[Ardour-Dev] ardour3 video timeline

[Patrick Shirkey]

On 06/28/2010 09:20 AM, Robin Gareus wrote:
> Picking up an old subject.. here's what I set out for:
>
> Outline:
>   1) add a video-timeline to ardour3
>   2) allow to launch xjadeo from ardour3-menu
>   3) remember state between sessions.
>
> Constraints:
>   - one video-track per session.
>   - video-file decoding happens outside of ardour (video-server)
>   - but the ardour session remembers all relevant settings.
>   - KISS
>
> Implementation:
> 2+3) can be similar to what qjadeo does: All xjadeo settings (incl
> window position&  attributes) can be remote-controlled. A "video-import"
> dialog could invoke mencoder or ffmpeg on initial video-open.
>
> As for 1):
> The trickiest part (at least for me) is the ardour3 GUI. For the
> video-frame-cache/server there is an existing code-base and xjadeo works
> on all platforms that ardour does.
>
> The first idea to implement the image-timeline like it had been in
> ardour2/CMT proved unsuitable: in ardour3 TimeAxisView and StreamView
> both rely RouteTimeAxis[View] (and eventually a Route) to display a
> track on the canvas. The two options (write all required functions for a
> StreamView without route or make the video-track a special route) seem
> overkill if not wrong (because it'd require changes to libardour, and a
> video-timeline is GUI only).
>
> A IMHO suitable solution is to use the ruler/marker bar for the
> video-timeline. A first-shot at coding this looks rather promising:
>
> curl
> "http://rg42.org/gitweb/?p=ardour3.git;a=commitdiff_plain;hp=master;h=videotl"
> | patch -p1
> ./waf configure --videotimeline
>
> It currently displays "dummy-frames" (black-frames with video-frameno
> rendered into them) and looks like this:
> http://rg42.org/_media/wiki/a3vtl1.png
> http://rg42.org/_media/wiki/a3ctl2.png
>
> Please review. Would this concept be eligible to become part of ardour3?
>
>    

Nice work Robin!

I think it will be very useful for post production work. My only concern 
is that it doesn't necessarily allow extension for the inevitable future 
request for video editing capabilities...

However if it is viable to place the time line in the editor panel at 
some future date when the single track system is stable and fully 
implemented then it seems like a very good solution to get the ball rolling.

I understand that there is already Blender and several other very good 
video editing systems but the same defence was used for midi editing and 
now we have ardour3 so it's probably best to plan for the eventual 
possiblity that ardour will become a fully featured video editing system 
too once this step has been integrated and proven stable.

Cheers.

-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd