Video Penguins
Jan 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Dan Ochiva
Hollywood loves Linux, but is the world of video production ready to start adopting the open-source OS?
 Film Gimp, here in a Mac OS X version (Windows version to follow shortly), started as a Linux alternative to Photoshop. Since then, it’s been used in many feature films and commericals. |
Linux is the future, we hear. While Microsoft, Apple, and Sun sell ever more complex and expensive versions of their products, rumblings of discontent grow against what some see as OS tyranny.
Today, the Linux programmer community — once made up primarily of Jolt Cola-swigging hackers creating web server apps — now grows at a snappy pace as computer industry heavyweights IBM and HP throw vast resources toward prepping this open-source OS. (Open-source software makes the underlying computer code available to everyone to tweak and change as they like.)
Linux derives further support from countries around the world, as India, China, and the European Union embark on R&D to increase its use.
But what's that mean to those of us involved in creating moving images?
Hollywood Goes Open-Source
Over the past three years, as Intel-based workstations caught up with and surpassed SGI's storied machines, the Hollywood community has moved from employing Linux solely to operate massive renderfarms to incorporating Linux ports of top graphics, animation, compositing, and effects packages such as Alias|Wavefront Maya, Side Effects Houdini, Softimage|XSI, Kaydara Motionbuilder (formerly Filmbox), Pixar's Renderman, Silicon Grail's Rayz, and Nothing Real's Shake. (Of the latter two compositing packages, both acquired by Apple in 2002, Apple Shake continues in a Linux version.)
PDI/DreamWorks, ILM, Digital Domain, and others also code considerable amounts of in-house Linux software to generate unique looks and solve specific production problems.
Linux software often turns up as a free open-source program. For example, another top graphics package, Film Gimp, started out as a Linux and SGI Irix-based paint and touch-up program for the film industry. Film Gimp became an important industry tool in 1998 when Silicon Grail, along with Los Angeles-based effects house Rhythm & Hues, donated coding talent and hired additional staff to create a powerful Photoshop alternative. Now a community of film industry-related coders, aided by Sam Richards and others at Sony Pictures Imageworks, continues to improve the software. A Mac version is out now and Windows is soon to release. Recent film projects employing Film Gimp include Scooby-Doo and Stuart Little 2. (See filmgimp.sourceforge.net.)
All right, so governments and Hollywood are sold on penguin power. But can Linux deliver similar top-quality products for video production? Can free software ever replace packages like Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Xpress DV?
The short answer at this point: don't lose any sleep, Adobe, Apple, and Avid.
Linux for Video?
“Linux is the future, and it has had a big win in the motion picture industry,” says Film Gimp release manager Robin Rowe. “But video is much more immature in Linux. There is nothing comparable to Final Cut Pro, for instance.” A partner at MovieEditor.com, Rowe develops software for motion picture and Internet applications at this Richmond, Calif.-based technology development company.
While the top graphics tools used in commercials and feature films are available in Linux, Rowe notes, Adobe, Apple, and Avid don't make Linux versions of their video apps at this point.
To understand why, it helps to think from the manufacturer's point of view: faced with thin profit margins in the highly competitive NLE market, there's no compelling reason to devote critical staff resources to developing complex software aimed at a relatively small, diffuse group of hacker enthusiasts who also happen to work in video production.
“Avid supports Linux in areas where we have had significant customer demand,” says Matt Allard, product-marketing manager for Avid. “It's really a matter of customer demand and the creative environment in which our customers work.”
While the situation may change in time, the small Linux market can't begin to compare to the many thousands who buy NLE software for Mac and Windows-based systems. Besides, since Apple and Microsoft handle all the many aspects of today's complex operating systems, manufacturers can concentrate on application-related development.
As for open-source Linux editing programs, the two more established packages, Kino and Cinelerra (formerly Broadcast 2000), provide bare-bones toolsets, with promises to add more capabilities as soon as their creators find the time.
Available in a .60 version at press time, Kino (kino.schirmacher.de/article/static/2article/archive/0) offers basic cuts-only editing with a non-timeline windows environment. Edit control, however, comes only via keystrokes, not with mouse clicks. The Kino website also relates that the crucial 1394 (FireWire) code is still a work in progress. Be prepared to hack: Setting up Linux libraries and downloading other necessary code remains part of the program's setup procedure.
Heroine Virtual Ltd.'s Cinelerra (www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3) is not actually a single program, but five different tools to be used together. Described as allowing “free-form” editing, Cinelerra's stated capabilities include unlimited tracks, 16-bit YUV compositing, SMP (symmetrical multi-processor) optimizations, network rendering (i.e. renderfarm) support, video capture support, realtime effects, layer masking, and camera/projector panning.
But according to Robin Rowe, once a technical director at an NBC station, many users find the program difficult to use since it lacks documentation, and the GUI requires non-standard, “counterintuitive” actions. That complexity is acknowledged up front, as Heroine Virtual (actually a one-person project) presents Cinelerra as designed for Linux gurus. As the website advises, “If ease of use, simplicity, and convenience are your thing,” you had better go elsewhere.)
 Cinelerra is split into five separate tools for video editing. The Linux-based editor is capable of 16-bit YUV compositing, realtime effects, and background rendering. |
Drew Perttula, frustrated by the DV editing programs available for Linux, decided to roll his own solution in the true do-it-yourself penguin spirit. Perttula, based in Berkeley, Calif., started writing his Cuisine nonlinear editing program last September to edit seven hours of footage into an 8-minute documentary.
The design of a basic footage-capturing and logging capability came first, with the timeline editor completed soon after. For mixing audio, Perttula first created an effects plug-in architecture. The actual mixing would be handled by a plug-in. This approach is fairly typical of Linux development. In designing programs that need to accomplish many different tasks — such as editing, graphics, audio, and compositing — Linux programmers often create a framework to handle the basic chores and then leave it up to other hackers to write plug-ins to take care of other tasks.
“The plan is to let the users, which will still include me, add their own features as they are needed,” says Perttula, who has begun editing another documentary. For that one, he'll need to create a method of working with up to five simultaneous cameras and wild (unsynched) sound.
As with a great many independent Linux coders, Perttula makes Cuisine available to anyone who cares to download the files (cuisine.bigasterisk.com). A more or less complete, tidied-up version of the nonlinear editor should be ready this month. Then it's up to the Linux community to write additional plug-ins and, just as Perttula has done, share its best coding with the world.
Adobe, Apple, and Avid will not lose their market share with the release of Cuisine. But it's folks like Drew Perttula and the quickly growing Linux community that one day could offer the next NLE program you reach for.
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