I am officially back from SCALE 10x (Southern California Linux Expo), and I have a few photos and experiences to share with everyone. We (myself and a few co-workers) arrived on Thursday (Jan 19th) at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles. We spent most of Friday in PostgreSQL training (unrelated to OpenShot, but really awesome). Andy Finch arrived Friday afternoon (from London), and we finally got to meet in person, for the first time. Andy is a great guy, and it was awesome to hang out with him and talk OpenShot! We spent the rest of Friday setting up our booth, and enjoyed a few $7 beers (that got expensive quick)!

On Saturday (Jan 21st), the expo floor opened at 10 AM, and we got to work. Andy and I worked the booth and got to meet tons of OpenShot fans, introduced it to some people that had never heard of it, and met a few Hollywood post-production professionals (which was really cool). At 3 PM, I made my way into the largest room at SCALE (the la Jolla room), and setup for my presentation, "Create Stunning Videos with OpenShot!" The presentation was streamed live, but apparently we overloaded the servers, and the stream buffered continuously... so most people were not able to watch the entire presentation. Hopefully, I'll be able to edit a full version, with all my tutorial videos included, and make that available on YouTube soon. After the presentation, I was interviewed (and recorded) by Suite 500 Inc, which was a first for me =). Later on, at 6 PM, I gave my 2nd presentation to "The Next Generation", a youth conference that SCALE was also running. This presentation was targeted at kids, and was much shorter.

On Saturday night, we attended "Game Night" at SCALE, enjoyed some android cookies and ice cream sandwiches (from Google), the history of Nintendo (which was very cool), and even played some air hockey. There was also a full size laser tag arena, but I did not want to crawl around shooting people after the long day.

On Sunday (Jan 22nd), we once again worked the booth, met lots of nice people, and towards the end of the day left for the airport. Andy flew back to London, and we flew back to Dallas, Texas. We all had a great time, successfully promoted OpenShot at the largest Linux expo in the United States, and were happy to spend our free time promoting and supporting the larger open-source community!

The following photos were mostly taken with cell phones... so... keep your expectations low with respect to quality. =)

In my presentation at SCALE 10x (on January 21st, 2012), I created and then debuted a fun, short Minecraft video. The video tells the story of Steve, a resident of Minecraft, who wakes up to find monsters invading his land. Steve looks for safety in an abandoned cave, and unknowingly stumbles into the real world. Where in the real world does Steve appear? Maybe you'll have to watch the video and see for yourself. =)

In the December 2011 issue of Linux Format magazine, I just discovered a great article about OpenShot. The 4 page spread was written by Jono Bacon, and also included a small mention on the cover. In addition, OpenShot 1.4.0 was included on the DVD, which comes with the magazine.

Over the past year, OpenShot has been featured in many magazines, but unfortunately I rarely hear about them or see them. Whenever I browse a book store, it's always fun to dig through the Linux magazines, and look for mentions of OpenShot.

If your favorite Linux magazine features a story about OpenShot, I would love to know about it. You can always share the info on our Facebook page, or post a comment here.

Happy New Year! 2012 is going to be a big year for OpenShot. We are about to release version 1.4.1 (details below), and are packing our bags to attend SCALE 10x (Southern California Linux Expo). I spent a large amount of my time last year working on a new video editing framework, which will be revealed very soon, which is another reason 2012 is going to be so much fun!

Next Version

We are mostly done with version 1.4.1, which originally started as a minor bug fix release, and has now grown into a more full-featured release. It includes lots of bug fixes, improvements to localization and translations, fancy new titles, a new 3D animated title sequence (wire-frame text effect used in the 1.4 release video), and more!

Translations

We have some new English text that needs to be translated as soon as possible. If you speak a non-English native language, please help us translate OpenShot in your language. It's super easy, only requires a web-browser, and is a great way to "give back" to our project: https://translations.launchpad.net/openshot.

SCALE 10x

OpenShot will be an exhibitor at SCALE 10x, on January 20-22, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. This will be our 2nd year to exhibit, and I look forward to meeting everyone who stops by. I am also pleased to announce Andy Finch, one of OpenShot's top contributors, will be flying in from the United Kingdom to help run the booth. This will be the first "real-life" meet up between OpenShot contributors, so that is very exciting!

At 3:00pm on Saturday (January 21, 2012), I will be presenting Create Stunning Videos with OpenShot!. It will be broadcast LIVE over the Internet, if anyone is interested in watching. If you are attending SCALE 10x, I hope you can make it to my presentation!

Donations

If you enjoy using OpenShot, I hope you will consider donating to help fund the next year of development. Any donations to OpenShot help fund servers, meetings, marketing materials, and important industry events such as SCALE. Our January donations are only $11 USD so far. Even small donations are very appreciated, so please be kind and Donate.

Here is a great original video created with OpenShot 1.4, which shows the progression of an artist, layer by layer, creating a beautiful scene of a girl holding a puppet. The artist used Krita 2.4, an open-source digital painting application, and used OpenShot to animate the progression.

Girl with Puppet:

Ramón Miranda is a talented artist, with many of his creations featured on DeviantArt. Check out the final image of "Girl with Puppet" on DeviantArt.

If you have a video or artist you would like to me to feature on this website, please let me know.