Novacut
Novacut Wiki Home
Novacut: website, blog, Kickstarter
Novacut Brand Identity (design by IZO): Final v1 Guidelines, First Draft
Want to get involved? See if Novacut is the right project for you.
Join the conversation
IRC: #novacut (freenode)
Twitter: @novacut
Vimeo: Novacut Artist Diaries
Mailing lists: novacut-community, novacut-prototypes
PPAs
Code (and other stuff) in Launchpad projects
novacut-artwork - various assets for the stunning Novacut brand identity design by IZO
novacut-prototypes - where we rapidly prototype and measure time savings of UI variations before doing full implementations
novacut - where editor UI and render backend will be (most current work is on novacut-prototypes and dmedia)
dmedia - the Distributed Media Library (ingest, media management, collaborative foundation)
filestore - hashing protocol and FileStore for dmedia
microfiber - lightweight, high-performance CouchDB adapter for Python
UX designs
Software architecture
FAQ
Wouldn't collaborative editing take too much bandwidth?
- Novacut works with local files. Once your teammates have the needed media files locally, only changes in the metadata describing the edit must be synced between you, and this is tiny data, takes very little bandwidth.
Getting the files in the first place can be bandwidth intensive, but there are options. First, Novacut can work with lower resolution proxy version of the videos, which are considerably smaller than HDSLR video strait from the camera. Second, sometimes shipping a hard drive to someone is the most practical, and dmedia has been designed with this use case in mind. And third, dmedia will soon be able to do a distributed upload (multiple people uploading files at same time) as a way to work around relatively slow upload speeds.
Will Novacut work without the cloud?
- Yes, Novacut runs locally and works without net access. Novacut is "cloud-enabled", not "cloud-based". The cloud component is a practical and cost-effective way to make collaborative editing more useful, but it's not a requirement.
As all the Novacut components will be open-source, you can run your own cloud on, say, a local cluster or Amazon.
Where is the code?
- All our development is done in the open. There is a handy directory of our software components here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Novacut
Where it makes sense, Novacut is being split into components that can be reused by other applications. Most all the coding thus far been in dmedia (the Distributed Media Library), which is the hardest part of our collaborative architecture (the rest we basically get for free because of how we're leveraging CouchDB).
Why HDSLR?
- Initially we're only "officially" supporting Canon HDSLR, meaning we have full metadata support and have extensively tested with these cameras. Canon HDSLR were chosen as our initial target because that's what the majority of current low-budget, high-quality, direct-to-fan productions are using (a wide majority, easily 75%). We're careful about tuning Novacut to reality, about helping as many storytellers as possible.
However, Novacut will support any video format supported by GStreamer, which is a lot. So from day one you'll likely have a great experience with other video formats from others cameras too (YMMV). But initially only Canon HDSLR cameras will be under our official quality assurance umbrella. With time, the list will expand, likely fairly quickly.
AVCHD support?
- Novacut should work fairly well with any video format that GStreamer supports, which includes AVCHD. However, we're only "officially" supporting Canon HDSLR cameras at the moment. Doesn't mean you can't try other cameras, but experience might not be great yet. Over time, more and more cameras will be officially supported.
Is Novacut completely open-source, or is it "open-core"?
- Novacut will always be completely open-source, and we have no interest in any "open-core" business model. The Novacut "cloud" is the exact same Novacut backend components that run locally on your own computer, except running on our hosted infrastructure. A very important use case for us is running your own local, private cloud... and to enable this use case well, everything must be open source.
For those interested, here are some geeky details on Novacut software architecture: Software Architecture
Is Novacut a native app, or does in run in a browser?
- Although we're using web technologies, Novacut is a native app, and the "server" components all run locally on your own computer.
However, because we're primarily using HTML5 for the user interface, we'll be able to make your edit available online through a browser. We don't anticipate this will be a practical way to do serious editing, but in a pinch it's better than nothing.
Imagine being able to give a client a peak at what you're working on using your phone. Or imagine a director or DP using a tablet on-set to review rough on-set edits (where tablet is talking to on-set workstation or server). Lots of cool possibilities.
All FAQ Info Taken From The Kickstarter Page