[LAU] To improve Linux audio tools: a Blender like idea

[Thomas Vecchione]

Heh somewhat late coming into this conversation.

Something Jan doesn't let on, is that he has shown himself to be more than
willing, and has in the past, tried Ardour and hasn't found it up to a point
he feels comfortable integrating it into his workflow.  He has no problem
working with people that do use it, I can say this from personal experience
as I am currently working on a different project with him.  Not Durian,
though I have let him know I am available to help him with this as well and
would of course be working in Ardour.

He has also dedicated a lot of time in speaking with me about various
aspects he would like to see Ardour improved on so he CAN use it in his
workflow.

I tossed around the idea of approaching Ton through various people I know in
the Blender community with a collaboration idea with Ardour, but I don't
think I even got to the stage where I brought it up with Paul(Maybe I did,
Paul?), for two(Three depending on how you look at it) main reasons.

One is that to be honest, I personally feel getting A3 finished up and
polished and out the door will by itself address a HUGE amount of the
shortcomings.  Hans, Dave, Carl, and Paul (And many others) have all done
amazing work thus far in implementing new features that address many
shortcomings of it.  After this point I will be having a nice long
conversation with Jan for instance to see what he feels would need to be
done as well to start using it in his pipeline for projects like the Blender
projects, but Jan is only one user(No disrespect to him of course) and there
are many others that hang out in IRC as well as on the mailing lists that
also provide valuable feedback, so I do not wish to discourage them either.

Two, there just isn't the funding in the same way that there is with
Blender.  Blender dedicates months, and the Blender Foundation pays artists
to come over, as well as developers, to work full time on this project.  The
developers code the features needed by the artists to complete the project.
As Jan mentioned this is much more about improving Blender first, and making
a movie second.  Heck right now we have problems even paying Paul to stay on
Ardour full time, much less pay a couple of artists and additional
programmers as well, not to mention that the LAU pipeline might include
multiple pieces of software(Of which I tend to believe Ardour would be one,
but it doesn't necessarily have to be), whereas the Blender pipeline
concentrates on a total of one.

As far as my opinion matters(And it probably doesn't much;) I just don't
think LAU at this time is ready to provide the same level of financial
support needed to pull something like this off.  However I would probably
still be willing to try if people wanted to, but I would suggest not trying
for this year, but to plan far in advance and set attainable goals for
this.  Then again people are of course free to disagree with me, and as much
as I might not agree right now, I am always interested to hear other
viewpoints myself;)

          Seablade

PS Yes believe me, I have been explaining what Jack support could mean,
especially if combined with netjack, to some of the folks in the Blender
community, and we have all been drooling over it;)
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