") and since Blender works on all platforms from my point of
view it seems to be the best tool of choice for editing and mass
collaboration - still only a minority is using Linux, this will change of
course, until then for me a compromise where I only use Linux, Blender etc
and others that I might be working with are using Mac/Windows and Blender is
ok for me. Of course every project is different and has its own philosophy
and priorities...!

Blender 2.5 development roadmap:

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250/

Also interesting: (new) Blender color management ("linear workflow"):

http://www.blendernation.com/blender-2-5-color-management/

The current Blender foundation open movie project is durian
http://durian.blender.org/ - this is the one used to test Blender 2.5 > 2.6.
(All done around mid 2010.)

After that there will project Mango, focusing on compositing/SFX and making
Blender 4K ready. (All done around mid 2011.)

I think after Durian (mid 2010) or the latest after Mango a year later,
Blender 2.6/7 will see a large increase in users, not only for 3D, but also
for video post production! One disadvantage of all the other Linux NLEs is
that they (currently) only work on Linux. Maybe that's ok, but I very much
like the idea of being able to open a .blend file *anywhere* on *any PC*
that I or someone else might happen to work with...!

And of course there is now the Ubuntu based openArtist
http://openartisthq.org/ - see the Vid menu for all open-source NLE
solutions, they should all be ready to use out of the box. The related P2P
blog entry:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/new-version-of-openartist-released-an-annotated-multimedia-linux-distro-with-focus-on-ease-of-use/2009/12/06

If you haven't done it yet I'd recommend talking to the Blender VSE
developers. Maybe you can collaborate in some way or they can help you out
with a specific feature or some piece of information that you might need?
After visiting the Blender institute and seeing those people working I am
more impressed than ever by this project - there are some really incredibly
talented people working there...

Valentin

indiworks.blip.tv

indiworks.wordpress.com

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 5:56 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> hi Christian,
>
> thanks for your reply,
>
> the BBC project I mean is http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/
>
> seems like a twin of what you're doing,
>
> Michel
>
> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> hi,
>>
>> It is a pleasure to meet you all...
>>
>>  On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> hi Jose,
>>>
>>> have you met/spoke with Synnove yet,
>>
>>
>> No, thank you, Michel, for the introduction!  Synnove, desculpa, hablo
>> poquito Espanol!
>>
>>
>>> she's a participatory videomaker in spain, and I wonder if there's any
>>> room for p2p-inspired cooperation?
>>>
>>
>> I am very interested in exploring methods for collaboration.  My first
>> interest is in promoting Free Software tools, so that we don't become
>> dependent on Microsoft or Apple for the tools to do the editing.  Those
>> proprietary tools are very expensive, and would require people in the
>> developing world to either violate the law and download Microsoft or Apple
>> software illegally; or to spend lots of money on legal software.  With Free
>> Open Source Software (Software Libre), we can have a sustainable film
>> collaboration.
>>
>>
>>> Christian, on a related issue, is the BBC 'digital revolution' program
>>> the same as yours ... it looks almost identical? are you cooperating with
>>> them?
>>>
>>
>> I am not sure to whom you are referring.  Are you referring to the "Code
>> Breakers" documentary?  here is the Wikipedia article:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Code-Breakers
>>
>> here is another website with links to the movie:
>>
>> http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc
>>
>> I have not been collaborating with them.  They use non-Free tools to tell
>> the story of Free Software!  I think it is fine that they are choosing the
>> tools which they want, but I use only Free Software tools, mostly for
>> pragmatic reasons:  As a lawyer, I cannot break the law, and yet I cannot
>> afford the very expensive Microsoft hardware and software or very expensive
>> Apple hardware and software that the BBC producer are using.
>>
>> Here is a brief status of our movie now.  We are expanding our Free
>> Software in Schools outreach to some additional schools.  We are hoping to
>> find a child or teacher or two at those schools who can be the "star" of our
>> movie, meaning someone who is willing to let us into their lives.  So far,
>> we have lots of background footage, but we still need someone who will be
>> willing to be the heart of the movie.
>>
>> It was a pleasure to see the short movies linked below.  I think that they
>> are very important pieces of work:
>>
>>
>>>>> I would like to share with you an interesting link. This is a
>>>>> participatory video project.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.insightshare.org/
>>>>>
>>>>> In Copenhagen, they have participated with this video made by Samoa's
>>>>> communities.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/insightshare/videos/Tofiga_O_Pili_Aau_short.mp4/view
>>>>>
>>>>> mmm, maybe one day p2p will have a participatory video project too !!
>>>>> .....is it feasible or an illusion?
>>>>>
>>>>
>> To answer Synnove's question, I think that a p2p participatory video
>> project is possible, but there are some infrastructure problems that we need
>> to solve.  First, we need to make sure that we are using Free standards for
>> our software and our video codecs.  If we use non-Free video editing
>> software, it will make it much more expensive for us to collaborate.
>>
>> Second, we need to be able to share Free Software video editing files,
>> such as XML files associated with Cinelerra or Kino or KDEnlive.  Those
>> editing files, called an "Edit Decision List" allow people to email their
>> edits around the Internet, because those files are tiny, no more than a few
>> kilobytes for a whole movie, as opposed to many hundreds of gigabytes or
>> even terabytes of data for the raw video.
>>
>> Third, we need to have local repositories of the raw video, so that it is
>> possible for the Edit Decision Lists (EDLs) to be applied to the same raw
>> video database.  Maintaining this raw video is expensive, because it is
>> heavy weight.  One hour of standard video is about 13 gigabytes.  One hour
>> of high-definition video is 60 gigabytes.  I prefer standard video, not high
>> def, for that reason.
>>
>> Fourth, we need versioning-control software to make sure that
>> contributions to the video tree are synchronized around the world at each of
>> the locations where the raw video is being housed.
>>
>> If we all had Internet connections the speed of South Korea, which has the
>> world's fastest speeds, we could begin to implement a kind of massive
>> distributed democractic movie production facility.  Currently, however, we
>> are going to have to make use of sending hard drives around the world, and
>> that will slow down production.
>>
>> I have posted 100 hours of forkable video to the Internet Archive's
>> Digital Tipping Point Video Collection:
>>
>> http://archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint
>>
>> The Internet Archive is a good place to start a library for _viewing_
>> video.  They have financial support from both government and corporations,
>> so they will probably be around for quite a while.  But the Internet Archive
>> is not a decent check-in system for video.  That is what we really need to
>> create, and it will be a huge undertaking that will cost hundreds of
>> millions of dollars.
>>
>> Until then, my approach is to use the good Free Software editing tools
>> such as Linux, Cinelerra, Blender, CinePaint, Kino, KDEnlive, and Pitivi.  I
>> am happy to talk about these tools with you.
>>
>> Again, it is a pleasure to meet you all.
>>
>> ---
>> Christian Einfeldt,
>> Producer, The Digital Tipping Point
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

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