As everyone knows, OpenShot has a new 3D animated title system. However, what you might not know, is exactly how Blender is being used to create these animations. I thought I would explain what goes into creating a new Blender title sequence.
When using OpenShot, the interface is super simple. Take a look at the window I used to create the titles for this video. Each animated curve has a color picker, so adjusting the colors is quick and easy. The glare and lighting in the video are affected by the different colors, so choose wisely, and create your own stunning combination.
Here is a video demonstrating the new 3D animated titles in OpenShot, as promised! As you can see, including some animated titles can be quite dramatic and add lots of fun to any video.
As far as I know, OpenShot is the first FOSS video editor to incorporate 3D title animations (not including Blender of course). Hopefully this feature (along with a few more we are working on) will start to differentiate OpenShot from the pack of FOSS video editors.
Greetings everyone! It has been more than a month since my last post, so I thought an update was due. Lots of activity is happening on OpenShot, even though my blog has been relatively quiet.
The first ever survey of OpenShot users has come to an end, and I have all sorts of fun data to share with everyone! If you want to skip the analysis and just download the results, here are the direct links:
This survey attempted to answer the following questions:
1) What existing features are most used?
2) What new features are most requested?
3) How is OpenShot installed?
I'll admit, a few of the answers surprised me, including the top 2 most requested features. So, lets break down the results, and see what we've learned.
1) What existing features are most used?
As you might expect, the top most used features are "Fade In / Out", followed closely by "Slice / Cut" and "Transitions". This supports the idea of automatically cross-fading clips when they overlap, and generally making it easier to fade clips, right? Also, improving the snapping, anchoring, and moving of transitions would also seem like a good fit, based on the usage of those features.
Knowing which features are the most used should help us focus on which toolbars, buttons, menus, and features to keep close by, and which features to hide in menus / preferences, etc..., in order to keep OpenShot the easiest-to-use video editor on Linux. =)
2) What new features are most requested?
To my surprise, the top 2 most requested features are "DVD Creation" and "Video Conversion". Of course, the next question might be... should OpenShot include the ability to create a DVD? Or is that better suited for a stand-alone application. Or should OpenShot include a suite of video editing applications: video editor / DVD creator / video converter?As much as I hear people tell me that video effects are not important, and no "real" video needs them, our number 3 top requested feature is "Additional Video Effects". So... it seems clear to me that people really like video effects. =)
The 4th most requested feature is an interesting one, "Video Capture". As more and more video cameras store video files on memory cards, hard drives, and USB mass storage devices, how important is this feature? In 2 years will people still need this feature? Are there existing video capture applications that OpenShot could "better" integrate with? Or does it need to be a built-in feature for OpenShot.
Multiple selections, color correction, and multiple audio volume levels (i.e. audio key-frames) are all really good features, and are at the top of my "personal" list. In general, I would like to have more specialized dialogs for some of the filters, like color correction, with sliders, live previews, etc... Also, I am interested in alternate ways of showing audio wave forms, audio key-frames, etc... Rendering audio wave forms can be slow, and in most cases, not very useful. However, when trying to sync audio and video, seeing the waveforms can save you countless hours. So, I wonder how it would feel to selectively turn on / off waveforms on a clip (as needed). Just a thought.
Also, I really thought the "Photo Slide-show Wizard" feature would be higher on the list, as well as the ability to upload to video sharing sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo. Oh well... the people have spoken.
3) How is OpenShot installed?
This was a useful question, since I spend so much time packaging OpenShot. It looks like most of our installations are from a Repository or PPA. This is great news, as it's the safest way to install OpenShot, and the easiest to update when new versions are available. Only 25 people (out of 946) could not get OpenShot installed at all. However, those 25 people kept us busy with bug reports, questions, forum posts, emails, etc... Looking at our mailing list, sometimes it feels like nobody can get OpenShot installed correctly. But clearly, only a small percentage of users have trouble installing OpenShot.Thank you for helping us make this survey a success! I would like to continue this tradition between each release. As we plan for our next release, it's nice to know we are working on features that people actually want. =)
Please help us shape the future of OpenShot by participating in this brief survey. We will be using the results of this survey to decide what features will be included in the next version of OpenShot. Contributing to OpenShot has never been easier. =) Depending on how this goes, I would like to take a similar approach after each release of OpenShot, and create a survey between releases to help measure what features our users want.
This survey will be open for 7 days, and then we will publish the results for everyone to enjoy! Please help us spread the word about this survey. Here is the link: http://daisurvey.com/welcome?openshot.
With the impending release of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) just around the corner, I am proud to announce that OpenShot 1.1.3 has been accepted by Ubuntu and is ready to install from the Software Center! Also, the MLT framework (the video editing library used by OpenShot and Kdenlive) has been updated to it's newest version (0.5.4).
This is the most stable version of OpenShot ever created, so hopefully everyone will enjoy using it!
Although I have not published many posts recently, I have been working hard to improve OpenShot. Three different versions of OpenShot have been released in the past 45 days (version 1.1.1, 1.1.2, and 1.1.3). All of these versions have been uploaded to both Debian and Ubuntu.
We have already started work planning OpenShot 1.2, and will soon be discussing features with you... the community, and hopefully we'll be able to incorporate many of the feature requests that have been suggested. I will soon be publishing a survey for everyone, to collect feedback on likes, dislikes, wants, needs, etc... So, stay tuned for that post.
If you would like to help the OpenShot project, please feel free to use the banner image above on your own website to help promote us. The bigger we can grow our user base, the more contributors we will attract, and thus... the better we can make this project!
After 8 months of waiting, OpenShot has finally been officially registered as a US Trademark! This is great news, as it protects the name and branding of OpenShot, and ensures we won't have to choose a new name at some point.
When I first announced the name "OpenShot" on this website, I was soon contacted by a company who claimed I had "lifted" their name. This began an 8 month battle to trademark the name. So, you see, this is a big moment for me, as it means the name is finally safe, and I can return my focus on the things that really matter, like the next version of OpenShot!
What I find interesting is that Kdenlive got 17% of the vote. If you combine OpenShot and Kdenlive, we account for 52% of the results. Both of our projects use the same video editing library, MLT. This is great news for the MLT Developers. Even more interesting, is the top 3 applications all use FFmpeg. That is 74% of results that use FFmpeg.
I know that much has been said about Gstreamer, but it is interesting to see how popular FFmpeg is with video editing applications.
Go there...
http://www.openshotvideo.com/
Don
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