Thanks for your message. I hope you don't mind me answering on the forum, just to keep a record of the conversation.
On Nov 17, 2008, at 10:20 AM, Rob McWhinnie wrote:
> Message body follows:
>
> hey.
>
> i see that you are starting a new project that is visualhub-
> inspired.
>
> i was thinking about helping out with the transcoderredux
> project but i don't really know applescript and it's not
> commented, or any documentation, i felt like it would take
> a long time to get up to speed.
>
> in the forum you mentioned you might start from scratch
> more-or-less and go from there using the same tools for
> conversion that visualhub did. i'd like to say that i'd be
> totally down for working on this project and like to work
> on things from the beginning more than looking at 1000's of
> uncommented lines of applescript.
> i was wondering if you are going to go the applescript
> route with this?... i'm assuming it would be more than
> possible to do this via objective-c. i would much prefer
> that as i have used obj-c for the past year and a half or
> so doing app development. i'm currently in a non-dev
> position and want to work on a project to keep my skills up
> to date, etc. for when i start hunting for jobs again.
I am in the process of taking what I can from the FilmRedux project and creating a new Cocoa based app. I had trouble struggling with the AppleScript, too. I have the project up and am now working on the drag & drop interface for the file list (which is most fiddly bit of code before getting down to the real work).
My biggest issues now have to do with ffmpeg and the "default" encoding settings. The world of command line transcoder software is a mess. FFMpeg is reasonable and I have been able to build it with x264 support, which is a far superior H.264 codec. But Mencoder has some nice filter support, which FFMpeg doesn't have. And both are nearly impossible to build statically (so they can be shipped without any pre-existing dylibs). So I have decided to simply link libavcodec and all the rest into the app. At least that way I will have control over the linkage. And embedding the codecs in the executable will give me much better control anyway.
I'm also trying to understand the encoding settings used by Visual Hub and FilmRedux. I think Tyler did a great job coming up with a set of simple controls for all the media types supported. But digging that information out of the AppleScript source is not easy. I was planning on doing sample encodes with all setting combinations and then reading the logs to see what options were sent to ffmpeg.
But FilmRedux has some nice settings for new media types that I want to capture as well. I'm not sure if these are even fleshed out yet, but I want to try to snag any work Tyler has done in this area.
So, as you can see, I'm just getting started. I'm not sure how you'd like to contribute at this point. The code is not fleshed out enough for any sort of collaborative work. But if you'd like to research the media settings or anything like that, or even just kibitz on my current work in progress, that would be great.
-----
~Chris
chris@marrin.com
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just saying whats up. i'll be back from time to time to check out what's going on and will be up for working on the project when it gets to that point.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
i might check out the repo in the next couple days to see what's going on. i might have time to put into the project starting in late february, if needed!
rob
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I think Video Monkey is a damn fine name for the project! I have no dev skills whatsoever, but just wanted to voice my enthusiasm for your efforts. I would like to help however I can, but for now I'm limited to giving you props for keeping the Visual Hub train rolling. Thanks for taking this on!
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I am very excited to see that you have decided to start work on VideoMonkey! I think that having a nice Cocoa/ObjC app that is doing what VisualHub did will be a true asset to the Mac community.
I'd like to contribute to this as much as I can, because VisualHub has saved me from many a headache and I'd like to keep that dream alive. However, reality has taken its toll, and I am still completing my last semester, so what I think I'm going to do is try to help get the loose ends of VisualHub tied up and see if I can get something running with that (it would be a good intro to AppleScript). There are a few others doing the same thing, so hopefully between all of us we'll get something going.
Although it does at first seem kind of unfortunate that VisualHub has appeared to split into two different apps, I think this is actually wiser. We can get FilmRedux working in the short term (since it's probably by all means the closest to being done) and as we are looking more ahead work can continue on VideoMonkey, with VideoMonkey eventually being the reigning video conversion app.
Good luck, and I will be keeping a close eye on this!
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Thanks for your message. I hope you don't mind me answering on the forum, just to keep a record of the conversation.
On Nov 17, 2008, at 10:20 AM, Rob McWhinnie wrote:
> Message body follows:
>
> hey.
>
> i see that you are starting a new project that is visualhub-
> inspired.
>
> i was thinking about helping out with the transcoderredux
> project but i don't really know applescript and it's not
> commented, or any documentation, i felt like it would take
> a long time to get up to speed.
>
> in the forum you mentioned you might start from scratch
> more-or-less and go from there using the same tools for
> conversion that visualhub did. i'd like to say that i'd be
> totally down for working on this project and like to work
> on things from the beginning more than looking at 1000's of
> uncommented lines of applescript.
> i was wondering if you are going to go the applescript
> route with this?... i'm assuming it would be more than
> possible to do this via objective-c. i would much prefer
> that as i have used obj-c for the past year and a half or
> so doing app development. i'm currently in a non-dev
> position and want to work on a project to keep my skills up
> to date, etc. for when i start hunting for jobs again.
I am in the process of taking what I can from the FilmRedux project and creating a new Cocoa based app. I had trouble struggling with the AppleScript, too. I have the project up and am now working on the drag & drop interface for the file list (which is most fiddly bit of code before getting down to the real work).
My biggest issues now have to do with ffmpeg and the "default" encoding settings. The world of command line transcoder software is a mess. FFMpeg is reasonable and I have been able to build it with x264 support, which is a far superior H.264 codec. But Mencoder has some nice filter support, which FFMpeg doesn't have. And both are nearly impossible to build statically (so they can be shipped without any pre-existing dylibs). So I have decided to simply link libavcodec and all the rest into the app. At least that way I will have control over the linkage. And embedding the codecs in the executable will give me much better control anyway.
I'm also trying to understand the encoding settings used by Visual Hub and FilmRedux. I think Tyler did a great job coming up with a set of simple controls for all the media types supported. But digging that information out of the AppleScript source is not easy. I was planning on doing sample encodes with all setting combinations and then reading the logs to see what options were sent to ffmpeg.
But FilmRedux has some nice settings for new media types that I want to capture as well. I'm not sure if these are even fleshed out yet, but I want to try to snag any work Tyler has done in this area.
So, as you can see, I'm just getting started. I'm not sure how you'd like to contribute at this point. The code is not fleshed out enough for any sort of collaborative work. But if you'd like to research the media settings or anything like that, or even just kibitz on my current work in progress, that would be great.
-----
~Chris
chris@marrin.com
hey
just saying whats up. i'll be back from time to time to check out what's going on and will be up for working on the project when it gets to that point.
hey...
i see that you started working on this now
if you need help with anything, let me know...
i might check out the repo in the next couple days to see what's going on. i might have time to put into the project starting in late february, if needed!
rob
I think Video Monkey is a damn fine name for the project! I have no dev skills whatsoever, but just wanted to voice my enthusiasm for your efforts. I would like to help however I can, but for now I'm limited to giving you props for keeping the Visual Hub train rolling. Thanks for taking this on!
I am very excited to see that you have decided to start work on VideoMonkey! I think that having a nice Cocoa/ObjC app that is doing what VisualHub did will be a true asset to the Mac community.
I'd like to contribute to this as much as I can, because VisualHub has saved me from many a headache and I'd like to keep that dream alive. However, reality has taken its toll, and I am still completing my last semester, so what I think I'm going to do is try to help get the loose ends of VisualHub tied up and see if I can get something running with that (it would be a good intro to AppleScript). There are a few others doing the same thing, so hopefully between all of us we'll get something going.
Although it does at first seem kind of unfortunate that VisualHub has appeared to split into two different apps, I think this is actually wiser. We can get FilmRedux working in the short term (since it's probably by all means the closest to being done) and as we are looking more ahead work can continue on VideoMonkey, with VideoMonkey eventually being the reigning video conversion app.
Good luck, and I will be keeping a close eye on this!