10 Sep

Greetings!  With version 1.4.3 nearing release (in the next 10 days... give or take a few), I thought it would be a great time to share some of the details, and also fill everyone in on the past many months of development.

The Highlights

The OpenShot team has been very busy over the past 6 months, and version 1.4.3 sports many exciting new features, and of course, lots of bug fixes and updated translations.  Here are a few of the highlights to get you excited:
  • Improved Timeline Snapping for Transitions (no more manual adjustment of every transition)!
  • More than 10 New Effects!
  • New Transitions!
  • New 3D Animations!
  • Improved Drag & Drop features (such as Vertical Constraints, Improved Gap Removal, New Keyboard Shortcuts, etc...)!
  • Tons of Bug Fixes!

Development Update

Over the past many months, the OpenShot team has actually been working on 2 different projects : OpenShot (the video editor) version 1.4.3, and a new & improved video editing back-end (i.e. library).  While also investing some time in GTK3 compatibility... although that's another topic altogether.

The library is coming along great, with some incredible multi-threaded performance results, and a great set of animation and compositing features, which should really raise the bar for open-source video editing platforms.  Currently, I am the only developer that is working on the library, which will soon change once I open-source the code, and release an alpha version (which should happen towards the end of the year).  However, just because I am the sole developer on the library, that does not mean others have not helped and guided me:  A special thanks to Cody Parker, Noah Figg, Mark Hatch, Justin Thomas (my brother), Andy Finch, Olivier Girard, and the wonderful Internet (I'm talking about you Stack Overflow)!

On a side note, and to add some credibility to the library, it's already been successfully deployed and tested on a website for a client (and supporter of OpenShot), as a real-time video editing back-end, which streams the edited video back through Python + Django (and Apache) to an HTML5 video element (cross browser support).  Did I mention it all works in real-time?

I've also got the library's Debian packaging working great, and Lintian clean, which simplified the installation of the library for my client considerably.  Now, I just need a few more hours in the day... =)

We Need Your Help!

I feel bad that it took 6 months for this update to be written and posted, so get ready for lots, and lots of updates over the next few weeks.  We need testers, translators, and supporters to help us complete version 1.4.3. Thanks for your support, and stay tuned for more information very soon!

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