[Consortium] FW: [piksel] Fwd: [estudiolivre] I believe in cinelerra

[Cory K.]

Leo germani <leogermani at gmail.com> wrote:
> What
>
> Develop cinelerra as a professional free/libre video editing tool.
>
> Why
>
> Cinelerra is the most powerfull free software for video editting we
> have nowadays. Although it has many resources and that it is far more
> advanced than any other Open Source video software, its development is
> very slow and has no sponsor.
>
> Its main developer, Heroine Warrior, do not mantain a SVN or a mailing
> list. The last official release was last july and there is no sign of
> a upcoming version of cinelerra. They usually publish a new release
> every six month or so but do it only for their own needs and do not
> talk with the community much.
>
> Few developers mantain a fork called "Community Version". All out of
> volunteer work they mantain a SV a mailing list and an online wiki.
> They also fix some bugs and add some features to the code.
>
>  This desorganized development results in a mess. There is no official
> stable release and package for the distributions, and cinelerra is now
> known as very hard to install and unstable software (although it got
> really better last year).
>
> Also, first contact with cinelerra is usually disappointing because of
> a not well resolved interface and also because of big flaws it has on
> some funcionalities.
>
> With all that said, it happens that we have a software that is, at the
> same time, powerfull enough to do any kind of editing, but weak enough
> to have very basic issues of usability.
>
> And the feeling all advanced users have is: We are pretty close to
> have high standard software!
>
> To learn more about the mess, take a look at this page:
> http://cv.cinelerra.org/about.php
>
> Many of the actions described on this plan are already been done by
> many people, but in a rather heroic way. If this people got motivated,
> organized and _paid_, cinelerra would increase its quality
> dramatically in a short period of time.
>
> The Plan
>
> 1. Get the community together
>
> The community of developers today is very small and spread, and
> cinelerra has no road map.
>
> First thing to do is gather this people to discuss about the future of
> cinelerra, identify the main flaws and its solution, make a plan to
> organize the place and set up for new features.
>
> Cinelerra needs a project leader, an interface designer, and more
> people with defined roles that should be choosen on this meeting.
>
> Developers of other softwares are also welcome. Cinelerra is, so far,
> the only video free editing video editing software with professional
> approach, but it could share a lot of things with other software, such
> as effects, for example, that shoul be usable in any video software,
> just like we have LADSPA for audio. There is already a video effect
> standar called Frei0r that cinelerra does not support.
>
>
> 2. Diagnostics
>
> Cinelerra code is not very well documented, so few people have the
> idea of how tuff is to deal with it. Second step is to see what must
> be done so we can invite more people to colaborate with the code.
> Documentation, refactoring, etc. It also has to work on the API so
> other people can write plugins and effects.
>
> In other words, lots of work that are a pain in the ass but has to be
> done in order to advance properly. And passion has a limit. There must
> be people getting money to work on that.
>
>
> 3. Make a plan
>
>  Based on the diagnostics and on researches with users and other video
> editing tools, define how cinelerra will look and act in a not so
> distant future. With that goal in mind, make a reasonable plan to make
> it happen.
>
> 3. Set up a core development team
>
> No secret here. Few people dedicated to make it happen, including an
> interface designer.
>
> 4. Bounties
>
> The core team can offer bounties for parts of the job they choose.
> This will attracat more developers to the community.
>
> 5. Attract contributors
>
> Mantain a nice looking website, a wiki, tools for easy translation of
> the interface and of the online documentation, etc. are goos
> strategies to attract people to contribute. Its also important to find
> people to package the software for different distributions.
>   

While Id love to see this, I just don't see it happening.

I went round and round for months with the -CV guys trying to shape
things up for inclusion in Ubuntu/Debian. They had no interest in
getting it into distros and all maintained their own branches with
various changes. Was a mess.

The license situation is a nightmare as well but I have hear has
improved. Things like having the MS fonts as a depend doesn't fly.

Aside from the unwillingness of the current community to fix these
things there is really just a lack of qualified people to do the work.

Projects like Blender and Ardour are where they are because of financial
backing IMO. Thus keeping good people round. Not to mention strong
leadership.

I had this same idea a couple of months ago. Just fork it. DO a massive
license/code cleanup and start from there. I wanted to go with
"Freelerra". The more I looked around though I started looking at
projects like KDEnlive and Open Movie Editor. They are starting slow but
IMO have a better base in which to start from.

These are complex programs in which to do right and on a professional
level. It will take a hell of alot of work to get a proper free fork going.

If you get this going I'll be right behind you and do what I can but I
just cant help but be pessimistic because of what I know of the current
-CV community and the complexity of a pro NVE.

-Cory (Ubuntu Studio lead dev)