[gephex-devel] Similar project

[Jean-Sebastien Senecal]

Philipp Promesberger wrote:

[...]

> I'm sorry that i haven't really had a look at your code yet but I'll 
> try and compile it tomorrow and check it out. I think the one single 
> point gephex is missing atm is the first point on your list: the easy 
> to use and (especially) intuitive user interface. We have talked about 
> how to design this in the next version (which is being developed right 
> now) a lot and would certainly like to hear about your ideas regarding 
> this issue.


If you're courageous enough, you can try the latest version here: 
https://anarcat.ath.cx/svn/drone/
Right now, our interface is as intuitive as it gets... which means, 
quite the same as yours!

[...]

>
> This is being discussed in a lot of places.
> First there is the freeframe API which gephex is gonna support in the 
> next major release (0.5 / http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/ ).
> Another approach is the (currently under development) livido API. It's 
> being discussed for some time now and there hasn't been any agreement 
> yet, so nobody can be exactly sure what is going to be happen with 
> that ( http://livido.dyne.org/ ).
> During our attendance at piksel 04 we sketched our own API interface 
> which is already supported by the current gephex version (no release 
> version yet) and one other application written by a guy we met at 
> piksel. It's a really simplistic approach to video effects and subject 
> to improvement (there are no mutliple sources yet for instance) but it 
> is meant to be as minimalistic as it is and there will be a more 
> advanced version in the future. Check it out at: 
> http://frei0r.kexbox.org/doc/html/frei0r_8h.html
> We're gonna port most of the simple gephex effects to this format 
> anyway because it the plugin loader will be changed in the next major 
> version and it will make things easier.
> So, as you can see, there are already many aproaches going on in this 
> field. We're waiting for your comments :)


We've checked out most of these things, though quite superficially for 
now. My thinking is that it is ok and good to have diversity in the 
approaches, but at the same time, whenever there are common agreements 
over some things, we should work together so as to be able to share code 
as much as possible, because we've got quite enough to deal with the 
competition from closed-source software. Especially since open-sourced 
real-time processing soft seems to be quite a small community for now...

As for frei0r, I much appreciate the effort -- btw good idea to start 
documenting NOW ;) -- and think that most of our current filter could be 
implemented in this framework. However, I'd eventually hope to have a 
much more generic API that would allow new types (e.g. what if somebody 
wants to output something else than positions or color, like strings, 
audio stream, vector images (SVG) or 3D for instance?) Now, I know this 
is not the purpose of frei0r for now as it could probably deal with 90% 
of the filters. That could be realized by using C++ templates (this is 
what we did in Drone), but maybe this is not a step we're willing to do 
for an open standard at this step.

>> 2) we continue developping our software but exchange code with you
>> 3) we develop our own branch of GePhex
>> 4) we drop our project and start contributing ideas and code to yours
>
>
> I don't like 2) because it would probably involve a lot of redundancy. 
> 3) is probably the way to go if we can't agree at all on certain 
> aspects. 4) is nice, but it's your choice to "drop your code" and IMHO 
> it's pretty harsh. We certainly do not want to force our way of coding 
> onto you and if there's a way to combine code it would probably be a 
> much better solution to the issue.
> There's a lot of stuff planned for the next major release and we'll be 
> glad to tell you about our ideas and hear about yours. The development 
> is in a very early stage right now and I would love to give you 
> further details but I'm fairly tired atm so I might do so tomorrow :)
>
> This is very exciting, I hope we can find a way to work together!


We definitely have to.

Out,

    J.S.