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Update #37: Perspective
I think the Mac Performance Guide hit the nail on the head:
As I wrote back in December, Apple shows a disregard for its professional users in the way it arbitrarily changes programs like Final Cut, and when it also provides no guidance as to whether a crucial product might continue. When there is credible speculation of the Mac Pro being discontinued, Apple's silence speaks volumes. Professionals need to know they have a path forward, any vague guidance in the affirmative would address the issue.
When we jumped into this Novacut adventure (nearly 2 years ago now), we choose Ubuntu as our primary platform because we felt that Ubuntu would provide the best long-term, low-risk ecosystem for creative professionals. The strengths and trajectory of Ubuntu were clear, and my spidey-sense was telling me that we couldn't count on Apple to continue to make an OS and hardware suitable for professional storytellers.
Back in July 2010, my take on Apple was definitely a subtle reading of the tea-leaves, and I easily could have been wrong. But as luck would have it, we played the right cards. Today I would feel silly if we had bet on Apple.
If you're a creative professional who depends on Apple products to do your job, I think now is the time for some soul searching, the time to think about risk-reduction. Likewise if you're in the business of selling software or hardware that depends on the Apple pro creative ecosystem. Of course, I'm just a some guy on the internet (plus I have obvious bias), so please weigh the evidence for yourself and act in your own best interest.
But for what it's worth, at this point I'm personally 100% convinced that Apple is a dead-end road for creative professionals, and that Ubuntu is the creative platform of the future. Apple is a publicly traded company, and its board of directors are obligated to maximize Apple's profits. So I recommend keeping a keen eye on where Apple is making money. As much as it pains me to see artists and small companies blindsided by, say, FCPX or the mysteriously disappeared Mac Pro, the harsh reality is this is just the result of Apple executives doing their job, and doing it well.
And Novacut isn't the only pro video editor with an eye on Ubuntu. Last month at NAB, EditShare demoed Lightworks on Ubuntu. I think it's quite telling that EditShare is now clearly prioritizing the Linux port of Lightworks over the OSX port. EditShare seems very in-tune with their customers, and I have no doubt this flip is because there is now more demand for Lightworks on Linux than on OSX.
Momentum
If I sound extra enthusiastic, it's because last week we were at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Oakland, California. Although it was our fourth UDS, there was an electricity in the air that really set this one apart. For example, Canonical announced they expect Ubuntu to ship on 5% of all PCs sold next year. This is deeply important for us, because if you can't readily buy great Ubuntu hardware, there's not much point in Novacut running on Ubuntu.
Speaking of great Ubuntu hardware, I had the pleasure of interviewing Carl Richell, the CEO of System76. We really hit it off with the System76 folks, and they just happen to have a passion for bringing artists great hardware on which to create. If you're looking for a laptop on which to run Novacut, I highly recommend their new Gazelle Professional, which will be released this Monday (May 21st). How does this sound: quad-core Intel i7 (ivy bridge), 16GB of RAM, and a 95% NTSC gamut 1920x1080 matte display!
We were hired to film for the week, and our main responsibility was filming the Ubuntu Cloud Summit. Not only can Ubuntu hold its own against OSX on the desktop, Ubuntu is also an absolute champ in the cloud and on the server. Ubuntu isn't just lower risk than OSX, it's a superior technology on which we can build a far more practical and productive solution for storytellers.
Novacut is designed for distributed rendering and storage, so that you can spread both rendering and storage across any combination of your workstations, local clusters, and the cloud. In fact, the Novacut and Dmedia "servers" that will run in the cloud are the exact same "servers" that run locally on your desktop (which saves us a huge amount of work, by the way). We can do this because we're building on the same core Ubuntu platform all the way from the desktop to the cloud.
The same Ubuntu that will be shipping on 5% of PCs next year also has the server muscle to power Instagram and Wikipedia and the cluster that rendered Avatar. Ubuntu even runs on ARM-powered devices, on everything from the humble Vodafone Webbook sold in South Africa to this 192-core Calxeda server. No other platform currently has this kind of reach. Novacut wants to help the storytellers of the world tell their stories on the world stage, so a big reach we need indeed.
Story Arc
While at UDS, I also had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu. Did you know that before starting Ubuntu, Mark flew to space aboard a Russian Soyuz and spent a week on the International Space Station? I reckon something about the perspective of seeing the world from space played a part in Mark deciding Ubuntu was the most important thing to do next.
Did you know I was lucky enough to be in Porto Alegre, Brazil when both Ubuntu (at DebConf4) and the Creative Commons (at FISL) were first announced? And that before my trip to Brazil, I spent a year train-hopping and hitch-hiking around the US, daydreaming about ways in which technology could help empower storytellers?
I think we have all the ingredients here for a wonderful story, where artists and rebels and dreamers struggle together and, against all odds, slay every dragon that stood between them and a more beautiful world.
Update #36: Novacut 12.04, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
I'm happy to introduce you to both Novacut 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
Backer list
I really apologize about this, but no backer list this month. We were fixing bugs and serious usability issues right up to the release, and there are still a few glaring usability issues we didn't get to. So in the end, this month didn't seem like the right time to add the backer list on our website and in the editor. For me, I kinda see the backer list as the delivery of our good, so I want it to feel special.
Heck, considering how hard we all work on this, and how much we deeply appreciate our 802 Kickstarter backers, and everyone who supported us through PayPal, everyone who backed our first Kickstarter (the one that failed), our friends and family who have loaned us money countless times, every journalist who gave us the time of day, everyone in the open-source community who encouraged us and offered us guidance, the epic efforts of Ian Hex, the artists who made videos like this and this to help explain Novacut to other artists, not to mention the zillion artists who have taken the time to help us understand what you need... I don't want this backer list to just feel special, I want it to feel down right ceremonial.
To be clear, once said goods (cloud beta too!) are delivered, that's not the end of the Novacut story. It's just when we level-up at the end of a meaty chapter. Remember, we see tools like the editor as just a means to an end. Personally speaking, I don't want a video editor, I want more Firefly. Which is perfect as I'm certain that no artist really wants a video editor either... they want to tell their story, get it to market, and earn a living doing so. And not get canceled by Fox.
I also want all the Fireflies that should have been but weren't because they got jammed up by some gatekeeper. You might think of Novacut as our take on OCD fandom writ large. And we think a darn good business model, one that can fund the development of tools like the editor for many decades to come.
Where does all the value in the entertainment industry come from? Artists. So we're here to serve artists, period.
Try it!
There are still rough-spots. Multicam and audio have yet to come. Novacut will continue to get better every month. But all the same, I still think that now is a great time to see what all the fuss is about.
It's wonderfully easy to install software through the Ubuntu Software Center. However, as Novacut isn't yet in any official Ubuntu software channel, the process is a touch more difficult.
So to kick the tires, please follow these instructions to install Novacut on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Just ask us if you need help or get stuck!
You probably want to start by watching this so you understand a bit about Dmedia, and then watch this to get a good tour of Novacut.
Source code
You can download the source code from each component's Launchpad project page:
This is just the beginning
Think about that. Thank you, everyone!
Update #35: Cutting with Novacut 12.03
Well, we did it! As you can see in this video, our core cutting workflow is now usable. To be fair, there are still some major rough spots and we recommend you wait till 12.04 to really kick the tires. But tires can be kicked today should you want to.
Special thanks to James Raymond for putting in the epic amount of coding and UI work this month needed to make this happen!
Rewards
We haven't forgotten the outstanding Kickstarter rewards, of course.
First, we have the many folks whose names will go on the Novacut website and in the editor app itself. We've waited to do this because we thought it would be more meaningful once Novacut was actually usable. We feel Novacut 12.04 is the right milestone, plus it's a special release for us as it corresponds with the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. (Yes, we copied Ubuntu's version scheme, hehe.) So during the next month we'll get these backer lists together and give people the chance to make sure everything is correct before we publish them at the release of 12.04.
Second, we have the 17 lucky (and generous) people who will be the first to try real-time collaborative editing with Novacut, during the private beta of the Novacut cloud services. Realistically, we're probably another 2 or 3 months away from this, but we'll keep you updated as we get closer. We really appreciate everyone's patience on this, we know it's been a long haul!
And lastly, a lot of people who chose the 30 minute or hour chat with us haven't done so yet. If you're not interested, that's perfectly fine. But if you are interested, please let us know! We don't want to loose track of anyone!
Get the bits
Packages are available in the Novacut Stable Releases PPA for Ubuntu Oneiric and Precise. And you can download the source code from each component's Launchpad project page:
Mark your calendars!
Novacut 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will be released on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Expect greatness.
Update #34: Announcing the Novacut 12.02 components
Try as we might, we couldn't tie up all the loose ends to get our cutting workflow usable. In a live edit we can now adjust slices and reorder them in a sequence, all with real-time collaboration.
But the pieces we didn't finish are adding clips into the edit (from Dmedia), and creating slices of those clips in the first place. James Raymond has done great prototypes of these, but we didn't finish integrating all the pieces and making them work on live edits. Next month?
Doodling
In our user research for Novacut, a theme that comes up over and over is a fear of making certain types of changes in one's edit, a fear of "breaking things". And this is a serious problem because it means existing software tends to scare editors away from experimentation. So we've put a lot of work into making sure changing your Novacut edit doesn't have unintended side-effects.
We also want you to be able to doodle in the margins, so to speak, to have a place to stage your thoughts without yet causing any change in the edit. The first place we're experimenting with this is in the big box labeled "Doodle Here":
The idea is that when you first create a slice, it doesn't have to go anywhere yet, it can just hang out in the doodle area. Or if you want to remove a slice from the sequence, just drag it back into the doodle area... that way you can remove a slice from the sequence without loosing that slice. I really wished we could have gotten this all finished for the release because I'm so excited for people to try it. Next month!
Thanks to all the artists!
For this month's special thanks, I want to thank the many artists who constantly help steer us is the right direction. Of course this includes all the members of the Vimeo Novacut Artist Diaries, and many others, but there are a few people I want to thank specifically:
- Josh Bernhard
- Bracey Smith
- Hanna Sköld
- Eric Adler
- Antonio Roberts
- Christie Strong
- Arin Crumley
- Joe Wilson
- Christie Grinham
- Tadeusz Cantwell
- Daniel Blanco
- Josh Brown
- Martin Reisch
- Kris Navarro
- David J. Fulde
We've been really touched by how many busy professionals have been willing to spend time giving us feedback and guidance. With your help, we've been able to take Novacut in some bold directions, yet stay on track... because many kind artists have given us a nudge back onto the road whenever we've veered off.
And for anyone thinking of designing an open-source pro creative app: please start by talking to your pro creative users! There's no sense building a great solution to the wrong problem!
Get the bits
Packages are available in the Novacut Stable Releases PPA for Ubuntu Oneiric and Precise. And you can download the source code from each component's Launchpad project page:
Contribute to 12.03 and beyond!
We always release on the last Thursday of the month. The 12.03 components will be released on Thursday March 29, 2012, and development is already underway. To see what's in store for the next releases, checkout the 12.03 milestones:
That's all, folks!
Thanks to everyone who is helping make this dream a reality!
Cheers,
Jason Gerard DeRose
Update #33: Announcing the Novacut 12.01 components
Apologies that this is late. The release went out on time, but between the GStreamer 1.0 Hackfest and Linaro Connect, I haven't had time to write the release notes. I'll keep this brief as we're only about a week away from the 12.02 release now.
What's new
In Novacut proper, we reverted to the Python2 based renderer and now have it running as a DBus service (so we can render in the background even if the Novacut UI isn't open). We've been abusing the renderer with randomly generated test edits, and it's been quite reliable thus far. We didn't get our first cutting workflow all tied together for 12.01, but it should land in time 12.02.
We've also been doing a lot of UI prototyping, including this new type of storyboard view:
Special thanks
- Thanks to Barry Warsaw for porting dbus-python to Python3
- Thanks to David Jordan, James Raymond, and Tara Oldfield for all their hard work filming at Linaro Connect
- Thanks to Amber Graner for doing so many great interviews, and for letting us film them!
Get the bits
Packages are available in the Novacut Stable Releases PPA for Ubuntu Oneiric and Precise. And you can download the source code from each component's Launchpad project page. Whoa, seven components and counting:
Contribute to 12.02 and beyond!
We always release on the last Thursday of the month. The 12.02 components will be released on Thursday February 23, 2012, and development is already underway. To see what's in store for the next releases, checkout the 12.02 milestones:
That's all, folks!
Thanks to everyone who is helping make this dream a reality!
Cheers,
Jason Gerard DeRose
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A ticket to see the future of editing. This gets you access to our collaborative cloud during our private beta period. You'll experience the future first, and your friends will be totally jealous.
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All of the above, plus a chance to meet the Novacut team for a day, have a BBQ and chat about filmmaking. Backer's travel to meet the team at own expense.
Project By
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Jason DeRose
Lead Developer, Project Visionary
Tara Oldfield
Artist Liaison, Community Manager, Photographer, & Filmmaker
Akshat Jain
Developer Outreach, Hyperactive Awesomeness
James Raymond
Designer, HTML5 Guru
