Tasks, Workflows, and Packages for Ubuntu Studio Natty

[Hartmut Noack]

Am 31.10.2010 16:12, schrieb Scott Lavender:
> Firstly, thank you everyone for replying.

You are very welcome .-)


> I am concerned with the number of "video" applications we may be acquiring
> in the workflows now.  Currently, OpenShot, Avidemux, and OpenMovieEditor
> are all included.

I understand the concern and that it is indeed a complicated task to
find a sane and working set of video-apps for Linux.

Since the free video-apps are by far not that mature as the audio-stuff
I can only add some more points for the discussion.

Avidemux is some kind of a swiss-army-knife for working with
video-files. I did use it 2 or 3 times as a video-editor but I use it
frequently to extract audio and manipulate formats. There are great
commandline-apps for these tasks and these are easy to use. But it is
not at all easy to know all the options you have in the jungle of
formats for video so I consider Avidemux a very user-friendly app since
it allows to work with these options intuitive. (Somewhat like
PHPMyAdmin if you start working with MySQL...)

> 
> OpenShot is arguably the easierst, most user friendly video editor.

OpenShot is nice and its design is very promising. But as I tested it in
May last year I had so many crashes in so many different normal
situations, that I must say: if it was not developped in a most
astounding speed in the last months, it cannot be considered a
application ready for end-users.

>  I
> understand that Avidemux might not be considered a video "editor" per se,
> but allows audio to be stripped easily.  OpenMovieEditor apparently is JACK
> aware 

It has the best Jack-implementation I ever had the fun using with a
video-editor. It produces crashes also that can give you a situation, if
you are working in a studio with a customer but I made several
video-projects with it and the work went like a breeze - its
desaster-recovery system faild only once in 10-12 crashes I had with it
in several hundred houres of work. So I would say: even while 1 crash in
10 h is still much too much, it is recommendable.

> (I thought LiVes was the only JACK capable video application).
> 
> Each seems to have a strong point, but I was wondering if it was possible to
> consolidate these applications choices to reduce their numbers.  If an easy
> solution does not present itself and it is the best interest of
> functionality to keep all the applications, then it would seem that we
> should keep all the applications.

For starters I think, OME should be enough (given, that all the
frei0r-plugins and of course ffmpeg are on board also).

But the users should be informed in a nice and understandable way, that
much more is possible, if they install a list of additional apps.

> 
> My suggestion, at this point, would be to replace OpenShot with
> OpenMovieEditor in the "Create a Home Movie" task.  But I admit that I
> haven't used OME in quite some time and am not aware how it compares to
> OpenShot in terms of usability and "friendliness".

Unfortunately, OME is not actively developed these days. Since it is
still one great app, I still would recommend its inclusion - maybe this
could even lure Richard Spindler into further developing it ;-)

> LMMS has a unique concept in terms of usage and workflow that is *not*
>> doubled by qtractor. I'd recommend to keep it.
>>
> 
> I wish that you do not take my statements in a derogatory or hostile
> manner.  However, I think it would be unfortunate if we were to include LMMS
> (or any application) solely on the arguments presented above.

Absolutely no offence ment. :-)

But let me advocate LMMS some more:

Workflow: Creating electronic music for absolute beginners.

Requirements: LMMS

* open LMMS and choose alsa for audio-i/o
* drag some instruments, presets and/or samples from the browser at the
left to beatlines or tracks
* hit play and have fun
* invite you good friends rightklick, middleklick and the CTRL-key to
the party and have more fun
* connect any MIDI-Keyboard/Controller to tracks and parameters and have
serious fun.


Lmms is the most beginner-friendly sequencer I ever have seen under
Linux and it is at the same time capable enough to do complex advanced
stuff with it also. Qtractor is much more complicated. But while
Qtractor comes with Support for DSSI and LV2 and very capable
Audiotracks, LMMS has only crude sample-tracks and knows only LADSPA (it
comes whith great built-in synths/samplers though and can be compiled to
use VST).

So both have their audience and their unique powers. Users, that come
from Windows/Mac are used to have *all* these powers available and a
Linux-distro geared towards creative users should offer as much powers
as the free-software-devs are providing.So yes: both are sequencers but
if you want to make people happy, you should have both.

Beginners will be appalled by the learning curve Qtractor demands, some
more experienced users would be disappointed, if the flexibility and
audio-capabilities of Qtractor would not be available. So I think,
giving both a place in the standard-menu is absolutely worth the hassle.

> 
> I have previously mentioned validating inclusion of applications to make
> sure that they support an entire "tool chain" for accomplishing a task.  But
> a second order effect would be to also validate if anyone actually desires
> to accomplish a particular "task".  Hence, my request that someone specify a
> task and develop a workflow to support it.
> 
> Can one someone identify a task and develop a supporting workflow so we can
> discuss LMMS without abstraction.

See above - it is indeed that easy ;-)

> 
> Also keep in mind, we should also consider that if a very select subset of
> users desires an application, or entire "toolchain", should we include it in
> the ISO and make hundreds or thousands of users devote bandwidth to download
> these applications.  Especially considering that NO applications are being
> removed from the archives and can be easily installed with 'sudo apt-get
> install'.


To give beginners an easy, well documented and obvious method to install
more stuff ican be a reasonable alternative.

best regs
HZN