We’re a bit behind on our news reports, but here’s some catching up for this quarter.
As you might have read in an earlier newsitem a repository has been setup to provide binary Debian packages of Lumiera. This means you can easily download and install Lumiera without having to get the source code and compile it yourself. This should work for all Debian-derived distro’s, including Ubuntu. What this doesn’t mean is that Lumiera’s usable yet. Installing Lumiera will only give you a taste of the GUI as it was when Joel Holdsworth quit working on it, over a year ago. Yet it’s good to see the repository setup for future use, though an alpha release is not yet around the corner (there’s simply too much work to be done by just the handful of people that’s currently devoted to Lumiera’s development).
While preparing this repository Hermann Vosseler (ichthyo) took the time to review all the work that’s been put into Lumiera over the past few years. While examining the codebase (and cleaning occasionally), certain design principles have been reviewed and rediscussed. He also worked on the design of the Player subsystem and Engine Interface. Basically the Player will coordinate what actual calculations to request from the rendering engine, for which purpose (realtime playback, rendering, background rendering), how these requests can be interupted when the request itself changes (f.e. when changing playback speed), and how to deliver this output to a viewer, which can be controlled by the user, by using transport controls.
Ichthyo also continued to work on the Time/Timecode handling and Frame Quantisation functions. These are required to handle frame-time relationships while providing the option to use custom framerate settings at session level, or even for individual output busses. The basic framework is in place now. Next step is to connect it to Ardour’s timecode widget, and to add drop-frame support.
Short update about the website: this summer we’re going to see the new design for Lumiera’s reworked website! Francesco Siddi is working on it. Exciting stuff. At the meantime preparations are being made for participation in this year’s Froscon. More about that later in the next quarterly news report coming somewhere this summer…