PiTiVi -- Introduction and Progress report

[Brandon <brandon_lewis berkeley edu>]

My apologies for the tardiness of this posting. I have had a recent family tragedy, and this has kept me very busy (and away from the internet) for the last couple of weeks. 

WHO I AM

My name is Brandon Lewis. I am a student at UC Berkeley, and a life-long resident of the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area. This summer I will be working on the PiTiVi project, a free, non-linear video editor.  I had an early love for film making (especially the editing process), which is what attracted me to the project. My current interests include cooking, motorcycles, film, and computer programming.

WHAT I AM DOING

PiTiVi is a video editor based on GStreamer. GStreamer includes gnonlin, a timeline management plugin. PiTiVi is a Python front-end for gnonlin. It will offer a variety of ways to create time-oriented content, like animations, presentations, and videos.

I am focusing on PiTiVi's "Simple" user interface. My proposal included plans to finish the "Simple Timeline," which will provide a feature set and interface akin to iMovie. In addition to that, I will also be implementing support for PiTiVi's file format. For more information, you can go to www.pitivi.org.  

HISTORY OF INVOLVEMENT

I came across the PiTiVi project in January, and was intrigued. I had many questions, so I contacted the lead developer, Edward Hervey, to find answers. After reading the source code, I began to dabble with small modifications to test my understanding, and, eventually, I submitted bug reports and source code patches. This led Edward to suggest that I submit a google Summer of Code proposal. His comments and suggestions were indispensable in getting the proposal accepted. I would probably not have succeeded without his help. 

PROGRESS TO DATE

Initially I submitted some bug reports, and some patches to fix them. Then I started working on a specialized slider widget for the Simple Timeline. The slider moves on a background of colored blocks which represent each source, or clip, in the timeline. 

Sadly, I've been really busy since february, and the code has been re-factored quite a bit since then. I need to do some catching-up. First with school, and lately with the untimely death of my father. I'm hanging in there, and hoping I might even be able to attend GUADEC. Stay Tuned!