Apertus Newsletter - October 2012
flavio soares
Apertus Newsletter - October 2012
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another release of our monthly newsletter!
Mission: [ ]possible
As we have announced in our last release, the guys from the Kinoraw project - Carlos Padial and Simón Vialás - will attend the Blender Conference 2012, on October 11-12-13, in Amsterdam. Now, what will they be presenting there?
For those who haven’t seen the Software section of our forums in the last few days, Kinoraw has reached an awesome landmark! They have established a fully functional workflow for editing JP4 RAW files generated by the Elphel camera in Blender, using the program’s Video Sequence Editor and Compositor modes.
Technically speaking, they edit the videos using the JP4 still frames that come from Elphel’s footage. Then they convert the JP4 to DNG files, and the DNG to EXR files, which are then brought inside Blender. All these processes are done via Python scripting, and you can check their stunning progress in the two videos below. If you want more details, check out their technical article.
[ video 1: http://vimeo.com/50247217 ] | [video 2: http://vimeo.com/50218807 ]
Opening Hollywood together
Kinoraw’s quest at Blender Conference is to draw the attention of the Blender community to our efforts. Here, they are seeking developers who can help create the functionality for native debayering/deblocking of RAW video files inside the program’s Video Sequence Editor. Once this is accomplished, it will be an impressive feat! But Kinoraw will not be alone in Amsterdam. We have called in reinforcements for a second mission in town.
Does the Film Industry Want and Need Open Source Cameras? Tobias Deml is seeking an answer to question. As an aspiring cinematographer working for Prodigium Pictures (based in Los Angeles, California), Tobias has decided to lead an effort now nicknamed Project Hollywood. Once he got bit by the Open Source radioactive spider, there was no turning back. ‘Project Hollywood’ will become a documentary film, exploring the revolutionary possibilities that an Open-Source camera can bring to the Film Industry.
To quote from our website,
“The video will introduce the viewer to the world of Open Source and Open Knowledge (...), then focus on film-making; how open source is on track to become mainstream and widely established like Blender and how movements like Magic Lantern unleashed the power of the single user to become a developer, to transcend corporate restrictions and custom-add features.”
Now, Apertus has recently found out we have a double agent. Philippe Jadin, from Brussels, who not only is a core member of our community, but will also help Tobias out. He will infiltrate the Amsterdam headquarters to join the Kinoraw and establish forces for an interview with Ton Roosendaal, Blender’s creator and chairman of the Blender Foundation. The conversation will be recorded with two cameras - Philippe’s GH1 and Kinoraw’s Elphel.
Are you associated?
For a wild team of collaborators around the globe, doing all the kinds of crazy and imaginative stuff (such as Biel Bestué’s short test video), we decided we had better form a legal entity. And this non-profit legal entity has just been born!
It is called The Apertus Association, and we are currently enlisting the ordinary members - those who “are willing to advance the foundations means with their personal contribution (...) [and] vote in foundation polls”. These members will elect the board of directors, who will run the Association. All this effort has been done by agent Sebastian Pichelhofer - he was the one on site to check all the necessary X-Files and deal with the FBI bureaucracy.
Of course, during the latest reunions the Cigarette Smoking Man insisted that being a legal, non-profit organization doesn’t mean it has no operational costs. “It is a question of the speed in which we can achieve our goals”, he said. “The aliens are faster!” So the first act of the Apertus Association was to create and publicize the two channels we have now for donations: Paypal & Flattr. Help us by supporting our forces!
Discuss this newsletter here: http://apertus.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=768
Stay tuned for we have even more great news ahead!
The Apertus Team