RE: [Fsfe-uk] Upcoming Exhibitions

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 01:32, Robert J. Munro wrote:
> > That all said, if anyone could suggest at event where people would be
> > receptive to our message, please pipe up.
> 
> Has anyone any experience of Video editing with Linux?
> 
> There's Videofourm at Wembley on 11th-13th Febuary. Now might be a good time
> to see if they have anything on the last minute principle, if someone can
> bring a firewire DV editing setup that runs on free software.
> http://www.videoforum.co.uk/register1.htm

This is probably a good example of the boundaries we ought to be
pushing. Video is a great example of proprietary data formats and
patents holding back Free Software, yet as Robert pointed out, there are
a lot of Free Software packages that you can use for video.

> Has anyone used any of this stuff? What did you think of it? I'm interested
> because my brother does a lot of video stuff with Adobe Premier, and I'd
> love it if he could do some on Linux.

It's held back by a number of stumbling blocks. Firstly, you need good
hardware to be able to 'do' video: often, developers don't have access
to the requisite hardware. Second, if you want to do edits in real-time,
this often requires advanced hardware support of framebuffer cards,
etc., and we know what getting hardware specs out of manufacturers is
like. Thirdly, patents and closed specs. stop people implementing common
video formats (MPEG, QuickTime [esp. Sorensen Video], any Microsoft
format, etc.) - this isn't so much a problem for broadcast-quality edit
systems (they don't tend to use compression), but is a real problem for
anyone at the SOHO end of the market, which is where Free Software often
penetrates first.

That all said, the Rosegarden project did a great demonstration of pro
audio editing/mixing at the Linux Expo in London last year, and it
really did pull people in to watch. I'm fairly sure they didn't actually
have much planned either, it seemed to be just messing with instruments
(I'm sure they would refer to it as 'jamming' or some such :). It's not
easy to pull together, and I think there would probably be easier steps
(web video / video conferencing, esp. now GnomeMeeting is so great) that
full-blown broadcast post production systems :)

Cheers,

Alex.

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