[Kdenlive-devel] Introduction

[Oceanwatcher]

On Wednesday 03 June 2009 21:46:57 Dan Dennedy wrote:
> but not if it obscures the meaning to non-experienced users.
> Industries tend to develop their own lingo and jargon.

Yeah... And who decides what the correct lingo is? The whole point of industry 
specific lingo is to have words that is specific and make it easy for everyone 
to understand. All industries have this, and I would never dream of trying to 
fight it. Would you try to redefine well known expressions and terms in the 
programming community? Most of this lingo has developed over many years and 
the easiest thing for a non-experienced user is to learn a little bit about 
the field they are jumping into. The point of learning the lingo is to be as 
specific and precise as possible when you are communicating. And that has never 
been a bad thing in my book.

But as Linux is all about flexibility, you could of course make a dual 
interface that can operate in a normal lingo and a non-experienced lingo :-) 
But then again, this could make a lot of trouble for people that want to help 
in the forums...

> My drinking buddy and I don't give a rat's ass about SMPTE and the
> proper names and standard numbers. I am not going to provide all and
> only the SMPTE wipes. Our system is better because it is extensible
> and because we share our wipe definitions as grayscale images online
> through KDE Get Hot New Stuff.

Yeah... My point exactly. You actually do not need this stuff. This sorts under 
the "bad taste" stuff. When you make a video, all you actually need is clean 
cuts and a few dissolves. That forces you to focus on the storytelling, not a 
lot of effects. Remember - video and film are trying to fool your brain into 
thinking that it is three dimensional, while everyone know it is only two. But 
it works pretty well as long as the only transition you use is a clean cut. As 
soon as you do anything else, you break the illusion.

BTW - for every transition other than plain cuts you use, you should be able 
to come up with a good reason why the story you are telling actually need this 
effect instead of a plain cut :-)

> We would not need to remove transitions to improve the UI. Our code is
> not that rigid and tightly coupled.

I was not talking about removing effects, I was hinting at prioritizing 
resources. To get the editing workflow correct and get a good dissolve function 
in there is more important than adding more effects stuff. Of course, improving 
workflow is probably not as fun as making something fancy, so if fun is the 
only motivation, I guess effects win?

> BTW, I had asked if "Slide" is a good name for what is currently named
> "Wipe." According to some feature pages of some other editors I found
> online, it seems so.

I tried to play a little with the effect and yes, seems slide can be used. BUT 
- I added the effect and scrolled through it just to see how it worked. And 
this might be where the logic breaks for me.

I had the first videoclip on track 0. Then the next videoclip on track 1, 
overlapping a little. I rightclicked and added a "wipe". Got a box that I 
clicked on. When scrolling through, the effect is exactly backward. The first 
frame of the effect is the second videoclip and the first videoclip comes 
sliding in. When it is finishes, it cuts to the second clip (of course). So the 
whole thing should be reversed. Or, as I said, maybe my logic here does not fit 
Kdenlive.


-- 

Regards,

Oceanwatcher