Issue 21 of BlenderArt Magazine is just out and there you can find “Editing a Music Video in Blender”, a slightly modified version of my previous blog post from earlier this year (”Editing with Blender, Ubuntu…”). If you’ve read the article in BlenderArt Magazine and e.g. want to have a closer look at the node setup see the blog version of the article and click the screenshots to see the details.
What I’m really glad about is that my “Video Editing Preset” and “2D Titles Presets” .blends tutorials also get distributed with this edition of BlenderArt Magazine – if anyone ever needs them and/or can’t download them via my tutorial page simply also see the .blends that get distributed with Issue 21 of BlenderArt Magazine (”Editing a music video” > “video post blends presets from article.zip”)!
“Sleep Tight” Notic Nastic Live Clip (1 min. 14 sec.)
(Watch the Flash Video above or download (”Save Link As…”) the .mov.)
1: Selecting “the good stuff”
Click the image to see a larger version.
I load my whole footage into the Blender Video Sequence Editor (VSE) and start selecting “the good stuff”: with the mouse over the Image Preview window (see screenshot 3: Selecting “the really good stuff”) I use Space for start/stop and Right/Left Arrow for going back and forth. In the timeline (= Sequence): K for Cut and Shift S for snap editing (shortens/extends clip to the playhead when start/end is selected). The “good stuff” gets moved upwards a row (= Channel) with G for Grab and Y for Y-Axis. I keep the uncut original inside a (muted) Metastrip should I need it later since I am working without timecode. (You can use the Stamp render option for overlaying time information.) Then I make a back-up of the .blend.
2: Selected vs. original footage
Click the image to see a larger version.
3: Selecting “the really good stuff”
Click the image to see a larger version.
Same procedure as above (1: Selecting “the good stuff”) with the mouse over the Image Preview window (top right) and Space for start/stop, Right/Left Arrow for going back and forth… Since I easily get realtime playback using DV footage (no effects applied) with Ubuntu 8.04 and Blender 2.48a on my PC (current Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM and a reasonably fast 250 GB harddrive) this workflow allows me to find my in and out points while looking at moving images the way the audience will see it… Frame 6 067 is now the last one after “the really good stuff” is moved together (that’s down from 20 520 from the previous step). I use the Blender Text Editor for taking notes. Again I make a back-up of the .blend.
4: Sorting the clips
Click the image to see a larger version.
I add a Text Editor window left of my Sequence and name/tag my tracks. I adjust the Sequence window with (Number Pad) Home and then use Middle Mouse Button and Ctrl to fit the Channels to my tagged tracks. Then I move “the really good stuff” clips in the appropriate track (for moving clips up or down without moving them in time I once again use G and Y, for selecting multiple clips I use B for Border Select…).
5: Editing the video
Click the image to see a larger version.
I use Markers for the points where the singing starts. Then I move the best of the previously sorted clips to roughly where I need them and work on the details again using Shift S for snap editing and also G for Grab to shorten/extend a clip’s start/end… The basic structure for the edited video: details/close-ups at the beginning, the artists performing in the middle and a longer zoom out close to the end. I move the unused clips into Metastrips on the left.
As before I use (Number Pad) Home for seeing everything that’s in the timeline. But since there are the unused clips on the left now I then select the music track and (Number Pad) Dot/Del (normally used for “zooming in” on a single clip) for focusing the Sequence window to the area that I actually want to see when editing…
I export the edited clip as a PNG Sequence (= series of .png images). (F10 (pressed multiple times) for switching between the Sequencer buttons when editing and the Render buttons when exporting.)
The annotations in the screenshot above show what’s important for exporting/rendering.
6: Through the Compositing Nodes
Click the image to see a larger version.
I load the previously exported PNG Sequence into the Compositing Nodes and let it run through a series of filters: DV video artefacts get smoothed out and my own graininess/structure and artefacts get added. The particular filters used here may be experimental and only make sense for this clip, but a couple of combinations can be useful for other projects (values would need to be adjusted): Gauss-Darken for a toon look, Screen-Overlay-Mix for optimising an image, Sharpen-Soften for focus related compositing tasks (high values for Sharpen may introduce artefacts).
The yellow and blue annotations in the screenshot above show what’s important for processing a series of PNGs with the Compositing Nodes: in this set-up navigation is possible by moving the Sequence playhead (the green line at frame 90) for previewing different parts (individual frames) of the Nodes processed video. I export the Nodes filtered PNGs once more as a Sequence of PNGs.
7: The final look
Click the image to see a larger version.
I load the Nodes processed PNGs into my VSE Sequence (Space to Add Image Sequence), add and finetune a Glow (with clip selected Space to Add Glow), make a Metastrip of both (with clips selected and M) and use Color Balance (with clip (Metastrip) selected: Filter tab > Use Color Balance) for creating the basis of the yellowish (but at this point rather dark) look. I then add a one step Strobe (Filter tab > Strobe: 2.00). With Shift D I duplicate the Metastrip, move it up one Channel and also move it one frame out of sync (see screenshot). The Glow for this FX 1 track gets removed (Tab to open/close a Metastrip) and in the Edit tab I select Blend Mode Add and Blend: 33.00. (31.01.09: And Use Color Balance – as can be seen in the screeshot above – gets also unselected for this FX 1 track.) I also duplicate the FX 1 track, move it up one Channel and also move this FX 2 track out of sync for yet another frame. There is one last step not shown in the screenshot: a final, subtle Glow is applied to all strips.
I once more export the clips as a Sequence of PNGs, import them one last time and change the export settings in the Render Buttons > Format tab to FFMpeg, make my selections for the video and audio format/codec and make sure that Multiplex audio is selected in the Audio tab before exporting the finished video clip with sound.
8: Credits
Click the image to see a larger version.
This is actually done somewhere before finishing the editing (5: Editing the video) and using my own 2D Titles Preset .blend/tutorial. I adjust the text to the right size first. In order to have the Center where I need it for my title animation: Object > Convert Object Type… > Mesh. Then: Object > Transform > Center New.
Tutorials etc.
Download my Video Editing Preset .blend (Quick Start tutorial inside) for all the basics you need to get started with the Blender Video Sequence Editor.
Download my 2D Title Presets .blend (tutorial inside) for making “crystal clear” titles with Blender.
Download Blender for all major platforms.
Thanks to Paul for hosting these .blends on the Final BUG server!
See Using VSE (and Previous/Next pages) from the Blender Wiki for the official Blender Video Sequence Editor documentation.
See Using Nodes (Blender Wiki) for getting started with the Compositing Nodes.
Check out Ubuntu for getting started with GNU/Linux.
Notes for editors new to Ubuntu
While many to most things in Ubuntu will “just work” this is not the case for most things related to FireWire. Either plan some time for testing/research or get help from an experienced Linux user. It may be best not to rely on external FireWire drives for anything other than copying media to your internal drive as long as you are new to Ubuntu.
For help with all things related to Ubuntu and multimedia see also the Ubuntu Studio pages.
(26.04.09:) Ubuntu 9.04 users who experience problems with opening Blender 2.48a, exporting video with sound or audio playback in Blender see the fourth comment for solutions!
What is new…?
Click the image to see a larger version.
The Quick Start guide (inside the .blend) now with “More” for “moving beyond the basics”. (Note that the layout has been arranged for this screenshot…)
Video Editing Preset (v0.1.1):
(get Blender here).
Next to the new selected shortcuts and tips that you can find under “More” a series of smaller additions has been made throughout the text (e.g. to “Snapping”, “Add Media” or the “Questions/Answers”) to further make sure that everything you need to get started with free and open-source video editing using Blender is there. The file now also works better as a preset as such: e.g. Scrub audio is now on but the text still shows you where to turn it on and off…
Why…?
Blender works on all major platforms and you can share .blends between e.g. Ubuntu, OS X and Windows. At the same time Blender is free and open-source and the Blender VSE also works on older hardware – e.g. recycled with Ubuntu (or the lightweight Xubuntu): if no other solution happens to be available you could still get some work done or discuss a project using an old PC…!
Whether you are a video artist and always curious about new tools, a production company specialised in (3D) short format video (even if you don’t do your 3D work with Blender) or a (non-profit) organisation with a tight budget: the Blender VSE brings high-end video post to virtually any PC at no cost. (See the official Blender Wiki for more (”Using VSE”) including current limitations and workarounds.)
Change the size of the tutorial text with one click (see image…) or add Blender’s actual Timeline (e.g. under the Preview window, see tutorial for details) that offers more features for Markers.
Missing features…?
Blender is very flexible and can be customised in ways that commercial and closed source NLEs simply can’t: e.g. you could add smaller features like (a currently missing) Time code display via Python script (or simply use the built in Stamp option (Render buttons) for overlaying time information…).
The Blender VSE is not Final Cut Pro or Avid, but in the long run you might find that Blender (which is a 3D programme after all) allows you to realise projects that you previously simply could not do without an extra investment in yet more proprietary (and possibly limiting) commercial solutions (see all the new VSE feature (”Sequencer changes”) since Blender 2.46).
Suggestions and feedback
…for improving the tutorial/preset welcome!
And special thanks
…for hosting the .blend to Paul from the final BUG blog!
*02.01.09* Ubuntu (8.04, 8.10) users who experience problems with sound playback in Blender, are looking for solutions for FireWire related issues or have problems with the windowed (= not fullscreen) Blender version see the second comment! (And feel free to post solutions to other related problems as a comment…)
I’ll be at the Blender conference later this week. Update: I just found out that the conference is full, registration is closed. Never expected that. Last year seemed not that full…?! Last year was very interesting and this year’s conference schedule looks quite promising again. See you…!
“Zeitgeist: Addendum” by Peter Joseph is a radical, visionary and thought-provoking documentary that comes with perfect timing (released online on Oct. 2, 2008) to a world (financial) crisis:
it basically explains why we need to change our money based economy if we want to live up to our true potentials.
There are one or two points where the movie seems to shift a bit too far into another direction, but in the end I think it all works out well enough. This movie will have its strong critics, they will say that it’s just propaganda, but it also will have its fans…
I would call “Zeitgeist: Addendum” an anti-propaganda movie – offering the viewer radically different perspectives than those that we get to see everyday in our world (in the mainstream media, at work, in school, etc.). One quote from the beginning sets the tone of what this is about:
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” (Goethe)
Whether you (politically) agree with some of what is being said or not, I think the decision to (not) watch this movie is a real life red pill/blue pill moment…
On the film making side the editing has to be specially mentioned, its sometimes minimal style (only voice over and an (almost) black screen for more than just a short moment) offers room to form your own images and this is quite powerful… All in all it’s a bit like an indie editor’s “J.F.K.”.
Maybe “Zeitgeist: Addendum” could be a bit shorter and some of the changes might come across as too radical for some viewers… While it’s not perfect it attempts to achieve so much and succeeds in so many areas that its shortcomings don’t harm the overall experience and effect I think. The movie is very inspiring. Towards the end there is maybe a bit too much of the techno/spiritual theme and maybe there is just a bit too much of believing in technology at times, but all in all there is so much that works so well (and that makes so much sense) that this can be seen as a good starting point for a discussion…
“Zeitgeist: Addendum” is like “The Matrix” but for real – if you are ready to take this cinematic blue red (just remember which is which…!;-) pill…
(Link to its Goolge Video page, link to the film maker’s site.)
Michael Wesch (Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us), teaching Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University, talks about viral videos, YouTube and its complex community – recommended for everyone interested in online video history/communities and the deeper connections that exist beyond viewing numbers and market shares…
“presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result.”
Blender Video Editing: About the Tutorial Text
Here another screenshot from the Blender Video Editing tutorial where you can see more of the actual Quick Start tutorial text. If you want to learn how-to edit video with Blender this text will show you all the basics – inside the .blend file!
Click the image to see a larger version.
This is an interactive tutorial – all things in this .blend file have been arranged in a way that it will be fairly simple to learn all the basics in a very short period of time – no need to have a book or a web page open, you don’t even need video footage for the main part of the tutorial:
Learning the Basics With Colour Strips
All the basics like Navigation – Shorten/Extend – Moving A Clip – Snapping – Cut – Delete (including: selecting, dropping clips; frame counter, “Channels”) are shown with simple colour strips in the first part called “Editing/VSE Basics”- you can read and practise at the same time!
“Questions/Answers”
…is how the second part of the tutorial is called. Here the most common questions new users have when getting started with the Blender VSE are answered. (E.g.: How can I fade-in/fade-out video? How can I export video with sound? Etc.)
Blender VSE: De Facto Platform Independent NLE
This is one of the most interesting, maybe overlooked features of the Blender VSE: the same .blend file can be opened and edited on five different operating systems, e.g. on a Mac, a Windows PC or a laptop running Ubuntu – this is a de facto platform independent NLE! Try to do this with Final Cut Pro… And best of all: Blender is free and open-source – install it on as many PCs as your production requires – no need to buy any license for non-linear video editing (or SFX works). See all the new features the Blender VSE has since Blender 2.46, a good starting point for more information – also points out current limitations and workarounds – is the Using VSE page from the Blender Wiki.
In Three Steps to the Tutorial
*link updated* (v0.1.1, 15th November 2008)
1. Download the .blend file (depending on your browser/platform: simply click or right click and “Save As”)
2. Download Blender (you need the latest Blender 2.46 for this tutorial to make sense)
3. Double-click the .blend – the Quick Start tutorial text is inside the .blend: it will guide you through all the basics you need to get started with the Blender Video Sequence Editor!
Feedback…
…or suggestions for improving the tutorial always welcome.
Video Editing Preset: Quick Start Tutorial
Quick Start shows the very basics needed to quickly get started with the Blender Video Sequence Editor (VSE).
*link updated* (v0.1.1, 15th November 2008)
1) Download the Video Editing Preset .blend – Quick Start tutorial included (works without extra video files!)
2) Download Blender (in case you don’t have the latest Blender 2.46)
3) Double-click the .blend
Since Blender works under FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris and Windows the Blender VSE offers free and open-source video editing for almost any platform that an editor, video artist or company might be using. This means you could start working on your old iMac, send the .blend to your co-editor who has a Windows PC and once you get it back you could finish the project on your new Ubuntu workstation – the same .blend can be opened and edited on all platforms!
See all the new features that the Blender VSE offers since Blender 2.46. For more information, including some current limitations and workarounds, see the Blender Wiki: Using VSE.
2D Title Presets: Updated
*link updated* (v0.1.1a, 15th November 2008)
1) Download the 2D Title Presets .blend – the tutorial (included) now begins with a few quick steps to get started in no time
2) Download Blender
3) Double-click the .blend
Tutorials = CC Licensed – Your Work = Yours!
Both .blends/tutorials are (now) distributed under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported) – however you may use these .blends as starting points for your own commercial Blender made projects! Simply remove the tutorial texts (and rename the .blend) before sharing your .blends with others. The license restrictions only apply to the tutorial text and the tutorial as such!
Your editing projects and titles are yours!
If you are an educator, teacher or trainer: you may use these .blends in your classes (e.g. film school, multimedia training etc.) as long as they are distributed in their original form (no changes made) and free of charge.
See the .blends and the CC license for details.
One reason for the restrictions: I plan to update the tutorials, maybe extend them and simply can not support multiple versions. Thanks for understanding.
Special Thanks
…to Paul from the final BUG for hosting the .blend files!
P2P Audiovisual Wiki: open-source animation June 08 update
With the June 08 update I am stepping down as the maintainer of the P2P Audiovisual Guide, I’ve been working on this project for the last two years and now need to focus on being productive with some of the tools we list. The June update features a small but fine selection of the best and most promising free and open-source animation tools (2D, 3D and code based animation) that could be of interest to both beginners and experienced animators: P2P Audiovisual Guide (scroll down for the June 08 update…)
Indie media links
A couple of weeks ago I already decided to stop updating another one of my online project, remixlinks.ning.com, one reason being that since the latest ning.com update it became clear that “older” apps like mine (I was an early adopter of the ning platform about three years ago) would not remain fully functional in the future without extra work on the app’s code – while I am now starting to look into Python scripting for my blender 3D works I am still far away from being a programmer and don’t want to spend time fixing my bookmarks app…
Both the P2P Audiovisual Wiki and remixlinks.ning.com feature selected (open-source) tools, sites and services that could be of interest to indie film makers, artists or researchers… I am still thinking about how-to organise my future online projects, I am not sure if the Wiki format is ideal for me, nor do I want to start using another web 2.0 service that might not function properly in a couple of years time or (like previously del.icio.us) sell out to a company that I don’t feel comfortable being with. Probably an open-source solution running on my own server will be what I’ll end up doing, but those are just plans for the time being…
End of a journey
In a way this is now the end of a virtual journey through the Wild West of (indie) online web services and projects for me that has been going on since about 2004: after surfing on del.icio.us waves for a couple of months I started my own link collection on del.icio.us, moved on to ourmedia.org (first as a user then as a moderator), started remixlinks.ning.com and for the last two years now helped building the P2P Foundation’s Wiki by writing/maintaining the P2P Audiovisual Guide. See this page for all my (other) online projects – for now I am putting all of them aside, including my indiworks channel that I probably will not update any more. The current video RSS feed solution via videobomb is far from ideal. Still, my indiworks channel/video RSS feed will be available as long as the videobomb service remains functional. Later this year, once I’ve found a satisfying solution for all my online projects, I plan to offer some sort of replacement for it. In any case: all my videos will of course remain available for download via the Internet Archive, I have no plans whatsoever to change that, the IA is the best and most reliable service of its kind that I’ve had the pleasure to use since I uploaded my first online video to their open-source movies section around autumn 2004. (Note that the download numbers on a video’s IA page only include the downloads made directly via the video’s page – those made via a link or a video RSS feed are not included…)
And now…?
After exploring (indie) online video distribution, researching free and open-source media creation tools, learning (and still learning…) blender for two years now and recently switching from OS X to Ubuntu the time has come for me to focus on the production side of things as well as finding a more satisfying way of presenting and distributing my work. I’ll keep (updating) this wordpress.com blog for a while to come, but plan to have a better (= more online video friendly) solution in place when the reorganisation of my online projects is done…
See you in Cyberspace!
The following text was originally written for a publication about online video to come out later this year. I was asked to make a series of changes that I just could not agree to and therefore took back my text. The integrity of my work means more to me than having it published in print.
I am aware that the text might come across as a bit extreme or seem strange to some - others just might find this particular style and energy interesting - I do and that’s why the text is the way it is. Sorry if you don’t like it, what I tried with this is to write down all of my thoughts about online video and the new medium itself - how I see film, video and storytelling developing into something new: the open video and story remix platform - an online “theme park theatre”.
I see a medium evolving from film and cinema, not as its replacement, but as “the next thing” - I believe that there will always be something like cinema - in one form or another - and this text is about that other form…
The Online Theme Park Theatre: an Open Video and Story Remix Platform
(1.0 version, 04.04.08; for this blog post, 20.06.08: three minor changes/corrections concerning the hyperlinks as well as bold highlighting for skimming the text and some underlining for layout/clarity reasons.)
The author likes to thank Till Alberts and Nicolai Gütermann for giving their valuable feedback and input to a first draft version of this text.
Introduction
This is a collection of thoughts about the collaborative possibilities that online video offers and a look at free solutions for setting up an independent online video remix platform powered by free software.
This is not a technical manual nor is it a detailed business plan - it is a “free idea”. Free as the air and in the sense of obvious.
This text is the introductory chapter to a book that has not been written yet. And, when thinking about it, you might agree that this would be a book where everyone just has to write their own version: the theme/story platform concept is about just that.
This is also a new look at the medium itself that we are dealing with - the medium that we simply refer to as “online video”.
A free idea for free stories
One of the biggest possibilities for online video lies in its collaborative potential. What we are witnessing today is the birth of a new medium: grainy, handheld phone cam YouTube videos watched on laptops instead of silent, static, b/w film projected onto a screen. But this time it all seems to happen so much faster - and there are two key differences: this time the tools needed for producing moving images are much more accessible, while all potential participants are connected via networks and channels of all kinds. It is this powerful combination that makes the web, seen as a platform, an extremely exiting place to be as a film maker: an open video and story remix platform, a “virtual theatre” - a new, mashed-up medium, a “killer app” for the web.
A little more than 100 years after film was born the aristocratic/monopolistic structures for the production and distribution of moving images (and media in general) are falling apart (we even have phone cams and online video editing solutions now…) and rising is a much more diverse, richer and powerful infrastructure for moving images creation. But video sharing platforms and media archives are only the beginning - just like when editing a video you first get all the footage in one place (on a media platform you upload it) and make a preselection while organising your work (on a media platform you label/tag the video). Once that is done you start with the actual, creative editing process…
In the video editing world “online” can mean two things (that have nothing to do with the World Wide Web as such): “available” (footage from a disconnected hard drive that is still part of the project you are working on is referred to as being “off-line” - it is not available). The other meaning: “online editing” (meaning you were first working with a lower quality copy of the video and now that the actual editing is done you replace the lower quality copy with its original master footage - you “on-line” it. Now, from an editor’s point of view and in the context of the World Wide Web, there is a third meaning to “online video”: video footage that is free and legally (or you just don’t care like the avant-garde has done for decades) available on the web for reuse (and for retransmission to the collective audiovisual information stream). If you connect all three meanings from above the unified definition for “online video” turns out to be “free available master (footage)”.
Editing is about structuring and a film editor can be seen as someone who is programming a series of moving images. As increasingly well connected internet users we have started conversations on a multitude of levels - e.g. by making a video, reacting in one way or another to a video we’ve seen. Reacting becomes remixing. Fake movie trailers, popular online in recent years, will most probably prove to be real movie trailers, in fact. The remix feature film is likely to be “coming soon to a browser (and portable media player) near you”. We’ve finally build ourselves repositories and networks that allow us to start realising so complex undertakings as the community made open-source feature length film. Example for a finished remix feature length documentary made by one single editor (with the Final Cut Pro files available for further remixing): “Panorama Ephemera” (2004) by Rick Prelinger - www.archive.org/details/panorama_ephemera2004.
How it works
Within a few years the world of blogs (the “blogosphere”) has established itself as a highly effective, alternative infrastructure for publishing and delivering news (open for anyone to participate, accessible for minorities and specialists of all kinds). Something very similar is happening right now with the world of moving images: the cinema of the future seems to crystallise itself to be an online video remix platform - open for anyone to participate, allowing the audience to interact with the content on a multitude of levels. An existing example is YouTube: you can make playlists, find clips that are related to others, react to a video by making and uploading your own video and allowing others to view and share it and to react to it again - YouTube really is a new kind of movie: a dynamic, interactive show with thousands of channels and millions of clips forming a part of the “free available master (footage).
Just like YouTube seemed like a far out vision only ten to fifteen years ago (remember the time when there was no internet and when no one had a mobile phone?) the cinema of the future might seem like an idealist’s dream today while in fact it is materialising already - in platforms such as YouTube. In the end it is likely to be some kind of open, social media network: the “online theme park theatre”. Core product of such a platform will be a cinematic presentation of a story that relates in a strong way to the theme that the platform is centred around. Since different themes attract different audiences, and different people develop different kinds of stories, a multitude of such platforms (possibly evolving as “genre platforms” and offering a multitude of theme centred, individual projects) will exist. At the same time these shows will also be screened in real world cinemas while digital distribution/projection will further help to democratise the new medium and bring high quality, content rich community produced projects to large mainstream audiences and their established viewing environments. And online you’ll be able to watch a movie in a virtual theatre (either alone or with many others) that you (can) create/interact with while you are watching. The stories you’ll see will have a life of their own, might first need to be developed over a longer period of time (just like e.g. Linux took about ten to fifteen years to mature into a mainstream product), but in the end these multimedia shows will turn out to be our generation’s online classics: myths, legends and stories with heroes and heroines from the new world. It also seems very likely that real world/online (story) worlds will melt into one another in unprecedented ways - which again is only reminiscent of one of the oldest movie themes we know: the exploration of that fine line between dream and reality.
Movies today are prepackaged dreams - movies of the future will be modular, dynamic and interactive dreams.
A visualised stream of thoughts
Online video allows creators to innovate, something a big Hollywood studio just can not afford because of ever exploding budgets - and the budgets themselves are just consequences of the attempts to fix with money what a special effect can’t buy: a good story. And so it became possible that simple stories - told from one person to another, by people gathering in groups, sitting around computer screens (our modern day fire places) - that these simple stories are now a serious competition for the industrial FX magician from Hollywood who lights very bright, very expensive fires that may look nice, but too often turn out to be illusions of fire places with no storyteller around.
In ten to fifteen years time we might already visit a (virtual online) theatre offering a 3D holographic experience and connecting tens of thousands of people at the same time - a bit like today’s “massively multiplayer online role-playing games” (MMORPGs) - people coming together in one place to experience a multimedia show that can be consumed, customised, contributed to, shared with others, remixed and retransmitted to another remix node in the network. The most effective way of realising this will be by using a totally open, non proprietary infrastructure without any kind of DRM or creativity restricting copyright laws.
But since this is a new medium we should not limit ourselves to think of it as a 90 minutes long experience…
Moving images are a visualisation of thoughts. And since the human mind likes stories we arrange those images into stories that can easily be shared and communicated: video is becoming a unifying language that almost everyone understands. Online video, our “free available master (footage)”, is a visualised stream of thoughts in an ongoing global conversation with feedback loops of all kinds - with each conversation a video stream gets better, smarter - like a programmer’s code evolving from a 0.1 beta version to the 1.0 final release - and all of this is happening while old media still tries to adapt, e.g. by suing its fans and costumers who try to integrate the static, old media content with the dynamic online one by sharing and remixing it!
Some tools and questions
Some of the tools needed for a meta platform like a virtual remix theatre already exist, others are just being built. We already have a couple of open-source movie projects (e.g.: “The Digital Tipping Point” - www.archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint or “Big Buck Bunny” - www.bigbuckbunny.org) while a multitude of high-quality, free and open-source media production and distribution tools are flooding the market that was once dominated by commercial, closed-source, proprietary software from monopolists.
Some of the free and open-source tools (many, many more available) already in place are:
- on the content creation side:
Blender (3D modelling, animation, rendering, video post - www.blender.org), Gimp (image and photo manipulation - www.gimp.org), Inkscape (vector graphics editor - www.inkscape.org), Ardour (digital audio workstation - ardour.org), Kino (DV video editor - www.kinodv.org)
- on the distribution side:
Miro (internet TV and video player incl. BitTorrent support - www.getmiro.com), VLC (media player and streaming server - www.videolan.org), Songbird (media player and Mozilla based Browser - getsongbird.com), Plumi (Video CMS - blog.plumi.org), MediaWiki (Wikipedia’s Wikisoftware - www.mediawiki.org; for Wiki style video editing see: sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura), WordPress (blogging software - wordpress.org), Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora (patent/royalty free audio and video encoding - www.xiph.org), Croquet Consortium (creation and deployment of collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses - www.croquetproject.org).
Next to semi-open/closed platforms like YouTube - does not support Creative Commons licences (creativecommons.org) - there are CC licence friendly platforms like blip.tv (blip.tv) and the incredible non-profit Internet Archive (www.archive.org). Other sites like Ning (www.ning.com) let users create their own social networks including pre-built micro video sharing sites à la YouTube, free to use, CC licence friendly.
In the end not technology but the quality of the actual story that a virtual story park is centred around will make a project work. More helpful than any rules and how-tos for story development are simple questions - they always work! (Rules are too specific - questions are open, universal and lead to new questions…) So here a couple of questions for online storytellers and remix video producers:
Who is my/our audience? Who is/are my leading character(s)? What does he/she/they want? What forces are opposed to our hero’s goal? In the end, will our heroine get what she wants? What’s the story in one sentence? What’s the story in three sentences?
Note: possibly these question might seem “too simple” and not appear to be useful - in that case come back once you’ve started developing your project! Being able to answer those simple questions will give you a good foundation for developing a working, complex story - if answered well those are in fact rather hard questions! For more questions read Linda Seger’s classic “Making A Good Script Great”, for the eye-opening, mythological approach to storytelling read “The Writer’s Journey” by Christopher Vogler.
The next step
Now before proceeding please click to confirm:
Commercial Break To be Continued… The End
new flash video
two flash video conversions (320×240 and 640×480) have been added to the vivaldi rock page on the internet archive - the new 320×240 640×480 flash conversion is now also the one on the video’s blip.tv page.
*** still for an optimal viewing experience downloading of the medium resolution or even better the high resolution version is recommended! *** (or who would want to go to an art gallery and only get to see cheap photocopies of the paintings…?!) also try to adjust your sound (settings) accordingly before watching… thank you! ***
vivaldi rock (2008, 4:13, visual music video)
sketches
when working on a video like vivaldi rock i make a lot of tests - here are some of my digital sketches: test renders and design tests made during the production. they appear in chronological order (left to right, top to bottom) and give a bit of an idea of how the project evolved from the creator’s point of view - not everything might be perfect here, but it could be interesting to see what kind of ideas made it into the final animation and what was left out…
note that the final design for the visuals is of course heavily inspired by existing (2d graphic) design from the 60’s and 70’s of the last century - vivaldi rock is among other things a personal homage to a somewhat demanding yet fascinating colour combination that those who grew up in the 1970’s might never (be able to) forget…
click to see larger versions - file names = descriptions… (you can click the images once more on their individual pages to see them in full size!)
visit the vivaldi rock page on the internet archive for all permanent download links (as in previous blog post)
as you might notice there is something missing from the series of images above… what about the ending…? watch the video to find out!
vivaldi rock is a 3d visual music video (4:13)
made with blender
download (”save as”):
h.264/mpeg-4 - tested in quicktime and the free and open-source vlc
(640 x 480): high res (212 mb) - medium res (115 mb)
(320 x 240): small low res (55 mb)
or
watch (flash video on blip.tv)
*** note that the current blip.tv flash video conversion is not optimal for this video. until a solution is found downloading of at least the medium res (115 mb) version is recommended for an optimal viewing experience when watching the video (full screen) - thank you! ***
published under a creative commons by-nc-sa license
Blender 2.46 has been released yesterday (download from here) and one of the many changes worth mentioning are the updates to the Sequencer (video editing). This is such an elegant, minimal and yet powerful NLE…! To my knowledge there is no other video editing software, be it open-source like blender or a commercial solution, that runs on that many platforms (blender works under Linux, OS X, Windows, Solaris and OpenBSD and .blend files are 100% compatible across all of these platforms!).
There sure are some limitations, but after a first couple of tests and playing around with the 2.46 release candidate in the last couple of days I can only repeat that I am very impressed by the blender NLE. It has so much potential… Just don’t make the mistake of underestimating its capabilities when only quickly looking at the “Sequence” preset that blender offers by default. Read about it in the blender Wiki. There is room for improvement when it comes to certain workflows, but in a way this is also another strength of the blender NLE: it provides you with all the basics you need for non-linear video editing and lets you configure the tool in ways that are just not possible with traditional NLEs - since blender is of course a 3D application you can load 3D scenes directly (!) into the NLE or find a workflow where you combine the NLE with the Compositing Nodes.
I think with this update the blender VSE is now more than ready for wider, commercial use for (short) lengths video post production: it is free, open-source and runs on virtually any platform a production company might be using - no licensing fees have to be paid to anyone and if you need to make changes to the application, like adding a feature, you can always do it - it’s open-source! One reason why blender is growing so quickly is because individuals as well as companies constantly improve its (3D) capabilities and give code back to the project: so basically a small investment that one company makes can be shared with all others and instead of just getting one new feature you might get as many as in this latest 2.46 release - giving away something in the open-source world means getting more in return in the long run - everyone wins (except for a few big companies that have monopoly like power in the NLE world).
BTW, if anyone reading this is wondering about vivaldi rock: I was waiting for the new blender and I am rendering (again) now… There is still one technical issue that I have to solve, I was hoping there would be a fix for it in the new blender version but it looks like I have to try a workaround for now. More about that once the video is online… (If you don’t know: instead of checking back if the video is online already you can also simply subscribe to my video RSS feed: just (right) click/Copy Link Location and paste it in e.g. iTunes under Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast…: the video will then be downloaded automatically for you once I’ve posted it!)
a short teaser for my upcoming blender made 3d animation - the visual music video vivaldi rock
or
(”save as”)
*) wordpress.com does not support flash video from blip.tv
Sometime good things come to an end
I’ve made up my mind (final reason) to phase out all Apple products from my production pipeline: OS X, Final Cut Express and GarageBand (FCE 2.0.2 is now unusable, GarageBand 1.1 very close to unusable under Leopard).
I was thinking of investing in the Final Cut Studio package and new Apple hardware, but I really dislike Leopard, I dislike the way Apple treats its decade long customers, how they cheated me by selling me a buggy product like Leopard and made me loose valuable time (and money) by making me figure out on my own that Leopard never was ready for prime time on the PPC. This was most dishonest… Before that Apple had sold me a very noise iMac G5 - since bitten by Leopard I like to call it “my little Hoover” (Apple: ever tried sound editing…?).
That’s just it, folks! This is a goodbye from a platform I loved and promoted passionately (just ask any of my friends) over the course of many many years - I even made a bet with one of my best friends when things looked really bad for Apple in the mid-90’s. My friend said Apple would not make it, I was sure they would get their mainstream success sooner or later. My friend now ows me an apple, a McIntosh to be precise… Well, next time I see him I let him know that he may keep the wager - I have no more interest in it.
This was not an easy decision, but looking back Leopard was really the final reason. I had thought about alternatives for quite a while, but Ubuntu seemed not ready and I wanted to wait and see what Apple offers with Leopard: I was hoping it would be awesome and give me a good excuse to stick with the Apple ecosystem, the polished interface, its easy of use…
You can’t always get what you want
I let the Rolling Stones say this one for me:
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need
I wanted OS X and FCP but what I need is Ubuntu and a set of free and open-source apps that will allow me to replace the Final Cut Pro product line step by step over the coming months, possibly years: I am aware that today there is no finished open-source solution to FCP (we were introduced to Cinelerra at the TOSMI training last spring and unfortunately I was not convinced by what I saw, but I will have another look at it within the next couple of months).
What I plan to do now:
• document all free and open-source alternatives that seem attractive for high-end film- and video editing
• research, describe (write tutorials) and link to workflows and solutions in regards to open-source non-linear video editing and help bringing it to the mainstream
• help designing and developing (by giving feedback, discussing, bug testing) a free and open-source NLE of my choice
• discuss the possibility (and usefulness?!) of setting up a non-profit fund where film- and video editors worldwide can (if they wish anonymously) donate money to speed up the development of a fully featured, open-source alternative to Final Cut Pro
The last point will be a long term project, right now I’d say that the best existing open-source solutions seem about three to five years away from being able to compete on a feature-by-feature basis with FCP. But: I believe it is possible to start phasing out FCP of your production pipeline right now - read on for more!
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”
… is my favourite Albert Einstein quote. So what opportunities brings me the fact that I am getting rid of Apple in favour of a free and open-source non-linear editing solution…?
• cheaper, more customisable and expandable hardware (ever bought RAM from Apple…?)
• a free and open-source operating system (I’ll probably go for Ubuntu) that is being developed and tested in all possible openness (so it’s less likely to have a wild leopard bite you in the neck when you just don’t expect it)
• a wide range of high end free and open-source audio, video and 3D applications that can be customised in ways that closed-source commercial products like Apple’s Final Cut Pro just can’t be due to their closed-source nature
• the certainty that all my investments (bug reports, how-tos, donations, …) end up in a product that will always be available free of charge for me, for others and for future generations
• total independence from a multinational corporation like Apple that currently can decrease my productivity by selling me buggy software while being totally dishonest about possible shortcomings of their product
• support of an emerging Linux PC hardware market that brings cool design and usability to the former “beige boxes” world - this will further help with the adoption of Linux and speed up the process of frustrated Apple users like me migrating to the free software world
• Apple will have to try much harder to satisfy its user base and start innovating (instead of decorating) - competition is good for users on both sides
• I will be forced to learn new software and will have to solve problems along the way - perfect for improving my skills, deepening my knowledge
A start
Last summer the offline editing for my Blender made 3D animation Visual Machine no. 1 was done with Final Cut Express and it was onlined with the Blender NLE. Once I’ve got my PC hardware together and the latest Ubuntu is installed and configured, I’ll try using Kino for offline editing. I’ll keep testing workflows involving the Blender NLE (for onlining, possibly also for the actual editing). There are a couple of limitations you have to work around when doing this, but as I learn more about them I’ll be able to develop strategies and tools to overcome those limitations - one idea is to use (Python) scripts for automating certain cumbersome workflows - once tested those scripts could be shared in a handy library with the free software editing community and will allow:
• a highly optimised workflow within a particular app like Blender that currently might lack certain non-linear editing features
• the creation of a user friendly trans-apps workflow e.g. for combining the best of Kino with the best of Blender to have one package (incl. documentation) that can be distributed and promoted to e.g. Final Cut Pro users
I have done a bit of research already over the last two years while working on the P2P Audiovisual Guide and when collecting links for my remixlinks project. Now I have to figure out the whole thing in all its details, make tests, find solutions that work for me. But since my main project currently is a 3D animation and after that another one is already waiting, I will have to make this switch from the Apple to the Linux world in a series of smaller steps. Maybe by the end of the year I’ll have a first (set of) workflow(s) that I successfully tested and can recommend for production use - or maybe I will just be surprised by finding out what others already have in place and things will go much faster…?
Conclusion
I never really thought I’d come to this, but Apple messed up things with Leopard in an extreme kind of way (it’s not quite as bad as Vista seems to be, but for sure it feels like a Vista light) - and since Apple is not willing to listen (final reason) I have now come to the conclusion that it would be limiting or even foolish (and at least lazy) - to further rely on Apple when it comes to non-linear video editing.
Here a couple of search queries that my readers used in the last two days to find my iMac/Leopard blog entries (WordPress shows me those queries - without any other personal info attached to it (!) - on the admin page.)
I see very similar search queries every day.
No further comment…
my imac fan is too loud
imac fan noise leopard
“is an application which was downloaded”
mac os x 10.5 leopard is an application
jfif preview os x
turn off “is an application which was do
After maybe 30 min. this post on the Apple forum that I just made got removed. Now I know why I felt like making a screen-shot…! *Update, 05.04.08: to be precise the first “screen-shot” is a .pdf made via “Save as PDF”, the second one is a real screen-shot. You can see the URL on top of the .pdf one: it is the same as on the other one…! - And my forum message is still off-line today, so I take this as Apple’s answer to my question about if they can fix these problems. Not good.*
My forum’s message URL currently says:
“Error: you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category.”
(Note: the first screen-shot was made with the current Firefox Beta, the second one with Safari.)
Looks like someone from the PR department at Apple is trying to censor me?! Well done, Apple! This is the internet, people do talk about these things…! (And I am sure I will share this story with my dear Apple Final Cut Pro User Groups colleagues!) And this is the text that someone from the Apple forums just removed - I believe it was an appropriate and tasteful posting for the “Using your iMac G5″ forum at discussions.apple.com - Apple seems to think differently…
Dear Apple: fix Leopard + iMac G5 (fan noise, sleep problems, bugs, …)!
Dear Apple,
in case you want to keep me as a costumer I ask you to quickly fix all the current issues with Leopard and G5 iMacs. My iMac has become almost unusable since I upgraded (slow, excessive fan noise, narcoleptic condition aka sleep problems and of course the long list of Leopard bugs that made this the worst upgrade since I started using Macs back at System 7). Read my full blog entry - not very flattering - here: “Leopard is killing my iMac - next stop Ubuntu…?” http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/leopard-is-killing-my-imac-next-stop-ubuntu/
I’d like to be able to continue using Macs and stay on this platform, but if 10.5.3 does not fix the main issues (and 10.5.x all the others in due time) I am forced to downgrade/upgrade back to 10.3.9 - and then I don’t think I will be investing in Apple hardware again.
I was sincerely hoping that Leopard would fix my iMac’s G5 fan noise problem and as we all know those problems just got worse.
This might be the end of a long and wonderful friendship - when one side does not keep its promises (deliver high quality soft- and hardware) why should I stick with you…? I feel cheated - so far. Apple, can you still deliver…? If so: show me! Now…
And Apple: here the link of the day for you. Long live free and open-source software!
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