If you thought that Eminem was good for a laugh look at this.  

A Strange Loop

Merry Christmas, and give away a GOOS

Hello and Merry Christmas!

Every so often I decide to give away discs or jump-drives filled with open source software but, it seems the projects that put these packages together have slacked in recent years.  The software is outdated and I find a need to include even more software.  So I quickly tried to start a project that others can use to give the Gift of Open Source this holiday season.  I will be uploading it all Christmas Day so be patient because I made several disk options for you to download.  I know I am a little late so maybe you can give it over the 12 days of Christmas or for New Years.

See the menu on top for Downloads!  Here are some of the apps I included on the GOOS (Gift of Open Source) DVDs and CD:

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• LibreOffice
• OpenOffice
• Gimp
• Inkscape
• BlueGriffon
• Scribus
• VLC
• Miro
• BitTorrent
• FileZilla
• Pidgin
• HexChat
• RSSOwl
• ProjectLibre
• GnuCash
• xTuple
• TurboCASH
• Abiword
• Blender (remember it does video editing)
• Synfig Studio
• Natron
• GLMixer
• MuseScore
• LMMS
• Audacity
• Handbrake
• FreeCAD
• QCAD
• Maxima
• RStudio
• Octave
• SciLab
• NetBeans
• Atom
• Brackets
• Godot
• and much more...

Video Production on Linux in 2015

Video or movie production on Linux seems almost limitless thanks to Hollywood's adoption of this great, stable, platform.  I would say professional compositing, animation, and special effects is more present and mature on Linux than home friendly video editing software.  This is changing however, perhaps as soon as later this year, we could see the release of OpenShot 2.0 which I anticipate will be the most user friendly and intuitive video editing software suitable for the beginner, to use at home.

I did my first video editing in high school on Windows XP with Windows Movie Maker.  I liked it, it was intuitive and easy.  I found OpenShot 1.x while I was looking for something like Movie Maker for Linux and I have to say it is my favorite video NLE (Non Linear Editor).  It is easy to layer video or images on top of other video or images.  It has some transitions for transitioning between clips, some useful effects to apply to the video clips, and is easy to do basic arranging of clips with drag-and-drop.  OpenShot 1.x is good but just isn't there because of bugs, stability, and a few missing features.  OpenShot 2.0 and beyond should fix these shortcomings for the beginning home user.

There is nothing, however, keeping a determined amature film creator from learning and using some of the most advanced Hollywood video software on Linux.  Notice I say 'some' because much of what Hollywood uses is custom 'in house' software, but there are complete commercial and open-source packages that are free to use for the sake of education or even professionally.

Lets go over what the film creator wanting to go pro can dig into.  A lot of professional movies have SFX (special effects).  All SFX are done through video compositing.  Video compositing is the process of combining separate visuals into a shot.  This often gives the perception that everything seen is part of the same scene.  Perhaps the most powerful program to do this is a compositing package called Nuke.  Nuke was used in many films including The Hobbit, Avatar, and Tron: Legacy.  Nuke is a node compositor which is considered more suitable for complex compositions than the other type of compositor, called a layer compositor.  A popular compositor by Adobe named After Effects is an example of a layer compositor.  There is a free version of Nuke available for Linux which is intended for non-commercial use, you can download it from their website here.



There are other options than Nuke for doing your video compositing.  An open source alternative to Nuke is Natron.  Natron is compatible with the industry standard OpenFX plug-in format which is also used by Nuke and other commercial compositing packages.  Many packages that do 3D computer animation can also do compositing.  Houdini is a popular Hollywood example of one such software that lets you do both.  Houdini has a free educational version called Houdini Apprentice the next cheapest version I can find on their site is Houdini Indie version for $199.  Another extremely popular animation and compositing software is Autodesk Maya.  Maya runs under Linux but I have found no free version for Linux.



If you are looking for an open source alternative to Houdini or Maya, look no further than Blender.  Not only does Blender do 3D modeling, animation, compositing, and simulation but it also has a non linear video editor built in.  The video editor is very capable but there is a catch, you must use video clips that all have the same frame rate.  Blender has only recently been started to be used in Hollywood for small enhancements to scenes.  Blender has also been used for some movies on Lifetime Movie Network and on History Channel.  Blender allows for any property to be animated including those found in the video editor.  It also can do 3D video tracking to insert 3D objects into the camera scene.  Blender has a node compositor with many nodes built in.  There are plans to support OpenFX in the Blender compositor but the project is not currently finished.   If you like intro titles for your video you can find a lot here.

What I have talked about so far should give you a good idea of what to focus on learning if you want to create SFX for your video.  Now if you want to arrange clips of your finished scenes you probably want a good reliable video editor.  The most reliable stand alone video editors on Linux are probably Lightworks and Cinelerra, both are used in Hollywood.  Cinelerra will run slow if it isn't setup properly.  I have only had Cinelerra run smoothly for me one time by accident.  Lightworks as of now is probably your best option for a professional video editor.  It is designed to easily manage a ton of footage if you are thinking of making a full length movie with lots of camera angles and such.  There is a free version which is planned to be open sourced in the future.  You can buy or rent the Pro version for $24.99 a month or a one time payment of $437.99.   The free version limits export to 720p.  Novacut is another promising video editor for full length films.

I may write more in depth about these softwares once I get projects where I can use them more, but as of now you will just have to try them out to see what will suite you and your project.  Some video editors worth keeping an eye on include: slowmoVideo, Pitivi, Kdenlive, LIVES, Shotcut, and Flowblade.

EDIT:  Piranha 8 looks like a very professional video editor if you can shell out the $1000 bucks for it.  The list of films it was used with looks impressive.

Awesome Little Computers Running Linux

There are a lot of small, low power, and cheap computers that are coming out these days.  The first one that left an impression on me was the Raspberry Pi which came out in February 2012.  This was a computer about the size of a credit card and ran using only 1.5W if you had the model A and 3.5W if you had the model B.  I was thinking of using one of these as a personal web server because they use so little power, but you had to buy several accessories to get the thing to work such as an SD card, video cable, power cable (I heard it was picky about how much power it got), wifi adapter, ect.   Kits that came with what you needed ran around $100.

Fast forward to today and you will find many more awesome little computers running Linux.  The cheapest and most exciting one in my opinion is the C.H.I.P.  Its the world's first $9 computer.  Unlike the Raspberry Pi you get a complete package with the exception of it including a power cable.  The CHIP comes with a composite video cable and has built in wifi, built in storage, and even built in Bluetooth 4.0  There is a Kickstarter going on right now for the CHIP which has 9 days to go and is approaching 2 million dollars in funding.  I ordered early so I should be getting mine in December of this year.  But you can still get one by February 2016.  The 1Ghz CHIP is faster than the original 700Mhz Raspberry Pi but there is a Raspberry Pi 2 which has a 900Mhz quad-core.  There are also the BeagleBoards which run from $49 to $149.  

All the computers I have mentioned so far run ARM processors but there is another awesome little computer that runs Linux and it uses a chip with a bit more power.  The MintBox Mini is a small computer that is more capable than the rest.  It does run $295 but it comes with the much loved Mint Linux, an AMD A4 Micro-6400T (Quad core 1.0-1.6 GHz + Radeon R3), 4 GB DDR3 RAM, and a 64GB mSATA drive.  Plus it comes with all the plugs you'd expect on a desktop PC and yes, even wifi.  So take your pick at a quick little Linux PC.  

Music and Media Production on Linux

I have spent the last couple months using Ubuntu, and other Linux variants to produce music and video.  I don't have a deep understanding of music, especially electronic music, so feel free to point out anything you see wrong with my review.  As for video I did some video editing in high school and some in college as well.  Both music and video production have a strength on Linux, especially if you want to use free software that isn't pirated.

I am against piracy and believe that in overwhelmingly most cases all the source code of a program should be open source, but any support from a company or individual toward Linux or any other open source community should be welcomed.  For example I believe that Valve Software is doing good by bringing their proprietary software and games to Linux because they are contributing value and helping the community grow.  Especially since they are encouraging others to do the same.

Staying on topic I will start with audio and music.  I tried getting into music software on Linux before and failed just because I didn't know how important it was to know JACK, its tools, and the value of having it all set up properly for me.  I started with plain old Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and the Ardour user manual for version 3.5.  I recommend you don't set up JACK + Ardour under Vanilla (plain) Ubuntu.  Instead if you have Vanilla Ubuntu already installed, just use Synaptic  Package Manager to install the ubuntustudio package because when you login to UbuntuStudio all the security permissions are changed for you to use JACK and its tools with no additional set up, at least that is how it was on all of my machines.  I also recommend using AVLinux in place of Ubuntu or Ubuntustudio if you know all you want to do with that computer is make music because AVLinux has a lot of great tools compiled and installed for you like the Sorcer LV2 plugin that is good for making Dubstep music.  There are many other synth plugins that at the time of this writing arn't in Ubuntu repositories but do come with AVLinux.  AVLinux even has some commercial software and demos.

The basic process for starting your DAW(s) (Digital Audio Workstation) go like this.

1. Open QjackCtl and press start to start JACK
2. Open Patchage so you can see and control how JACK is routing audio to and from your software and devices, I keep this open always.
3. Open Ardour or the DAW(s) of your choice to compose and record your music.  
4. Use Patchage while opening or adding other software or devices to plugin that you need where.  

DAWS that I used include LMMS, Muse, Rosegarden, Ardour.  Muse and Rosegarden let you write with both notation and piano roller.  Notation can be written with other programs as well like Musescore or you can Google Impro-Visor which is another powerful program to help you write notation and exports midi files.  Impro-Visor can help you by generating melodies to go along with your music.  Its worth a look if you ask me.  I have generated music with it and imported it to LMMS where I can assign synths to it. 

If you just want to edit your sounds or songs Audacity may be all you need.  It will work with JACK but doesn't require it and works on Windows and Mac as well. 

There are commercial DAWs I am taking note of as well like:  Tracktion (free for Linux), Bitwig Studio, EnergyXT, and Renoise

Overall Linux is perfect for making and recording traditional music.  There are a handful of software synthesisers and a lot of audio filters.  I do feel more synths and synth presets need to be made for it to really shine in the electronic music industry.  I had quite a time getting something that sounded like dubstep made, part of this is because I never made dubstep but part of it is just because all the popular synths are made for Windows and Mac.  There are ways to emulate some Windows VSTi plugins but we need more native LV2 instruments.  So what I am trying to say is Linux is great for a garage band doing traditional rock or punk and it is superb for classical and symphony music too but its biggest limitation is with electronic music, especially dubstep.  You can make electronic music with it but it might take some hardcore programming of a plugin or extra knob turning of an existing one to get what you really want out of it. 

I will cover Video on Linux next time.  I Just got to tell you Video on Linux seems to have no limitations as to what you can do with something recorded.  I do hear it needs some more work on live broadcasting but rumour is that is being worked on. 

Global Community Software and Saveing Schools

I have always wondered why there isn't more use of Open Source software in United States' schools.  Sure I have seen Firefox catch on, but all browsers are free of cost today.  So why did Firefox catch on in the first place.  I think its a given that Firefox caught on because as we all know, unless you have been living in a cave, Firefox is faster and more secure than what most versions of Internet Explorer are.  This proved OSS (Open Source Software) could be better than commercial alternatives. 

Now what about replacing monstrously expensive programs like Blackboard.  Blackboard runs a minimum of $10,000 per year but typically runs colleges $25,000 to $75,000 per year.  There are much cheaper OSS alternatives that have virtually the same features and can even be further enhanced because of their open nature.  Blackboard could be replaced with Moodle, or Sakai which have a free price on their tag and can be self-hosted.  Sakai I find particularly interesting, its made with leadership from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with its original grant coming from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York City.  Sakai allows for online document distribution, a grade book, discussions, live chats, assignment uploads, and online testing, plus more.  Moodle is comparable but was not founded in the U.S.  Moodle is from Australia but has been in development for a little longer, 15 years.  There has been some progress in crushing the cost of LMS software for schools.  Some schools are migrating away from Blackboard to the alternatives.  Blackboard had over 90% market share in 2006 and since 2010 the alternative software have reached over 30% market share.  I urge schools and any organization that requires educational learning software such as hospitals to utilize and improve open LMS software, by helping improve your LMS you are not only improving it for your students but you are providing a free service to the rest of the global community.  I am talking about those kids in Africa, India, and other parts of the world. 

Other areas of software that may be useful for schools to save on and improve for the global community by using and improving open source software include:

1. Libreoffice in place of MSOffice for most students
2. Switch to an open ERP such as... OpenERP
3. For medical and mental services in nursing offices or particularly in Universities OpenVista, FreeMED, or OpenEMR
4. For School Homepage a CMS like Joomla, Wordpress, or Durpal
5. For the Library use an open ILS like Evergreen or Koha
6. For Math SageMath, wxMaxima, ect.
7. For Programming, Eclipse, Netbeans, QtCreator, ect.
8. For Art and design, Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, BlueGriffon, ect.
9. For additional free education software and to replace Windows for most students try Ubuntu or Edubuntu which has great computer lab management software.
10. Other school related open source software to fill in the nooks include: SchoolTool, Project Fedena, A1 Academia, Gibbon, OpenSIS, and you can Google for more. 

Schools should regularly look at BOSSIE to find the latest and greatest open source software to teach with. If we can migrate everything to OSS imagine how much we could save tax payers and tuition spenders.  All of this savings put together should save hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions over the years.  The Federal Government is starting to use more OSS why not the local. Bill Gates says how he wants to donate money back to the schools, well if our local governments wouldn't have wasted so much on commercial software we would have that money now to pay for better teachers, books, and technology.  Lets not continue to make this mistake.

Refer to http://schoolforge.net/ for case studies. 

DirectX? Ha! - OpenGL is Superior

If you are looking to grab a developer’s interest, all you really need to do is begin popping out statistics. Feature something that’s not 1.2 times above par, but three or four times better, and you will know you’ve got them. That’s the good news Nvidia teamed up with AMD and Intel to present at this last week’s Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. AMD’s Graham Sellers, Intel’s Tim Foley, and Nvidia's Cass Everitt and John McDonald appeared on the same panel to explain the high-level methods available in today’s OpenGL implementations that reduce driver overhead by as great as 10x or more.  With OpenGL, an open, vendor-neutral standard, developers can get significantly better performance, up to 1.3 times. Though with a little tuning, they will often get 7 to 15 times more performance.

That’s a figure that will always make any developer sit up and listen.  Better still, the techniques revealed apply to all major manufacturers and are suitable for using across multiple platforms. And they brought demos, showing what these particular improvements mean on real world systems.  That’s because of the fact that OpenGL can cut through the driver overhead who is definitely a frustrating reality for game project developers since the beginning of the PC game industry.  On desktop systems, driver overhead can decrease frame rate. On mobile devices, however, driver overhead is significantly more insidious, robbing both battery life and frame rate.  Learn more here.  With such possible superior performance looks like its time to kill DirectX projects and make them into highly tuned OpenGL applications for SteamOS and yes, even Windows.  Below is a video that you might get more out of if you develop with OpenGL.  I never developed directly with OpenGL but I know I will use engines and frameworks that do, especially after learning about this.