The 0.2 version of dmedia (codnamed ‘Feature Frenzy’), the storage component of Novacut Video Editor, has been released right according to the schedule. Geeky bits follow with a sneak peek of the first iteration of the UI.

At this point dmedia is really just for developers and highly adventurous end-users, but the design and implementation are both progressing quickly.

What’s New?

For the end user, dmedia now brings some eye candy. Utilizing NotifyOSD and Application Indicators, this release implements most our pro file import UX design. Not everything is implemented yet, but hopefully one thing is already clear: we really really care about design! To see the file import UX in action, checkout this video.

Other major changes:

  • dmedia runs as a D-Bus service
  • Imports have a rich audit trail, including tracking individual imports, batches of imports, and the computer they occurred on
  • Many improvements have been made to CouchDB views
  • The Python dmedialib package has been renamed to dmedia
  • The Debian python-dmedia binary package has been renamed to dmedia

For additional details, see the bugs fixed in the dmedia 0.2 milestone.

Contributors Spotlight

These people made commits to the dmedia 0.2 release:

Special thanks

And a special thanks to:

  • Akshat Jain for his tireless efforts promoting Novacut :D
  • Martin Owens for helping us understand what Application Indicators can and can’t do over the D-Bus API, and for letting the RenderMenu ride the coattails of his upcoming progress indicator
  • David Jorden for bringing his unending enthusiasm to our IRC channel and helping us all dream big
  • Eric Adler for bringing his considerable broadcast engineering experience to our IRC channel
  • Shane Fagan for professionally hanging out in our IRC channel and always offering a thoughtful, interesting perspective
  • Antonio Roberts for making frequent celebrity guest appearances in our IRC channel, filing great bug reports, and doing some adventurous beta testing

What’s next?

We do monthly time-based releases, always releasing on the last Thursday of the month. That means we promise to make a release on time each month, but never promise what exact features will land.

dmedia 0.3 will be released on Thursday January 27 2011, and development is already underway. To see the bugs targeted for this next release, checkout the dmedia 0.3 milestone.

Unfortunately, James Raymond’s (He is our own ohso admin) beautifully designed HTML5 video browser didn’t quite make it into this release. In the meantime, checkout this teaser to get a taste of what’s coming. The video browser will be completed early in the 0.3 cycle.

Install

So, you want a taste of the future? Fear not, because we have a PPA with packages for Lucid, Maverick and Natty to install from

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:novacut/stable && sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get install dmedia

Alternatively, you can download the source tarball here: dmedia-0.2.0.tar.gz

If you need any help or have a suggestion for us, please stop by our official IRC channel #novacut on Freenode.

dmedia novacut Video Editors