Open source programs for digital media!

I know there are already a couple of threads on linux systems and some other open source software, this one is really here to discuss open source software for digital media.

There was recently an article in 3D world magazine about open source software for 3D modelling, textures animation etc, and an article about the soon to be released film "Elephant's Dream" which will be the first animation to be animated and produced entirely with open source software. Now i've been discovering more and more Open Source stuff lately, but i had no idea there would even be an attempt to replicate an all round 3D modelling programme, when the most popular commercial software retails for something in the region of £3000-£5000.

My worry is that i don't know enough about Open Source programming to be able to get the most out of any of this kind of software. I've spent the last two weeks fretting over a Mambo website and also just installed Blender (for 3D modelling) looked at the interface, and yelped, but then i did that with 3ds max too... but that's not the main thing right now, what i'd absolutely love right now, is an Open Source software for DV video editing

So for all the Open Source folk out there, i've heard about Jahshaka which supposedly can be used for editing, but has anyone tried this and how does it compare to say Adobe Premiere Pro, or is it even suitable? Does anyone know of any others?? And are they going to support .avi and .mpg2 given that at some point this is going to become a DVD?

Edit: just read over this post, i hope there's not too much jargon in it, i'd just like to hear from anyone whose tried Open Source equivalents, for image editing, digital video editing, animation, or other exciting things. I'm intrigued by it's potential but a little bit scared because i'm not a computer programmer

Hola,
I've been wandering down more or less the same path. Blender is fantastic once you get you head around it. They hid a few video tuts on the main site. Theres a pretty good one explaining the intire interface fairly well.
Link hunt.....
Tada http://blender.org/cms/Getting_started.400.0.html

Jahshaka is usable but it's a serious step down from premiere or final cut though. But it'll get the job done if it has to. Blender itself also has minor video editing possibilties. There was one other decent OSS video editor somewhere. I'll have to get back to you on that one though.

Open office is another farly cool FOSS prog. And the gimp is a sweet photoshop replcement.

Sweet! thanks Mot, will definately have a sit down sometime and go through that tutorial.

I've installed Jahshaka, and will have a try of that one too, but if you remember that other name it would be fantastic!

* Avidemux
* AviSynth
* Cinelerra
* DScaler [44]
* GNU VCDImager
* Jahshaka
* Kino
* LiVES
* Mpeg2Schnitt [45]
* VirtualDub
* VirtualDubMod

Theres a list. Cinerella is the one i was talking about but it's linux only. VirtualDub is good for capture and basic cleaning your clips up but does'nt have any transistions function.

Heres another funny little page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_software_packages

wow so many more than i thought! Mot, you rock

Still would be great to hear other people's experience of OSS software. Would be interesting to see how much the industry makes use of this software, or if it might do more so, after the release of Elephant's dream...

Ooh, goodies

By coincidence, I've ben looking for open source software for digital media this weekend because not only can I not afford the standard software, but I also can't seem to install the preferred IP blocker which would've assisted me in downloading it illegally

After several failures in my attempts to install GIMP properly, I found GIMPshop which I've been playing with all day as I'm ill and not able to do much else. It's quite cheeky as it's GIMP hacked into a Photoshop style - and for free

You need to install GTK+ runtime for the gimp to install correctly.

Right here ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.8/win32/gtk+-2.8.18.zip

I'll check out gimpshop too, thanks for the pointer

I did install that, but to no avail. It's OK, I'm sure GIMPshop and that list will keep me busy enough

Rightio,
I reckon your right anyway, gimpshop looks cool, certainly if your used to the phtotshop layout.

it must be a good day for open source I got Gimp working although it warned me of some potential conflict errors during installation, so i'm hoping it will be ok. I'm liking the sounds of Gimpshop though! (I can see my harddrive is going to get so clogged up with all these different installations, that there won't be room to save my work )

Yup I got a confilct error or two when installing it aswel. Functions fine though.

Been trying to suss out oss video editors today aswel, but at the end of the day it still boils down to jahshaka for windows users.

i got distracted by other things, so didn't try them all yet, besides that i've mislaid the software i need to capture off my camera, so got nothing to try it out with yet. I finally made a breakthrough with my mambo website today though so things are looking up

You should try Drupal for web sites - it blows the socks off Mambo

I'll post something helpful soon

that was pretty helpful sym! I haven't heard about that one on my OSS adventures so far... but my company's server has mambo preinstalled, hence why it's mambo that currently occupies my life

For websites i strongly recomend e107 CMS(content managment system)
http://e107.org/

..and another goodie is xnview, for picture/media browsing, converting aso.
http://www.xnview.com/

Both are open source(GPL) of course.

A few things yo remember when you're using open source software:

Open source software is never free. You've not paid money for it, so the chances of the people who made it being paid for it are slim. Some of the money the OOS people get is from consultant work, and a lot of updates come from clients wanting a feature. In the projects I work on (Drupal is one of them) there are a few people offering money for X feature or module, but most of the updates come from the community, for free.

If you use an open source program, you should always give some time or money back to the people who made it. You don't have to be a programmer, or technical at all to help out. If you are a programmer you can test beta versions and patches or submit patches if you find a bug that you can fix. If you aren't a programmer you can report bugs (be sure to read up on the projects requirements and search before you do...), write documentation, post in the forums when n00bs ask questions and give feedback on updates.

A common reply to a request for a new feature is “we look forward to your contribution”. It's not that they are being rude, it's just that these people (including me) work on these things 'for fun' around full time jobs. It's only fair to add to the project in any way you can.

Having said that, there is a load of rubbish open source software out there, so you'll have to try out a load and sort of find the least worst of the lot – then make it better! Some software changes at an amazing rate. Drupal has about 2 major versions a year, and it becomes a lot better each time. Some of the software I use on my computer at home (I'm on Linux) is being added to daily and bug fixes or features are worked in with in days. It's a good idea to check out the commit log or forums to get on idea of how active the program is.

In short, open source software is a dynamic, always changing thing that only works because everyone that uses it helps out. *mutters about free lunches*

erm... haven't read most of this thread, but since it was on the first page here and it looked like a similar enough topic...

anyone know a good cheap/free alternative to ms publisher?

http://www.scribus.net/ will do - although if you want something like publisher you might have to go in to the source code and randomly remove bits so it doesn't actually work, and then add some code that makes every file 500% bigger than it needs to be.

rofl

I'm using Irfan view as an alternative to windows' picture preview thing. Its much of a muchness, but Irfan has a couple of cool bits, like folder changing when you reach the last picture.

And it can open a whole lot more stuff.

And, for the oldie but goodie, klm codecs are gooood. Real alternate player, quicktime alternate, dvd codecs, a player that'll do anything.

I likes it. I likes it a lot.

Isn't it odd that nearly free programs are often so much better than the tripe manufacturers/developers pump out and charge big bucks for?

hehe, yeah that's because of all the reasons sym listed above. Everyone contributes, so it ends up doing evey damn thing possible The only commercial company that seems to do similar (i.e. listen to people...) is Adobe, hats off to them, every new version of photoshop has something even cooler. (well that may not be entirely accurate, but i notice it more in photoshop )

Still haven't tried Blender properly but that would be the proof of the open source pudding especially as 3Ds max is riddled with odd bugs (although they may have improved it since the version i had in college), and yet you have to mortgage your house to buy a standalone license...

Have a flick through:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_software_packages

http://www.usewisdom.com/computer/windows/oss.html

Has a good number of things on it.

povray to make frames, mencoder to encode them into video.

They're both very solid back ends with huge amounts of options, and are pretty text intensive (not much GUI on povray, console only for mencoder), but both have a variety of front ends for modelling/editing.

any suggestions for open source video editing software?

lives

kino

or cinelerra

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ImageJ is great for all sorts of image manipulation (not for creation) and is perfect for organising and batch converting images (amongst other things).

I think it's a must for anyone who does scientific imaging as it's better than any of the proprietary packages I've used (of which there are a few though I'm not naming names).

It really comes into its own in image analysis and has such an easy macro-writing language that even I can use it! The other good thing is that there's so many plugins and macros out there that you'll rarely need to write a macro

btw, I agree with MiG on Irfanview being great for viewing images

Ooh, and the J in ImageJ = Java, so cross-platform goodness for all!
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