OpenFilmmaking » Blender

BlenderAVC 0.7 released, now including BAAM

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:12:51 +0000

I released version 0.7 of BlenderAVC yesterday, which has been updated with a few new features and now includes a Blender build based on the recent 2.48a source code.

The package now includes BAAM (BlenderAVC Asset Manager). This Python script runs within Blender and allows you to browse your video clips (processed by BlenderAVC) and easily add them to the VSE timeline.

Progress report on BAAM and release of all project sources

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:33:15 +0000

I’ve been working on BAAM (BlenderAVC Asset Manager), which is a simple asset manager integrated into Blender via a Python script. After a bit more testing I’ll release it and write some documentation.

I have also uploaded a source code package for all tools used in BlenderAVC in order to comply with the terms of the GPL.

Simple media management

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:11:11 +0000

I have been thinking (read: obsessing) over the idea of implementing a simple media management feature in Blender using a Python script. This morning I found a topic — prerendering for sequencer — which shows that the Python API covers at least part of the VSE. So it may be feasible.

Since the BlenderAVC clip meta info is contained in a clips.xml document in each “project” folder, the script could allow you to choose a set of these XML documents and then use them to show your available clips — size, length, thumbnail … ? You could then tell it to place a clip on the timeline and it could automatically create a meta strip containing the video and audio tracks. Hmmmm …

First project using Blender as an NLE

admin — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:07:00 +0000

Yesterday i finished a rough draft of a 20-minute video for my father. It was the first project I’ve done using Blender’s Video Sequence Editor (NLE), and I was fairly impressed. Using proxies, it is fast, even on my 4-year-old machine. It’s also stable — didn’t crash once! I really like the meta strips; being able to “tab” into (and out of) them is extremely powerful.

The biggest drawbacks have to do with media management. Loading 40+ clips into the timeline was a little painful, especially since I had to load each audio track in separately and then sync it with the video. The reason: While you can automatically pull in video and audio using an AVS script, Blender cannot yet proxy the audio. Thus, when you play the clip, AviSynth is still attempting to decode the AVC video in real time. This makes for extreme stuttering on my machine.

I am thinking of trying to write a Python extension which would allow an entire set of BlenderAVC clips to be sucked in at once. It would lay them out end-to-end on the timeline, sync up the audio and automatically stuff ‘em into meta strips. It would also be slick to add a strip name from a clips.xml file attribute. Stay tuned!