[Lumiera] Lumiera work-flow

[Nikola Duper]

Thank you for your answer!
As first I have to say that I am not code developer but I have some 
clues of how it works. I am the video editor and I have to concentrate 
on some issues that I consider very important:
- I would like to see Lumiera user friendly for just ANYBODY;
- I would like Lumiera to do as much as possible on its own with no need 
for a hard setup or for external software;
- Lumiera shouldn't behave in the way that any video editor doesn't 
understand.
We have, and we always will, two different points of view: one is point 
of view of a programmer and the other one is of the simple user. Very 
often something very simple for a programmer is a nightmare for a simple 
user. My "job" here will be to stay on a simple users point of view.
Sometimes I will propose some functions which might look like old 
fashioned or whatever, but they do their job. This is the ONLY important 
thing for me, or better, for video editing I have in mind.
Please keep in mind that informatics technology (IT) is changing every 
single day but video editing is very similar since many years. So, in 
video editing we have a lot of standards and old good ways how to do the 
things. When IT makes it better and faster we are grateful, but when IT 
wants to teach us how to do our job... well, it becomes frustrating :).
Just to be clear enough, I am not talking about you, I'm talking about 
many NLE I have tried, Cinelerra included, that made me frustrated.
> Lumiera's project format will be more database alike, that is a main DUMP
> file which contains all information at startup and while it is running
> it will write a constant LOG which notes every mutation the user does,
> for each restart it creates a new log file (but thats nothing you need
> to care about).
I don't care about the way Lumiera does it, for me it is important that 
it does its job. I mean that, when I open again lumiera after the crash, 
I have the simple option to open the last saved project or to open the 
last saved auto-save or log or else.
> About Saving on another HD .. this is somthing I want to keep out of the
> core. Lumiera will become scriptable and we will add hooks which are
> called before/after saving and so on.. we may even ship some scripts
> which do things like git commits or copying data to a backup or whatever.
> But imo this shall not be a core feature, that would be quite to
> inflexible, not everyone has a 2nd disk, other ones have a backups server
> which needs special treatment. Anyways, I recommend anyone to use a raid
> array to prevent data loss due disk failures. Data loss due operator
> faults should be addressed differently and is likely very site specific
> (you have a backup?)
>   
In video editing the second disk is quite important because you have on 
one disk the software running, the swap partition, the cache files and 
so on. If you put your footage on the same disk it will be difficult to 
have good performance. I understand that there are not so many people 
who have the 2d disk but how many of them have a raid array??
Anyway, I imagine this as a simple option: where do want your cache? 
where do you want your projects? Where do you want your backups? Where 
do you want your auto-save? Where do you want your footage? If you have 
one disk you will put it there, if you have other disks you will decide 
what to do, if you want to change the default.
We could even help the user analysing the system he is using. If Lumiera 
finds the second disk, or raid array, it might suggest what to do.
>> When we create a new project we should be able to decide if we are going
>> to work in 4/3 or 16/9, 720x576, 768x576, 720p HD, 1080i HD, 1080p HD
>> and so on. The choice Pal or Ntsc should be in the Preferences because
>> we change this option very rarely, if ever.
>>     
>
> From the engine perspective, Lumiera will be format agnostic. That means
> you can have any input format (i leave any complexities here out, we are
> aware that there are many) and the Output format will be determined by
> what you configure as output node, speaking very technical here, of
> course the GUI shall make that convinient. But internally its possible
> to have different Output nodes and render to YouTube quality and 1080p
> in one go.
>   
In video editing we know from the very begining in which format we are 
going to make our video. This is always the first question: Are we going 
to shoot in 4/3, 16/9, Dv, Dvcam, Hd 720, 1080 or else?
Once we have the answer we start video editing. If we don't know what 
will be our final output how will we prepare our graphics, animations, 
titles or anything else? How can I decide if I am going to use square 
pixel or not? The quality of the final output is decided on how 
accurately we choose and prepare our visual material.
Naturally it's great to have a possibility to export our video in other 
formats as well, but we MUST know the format we are working on. It is 
great to have a possibility to import other formats as well but we 
shouldn't give the idea that we can put anything on our timeline and 
then output in any format with good results. This would be simply wrong. 
Have a look on any NLE, or compositing software, even Photoshop, and you 
will see that the very first decision is format.
Sometimes we will have talented young people who want to do simple 
editing and we have to guide them through the process helping them.
>   
>> Very often, once we have created our project, we will start capturing
>> and collecting all the contributes which will be a part of our video. It
>> is very important to organize very strictly every file we are going to
>> use. To achieve this goal it is important that Lumiera does it for us.
>> So, when we create the new project Lumiera will create the directory
>> with the same name. When we start capturing the first clip Lumiera will
>> create, under the project directory, one new subdirectory called
>> “capturing”. The same will happen with audio, titles, effects, graphics
>> and so on. If we are importing the files, instead of creating them from
>> inside the NLE, Lumiera should recognize the file type and propose to
>> move it or to copy it in the adequate directory under the project directory.
>>     
>
> Lumiera will use hardlinks extensively that it ensures that footage dont
> get lost even when you move it on disk, part of it might be implemented
> in a external media management applications. But some parts will become
> a core feature of Lumiera so ensure sane media handling. Basically you
> can locate your footage anywhere (in the long run there will be a 'frame
> server' mode for lumiera where one headless instance run on a different
> machine only caring for serving raw footage)
>   
Please reconsider what I have written. I will explain a little bit more. 
If we are speaking of a workflow then I must think of several issues:
- there might be a talented editor which is not good at all with computers;
- there might be more than one editor working on the same project;
- I would like to work on my project without even thinking where are my 
files!
Sometimes the greatest freedom is to be free not to make errors. To 
achieve this goal we have to respect some rules ;).
The file (audio-visual materials) organisation is something of GREAT 
importance for every single editor. Having a NLE which does it for you 
would be wonderful for a first time editor as well as for me or other 
old colleagues.
>> In this way we will have our project perfectly organized and there will
>> be no need to search the files or the possibility to loose something. It
>> will be very easy to backup our project because we will be sure that ALL
>> our files are under the project directory.
>>     
>
> As described above this is doable, the project dir can be on the WORK
> area. One could archive/backup the project with all its footage.  But it
> is also sufficient just to save the project files (DUMP+LOG as decribed
> above) when one uses the 'lumiera-repository' feature and he has the
> footage *anywhere* it can be located and brought in place later.
>   
I think I understand what are you saying but even now I can do many 
things to keep my materials safe. The problem is that this is manual 
job, this is not automatic. I would like it to be a part of project 
building process. ALL the files, which are going to be on my time-line, 
HAS to be exactly where they have to be. No opinions, no different 
points of view. Simply: THERE! :).
Please, trust me if you can, I have a huge (21 years) working experience 
as an editor, director and TV technical manager. I can tell you that I 
know exactly what I am talking about and I know that many people would 
say a big THANK YOU for such a feature.
>> Once the video is done we have a lot of files under the project
>> directory which occupy a lot of space on our disk and there is no need
>> to backup it all. Our time-line “knows” perfectly what files we have
>> used and Lumiera should offer the possibility to make a copy of each
>> file, or portion of video and audio file, which has been used in our
>> video. These files should be put in a specific directory, and
>> subdirectories, depending on a file type. In such a way we are able to
>> save ONLY the peaces of the files which has been used in our video and
>> nothing else. It should be a good idea to have a possibility to give to
>> each audio and video clip additional second or two, head and tail, for
>> future fine trimming needs.
>>     
>
> That sounds like a extremely nice feature, if one has a VAULT then it
> would even be possible to recover the whole footage while deleting it on
> the workstation and only keep the interesting parts.
>   
This is not new, I saw it already on one NLE but it was not as good as I 
explained here :) (please excuse my arrogance :)).
>
> I hope this gives you a short insight about the things we are already
> working on, I made it extremely short there are many many things more to
> consider, this is just a broad overview.
>   
Thank you very much, I think that this is just the begining and I hope 
that our collaboration will get better and better.
Very soon I will send another document for the player/trim window.
Nikola