novacut-community team mailing list archive

[Jason Gerard DeRose <jderose@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In terms of the needs of Novacut, GStreamer 1.6 is an absolutely
stunning release! So a huge thanks to everyone in the GStreamer
community whose hard work made it happen!

The new rendering backend introduced with Novacut 15.08 was written to
work with GStreamer 1.2 through 1.6:

https://launchpad.net/novacut/trunk/15.08

However, as we refine our new rendering backend and prepare to start
adding new features, the burden of continuing to support GStreamer 1.2
and 1.4 has become difficult to justify. GStreamer 1.2 is especially
problematic as it requires many work-arounds and even then can't
always produce correct results (not even with perfectly conformant
input videos).

As these new Novacut features will likely be a bit rough around the
edges at first anyway, it seems like a good time to stop making new
Novacut releases on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty) and Ubuntu 15.04
(Vivid). Instead, we'll set our sights on a great Novacut release for
the next Ubuntu LTS (16.04, due out in April 2016).

So as it stands now, the plan is that Novacut 15.08 will be the last
Novacut release that supports Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 15.04. In
the meantime, you'll still be able to install Novacut 15.08 on Trusty
and Vivid as those builds wont be going anywhere. But during the next
6 months, new Novacut releases will only be made for Ubuntu 15.10
(Wily) and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (X).

Depending on how things shake out, we might make additional releases
that support Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for some of the six components beneath
Dmedia in the Novacut stack (UserWebKit, UserCouch, Microfiber,
FileStore, Degu, and Dbase32). But as Novacut and Dmedia both directly
use GStreamer, their future releases will only target GStreamer 1.6
and newer.

Our long-term goal is to support new Novacut releases on the current
Ubuntu LTS till the next Ubuntu LTS is released, and we came pretty
close this time around (the closest we have thus far, actually). But
change happens and sometimes you need to cut your losses and move
forward :)

Apologies to anyone negatively impacted by this plan. I'm confident we
can make it up to you with exciting future Novacut releases that will
be waiting for you whenever you're ready to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04
LTS.

Cheers,
-Jason