Apertus Newsletter - December 2011
Sebastian
you will find a summary of recent updates surrounding the Apertus Open
Source Cinema Project.
Topics:
The New Newsletter, Anniversary of Forums & Official Google+ Page
This is the maiden voyage of the 'new' newsletters, with community
members Sasha (myself) and flavio serving as the maintainers. Each
letter will be available in multiple languages, so you will need to
subscribe to your language of choice. These new newsletters will
arrive straight in your inbox on the first Thursday of every month.
They will kick ass.
If you want to receive the newsletter in a different language please
subscribe to the corresponding Google group:
Spanish
http://groups.google.com/group/apertus-newsletter-espanol
French
http://groups.google.com/group/apertus-newsletter-francais
Catalan:
http://groups.google.com/group/apertus-newsletter-catala
November 3rd 2011 marked the first anniversary of our Independence.
The Official Project forums (http://apertus.org/forums/) were created
on November 3rd 2010 after the Apertus project was abruptly exiled
from DVInfo.net. We'd like to thank everyone involved at present for
helping build the inclusive and open-minded community. Without you,
we'd have had far less success fuelling our project up to this point
and into the future. We're on the road leading up to a spectacular
horizon, 1400+ forum posts strong and it's looking like there might
also be a special surprise or two just around the corner concerning
the use of a new sensor.
In other news, Apertus now has a GooglePlus Profile (https://
plus.google.com/105838537533483168881/about).
Future Developments
Elphel, Inc. has been making solid progress refining their algorithms
for panoramic photo and video stitching (using material captured by
the Eyesis). Research is now being undertaken into 3D scene
reconstruction from the said panoramic imagery. For more info, see
this post on the Elphel Development Blog:
http://blog.elphel.com/2011/10/subpixel-registration-and-distrortion-measurement/#more-3495
With the majority of their attention directed toward the Eyesis
Project (http://www3.elphel.com/eyesis-4pi), Elphel, Inc. have made no
further announcements regarding the release date of the Elphel 373. In
response to this, a small group of Apertus members have begun
considering designs for a custom module that will attach to the front
end of the current Elphel 353 and house a new Super-35mm sized sensor.
This is taking place independently from Elphel, Inc.
Development of New Apertus Camera Enclosure
There has been talk on the forums that we should develop a new
enclusure for the Apertus camera, offering better weather protection
for the modules composing the camera system. Keep watching this space
(http://apertus.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=242) for future
developments
New Footage (New short clip to post every month? 1-2min length?)
There is a noticeable lack of high quality footage online showcasing
the strengths and capabilities of the Apertus system. Consider this is
a call out to current Elphel 353 owners to make a 1-2 minute short
film or clip, uploading their work once every 3-4 months so the world
can see just what our community and cinema camera system are capable
of achieving.
The Elphel Developer Camera Pool is still up. And it's not only for
developers, as the name suggests. If you or your team are interested
in applying, see here for more info: http://apertus.org/en/sponsored-hardware
First Global Meetup at The Libre Software Meeting, 2012 (Geneva,
Switzerland)
Apertus has been granted a stall at the 'Libre Software Meeting' (LSM)
2012, "the largest non-commercial event in the world entirely
dedicated to free software". This is fantastic news as we'll be
holding our first Global Community meet-up here, alongside the LSM's
workshops, talks, discussions, events and hall full of booths. The
event is estimated to attract anywhere between 5000-6000 visitors and
will be taking place in Geneva, Switzerland on July 7th-12th, 2012.
Congratulations to everybody involved, as this is going to be an
amazing experience!
Call for questions/interview
We are interested in hearing back from you: the community and life
force binding this project together. As such, we would like to know
what questions we could use in an interview with an established
artist, film-maker and/or cinematographer. As an example, what would
you ask film-maker David Lynch if we were granted an audience with
him? Send your questions in via the following URL: http://apertus.org/en/contact
Recapping significant achievements in 2011:
> Community member Nathan Clark used Apertus to create the first stereo 3D footage in an open-source camera system.
>StereoCamCheck has been developed by community member Hugh Fisher, allowing Real-Time debayering of stereo 3D footage. According to Nathan, 'the quality is amazing... (Better than the camera's built in, actually)... and it's doing it in realtime on the GPU- ...with two streams.'
> Apertus has been successfully utilised by Sebastian in time-lapse motion photography
> A rudimentary GNU Workflow has been developed by Flavio for using Apertus footage in an Open-Source Film Pipeline
> Development of a new Apertus Website is underway
> The search continues for an Official Logo representing the vision of the project and Apertus camera system
Here ends the December Newsletter.
Happy shooting,
Sasha