Blog

27 Jul

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Over the past 6 weeks I have been hard at work, and have many exciting updates to share, including an upcoming presentation at the Dallas Makerspace (for those who live in North Texas). While most of my time has been spent working on C++ libraries (which is a bit challenging to share at this point), I have also been processing the rewards as quickly as possible (photos below).

Distributed Editing

The distributed video editing platform is coming along nicely. We have a great design, which leverages a new video format we developed to easily (and quickly) share "chunks" of videos across a local network. This new format is frame accurate, reduces the time needed for decoding and encoding, and is optimized for this unique purpose (i.e. distributed video editing). This same format is used for local caching of the timeline (as it is rendered), which is key design element of OpenShot 2.0. 

The only downside of this approach is the large amounts of disk space needed for local caching and network caching. In order for other networked computers to assist in the video rendering tasks, they must have access to "chunks" of source media files. And due to the large size of media files, it was not practical to transfer the entire file to a distributed node. Thus, the idea to "divide" videos into small bite-size, frame-accurate "chunks" was born. =) 

Rewards

I should be ready to mail the rewards (T-Shirts, USB Flash Drives, Certificates) late next week, or the following week. I have already received and processed the T-Shirts and USB Flash Drives, and they are packaged into envelopes awaiting postage. I am still waiting on the certificates, which are being printed by a local print company, and they should arrive early next week. Once they arrive, I'll have 500+ certificates to sign (which I'm looking forward to). Here are a few photos of the rewards.


Upcoming Presentation (August 3rd, 2013)

If you live in (or near) the Dallas / Fort Worth area, I will be making an OpenShot presentation on Saturday, August 3rd at the Dallas Makerspace, during the Open Source Saturday event. The event starts at 10 AM, and I will be discussing all things OpenShot (including some thoughts on Kickstarter). I might even have a few T-Shirts and Flash Drives to hand-out, so be sure to attend if you are in town!

Version 1.4.4 (Available now for Linux)

We have fixed many issues with the current version of OpenShot (for Linux), especially related to the newest release of Blender (which broke a few things). This version has not been officially released yet, but is now available in our Daily PPA. Just to clarify for the Windows and Mac supporters, only OpenShot 2.0 will be compatible for Windows and Mac (scheduled for December release).

What's Next

I am focusing my attention on staying on schedule, and so far so good. However, there are many large technical challenges that await me, so I will be happy once these rewards are delivered and out of my office... so I can fully focus on OpenShot. =)