A Quick Chat With OpenShot Creator Jonathan Thomas

By , Published November 22, 2009

I took a few minutes to chat with Jonathan Thomas, creator and all round nice guy from OpenShot (better known as €œiMovie for Linux€ around these parts!), to find out what the application is up to, what their plans are for the future and when we can expect a stable release€¦

openshot promo

Would you like OpenShot to be the default editor in Ubuntu?

Yes, OpenShot should be the default video editor in Ubuntu.  That is my goal, and will continue to be my goal.

How far off is a stable release of OpenShot?
We are rapidly moving towards a 1.0 release.  We are trying to finish up our documentation, tweak our packaging for Ubuntu Karmic, and make a few final UI improvements.  So, yes we are almost there… to a stable release.

The development on OpenShot is super-fast. What is it that gives OpenShot such a quick development time?
Development is super fast because I’ve dumped a ton of personal time into the project, and chosen a great video framework, MLT.  Dan Dennedy (the creator of MLT, and contributor to Kdenlive) has been a huge help, and has been instrumental in helping me resolve many tough issues.

One year from now, what can users expect OpenShot to be like?
In 1 year, users can expect OpenShot to be faster, easier to use, more wizards to simplify more complex work flows, and integrated into more products, such as Blender.  Hopefully our community will be very large, and eventually I hope Ubuntu will re-evaluate PiTiVi and put OpenShot in it’s rightful place.

Exciting stuff!

Thanks to Jonathan for taking the time to answer my questions, much appreciated!

You can download OpenShot via the official site @ http://www.openshotvideo.com/

If you feel you could lend a hand or want to get involved in OpenShot, check out the Launchpad page @ https://launchpad.net/openshot

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Experimental OpenShot PPA Launched, No Longer Removes Video Playback
  2. OpenShot Video Editor Gets New Icons & Preference Window
  3. Openshot Video Editor Gets HUGE Update – 30 New Effects, Preview Window, Green Screen, PPA…
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  • Anonymous

    Great interview – OpenShot is indeed awesome. :)

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    Interesting; we once had no nice and easy (and good) “iMovies” for GTK. All of a sudden we have two and they’re both fighting for a place in Ubuntu’s live CD…

    Funny =D

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      It’s part of what i love about the open-source community – the gaping gap in “user friendly” video editors was spotted and worked on and now we have some excellent choices to choose from – both of which will/can only get better and better…

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    the the ubuntu UDS they didn’t make a final decision they will still see if PiTiVi be stable enough at the feature freeze so i think there is still a chance. by putting both in Ubuntu Brainstorm with Screen Shot and let people decide. the same way Ubuntu Software Store got changed

  • Jeff

    This is not how it works. There are licensing problems, which gstreamer-based apps work around nicely (due to gstreamer’s modular nature). I have trouble imagining the Ubuntu developers approving ffmpeg into the main repositories, for the same reason they don’t install gst bad/ugly by default, or libdvdcss, or w32codecs, or …

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Which is part of the problem as to why PiTiVi is a moot discussion, too, as any format an end user (who is not a geek) would want to edit in are proprietary and not installed by default.

      However, a user is prompted to install codecs for files that won’t play, so i don’t see the difference between prompting to install ugly or bad or ffmpeg.

      • http://popey.com/blog/ Alan Pope

        It doesn’t help that (last I looked) Open Shot Video ships with it’s _own_ copy of ffmpeg embedded in. This is reason enough to reject it. The app should rely on the version of ffmpeg in the repository. If there are issues with that version then those issues should be resolved first.

        This is the main reason I have not even installed Open Shot Video. I don’t it screwing with the (working) version of ffmpeg I have installed (and which I use).

        • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

          That is not longer an issue, and hasn’t been for some time (the screwing up video playback).

          On the FFmpeg side, i would imagine that if the Ubuntu devs approached OpenShot with a eye to sorting that out, a workaround would easily be sorted. Ubuntu are still looking at OpenShot which tells you something…

          • http://popey.com/blog/ Alan Pope

            I never said screwing up video playback was an issue. I said “I don’t want it screwing with the (working) version of ffmpeg I have installed”. See what happens if I try to install openshot from the ppa… It wants to remove ffmpeg, ffmpeg2theora, _blender_ and _xvidcap_. I asked the Openshot guys a while ago if they could please fix this. I can’t use openshot until they do.

            alan@wopr64:~$ sudo apt-get install openshot
            Reading package lists… Done
            Building dependency tree
            Reading state information… Done
            The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
            libftgl2 libalut0
            Use ‘apt-get autoremove’ to remove them.
            The following extra packages will be installed:
            frei0r-plugins libavcodec-extra-52 libavcodec-unstripped-52 libavformat-extra-52 libavutil-extra-50 libcv1 libcvaux1 libhighgui1 libmlt++2
            libmlt-data libmlt1 libsox-fmt-alsa libsox-fmt-base libsox1a libswscale-extra-0 libx264-76 python-mlt
            Suggested packages:
            libsox-fmt-all openshot-doc
            The following packages will be REMOVED
            blender ffmpeg ffmpeg2theora libavdevice52 libavfilter0 libavformat52 xvidcap
            The following NEW packages will be installed
            frei0r-plugins libavformat-extra-52 libavutil-extra-50 libcv1 libcvaux1 libhighgui1 libmlt++2 libmlt-data libmlt1 libsox-fmt-alsa
            libsox-fmt-base libsox1a libx264-76 openshot python-mlt
            The following packages will be upgraded:
            libavcodec-extra-52 libavcodec-unstripped-52 libswscale-extra-0
            3 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 7 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
            Need to get 13.2MB of archives.
            After this operation, 4,915kB disk space will be freed.
            Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

          • Andy

            Are you using the new PPA for 9.10? This PPA is designed to use the default packages in Ubuntu (i.e. FFmpeg, libx264, and Frei0r). Details here:

            http://www.openshotvideo.com/2009/11/openshot-ppa-new-experimental-ppa.html

          • http://popey.com/blog/ Alan Pope

            No, I hadn’t seen that. I went to https://launchpad.net/openshot -> https://launchpad.net/~openshot.developers -> https://launchpad.net/~openshot.developers/+archive/ppa

            It should probably be made more obvious on the launchpad page that this experimental ppa exists. I’ll give it a try.

    • http://www.dennedy.org/ Dan Dennedy

      MLT is modular too and does not require FFmpeg if you just want to use DV (libdv), Ogg Vorbis, various image file formats, and encode to DV. In fact, I made it possible to build a FFmpeg module that only includes the filters (colorspace, deinterlace, resample, scaling) or only includes the codecs/(de)muxers for making a separate add-on package for a different repo. Don’t like those limited options? Well, gstreamer is not that interesting without bad, ugly, or commercial codec packages either. Probably, the most interesting thing it adds is Ogg Theora reading and writing. Considering, MLT is currently weak in reading Ogg Theora through FFmpeg, do not be surprised if I add support for gstreamer in the near future.

  • Anonymous

    I wish them luck. Donated to the project too. Out of GTK editors – this, right now, is the best one.

  • Anonymous

    Just stopping in to say an enthisuastic kind word about OpenShot, and specifically, its development team. I posted two bugs on their Launchpad site earlier this evening (both UI-related, regarding timeline zoom functionality and implementation), and a few minutes ago got a message from Jonathan that he squashed both bugs, and they’ll be in the next version, coming soon!

    Jonathan and the OpenShot developers exemplify what I love about Ubuntu, Linux, and open source in general. It’s this kind of open dialog that inspires loyalty and creates a positive community around a project. We should do all we can to support projects like this, so they’re motivated to keep up the good work!

  • manny

    awesome i love openshotttt

 
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