novacut-community team mailing list archive

[Jason Gerard DeRose <jderose@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

What's New

Thanks to Simon Wells<https://plus.google.com/u/0/101128418892831818157/posts>,
the Dmedia browser got a nice makeover and now displays useful metadata:

 <http://cdn.novacut.com/Dmedia-13.01.png>

Other than that, this was a slow month as far as changes that users will
notice. However, huge progress was made in finalizing the version one
Dmedia Hashing Protocol, including drafting a formal protocol
specification<http://docs.novacut.com/filestore/specification.html>.
(See the FileStore 13.01 release
notes<https://launchpad.net/filestore/trunk/13.01>for more details.)

Before finalizing the protocol, we'd like to have at least one independent
implementation. Robert von Burg <https://twitter.com/eitchme> has started
work on a Java implementation<https://github.com/eitch/ch.eitchnet.dmedia.filestore>,
and has already provided very valuable feedback on things that are unclear
in the specification. Thanks, Robert!

Now all that sounds very geeky, but there is a good reason why we've put so
much work into this part. I felt it was deeply important that Novacut work *
without* the cloud, that it be easy to move assets between different cloud
providers, and that ferrying hard drives across the sneaker-net be a
first-class way to share the assets needed for collaboration.

Cloud services can be unprecedented traps for customer lock-in, and I don't
want artists to check-out of one roach motel only to become permanent
residents at another. Unless you can get your data out of the cloud,
*and*you have access to the software needed to
*use* your data without the could, you're boned.

Although it's not being used yet, there is a new software component this
month: D-Base32 <http://docs.novacut.com/dbase32/index.html>. It's an
experimental base-32 encoding designed for document-oriented databases.
Unlike standard Base32 encoding, it preserves the sort order (so sorting by
the binary IDs gives you the same order as sorting by the D-Base32 encoded
IDs). We haven't decided yet whether we're going to switch, and we'd love
feedback on this. Please see the D-Base32 Design
Rationale<http://docs.novacut.com/dbase32/design.html>if you're
interested.

As always, if you want to get involved with Novacut design or development,
please stop by the #novacut
<http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=novacut>IRC channel on freenode
and introduce yourself.
Special Thanks

Special thanks to Greg McQueen <https://twitter.com/gregmcqueen/> for
taking the time to interview me for Digital
Gleu<http://digitalgl.eu/2013/01/24/interview-jason-derose-lead-developer-for-novacut/>.


 Install Novacut 13.01

Please follow these
instructions<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Novacut/HowToInstall>to install
Novacut on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise), Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal),
or Ubuntu Raring (the development version). Note that if you've already
installed a previous version of Novacut, you'll automatically get Novacut
13.01 the next time the Ubuntu Update Manager runs.

If you're trying Novacut for the first time, you probably want to
start by watching
this <https://vimeo.com/groups/novacutartistdiaries/videos/41021506> so you
understand a bit about Dmedia, and then watch
this<https://vimeo.com/groups/novacutartistdiaries/videos/41021504>to
get a good tour of Novacut.
Source code

You can download the source code from each component's Launchpad project
page:

   - dbase32 <https://launchpad.net/dbase32>
   - novacut <https://launchpad.net/novacut>
   - dmedia <https://launchpad.net/dmedia>
   - filestore <https://launchpad.net/filestore>
   - microfiber <https://launchpad.net/microfiber>
   - userwebkit <https://launchpad.net/userwebkit>
   - usercouch <https://launchpad.net/usercouch>
   - dc3 <https://launchpad.net/dc3>