Film Gimp

gosand writes "DesktopLinux.com is running this story about Film Gimp. It is a movie editor based on The Gimp that movie studios have been developing for their own use for a while now. The article is an interview with Robin Rowe about Film Gimp's use, and includes some interesting info about the film industry's use of GNU/Linux desktops. One quote worth noting: 'Studios have become the leading desktop users of Linux. Three hundred Linux desktops at Dreamworks. That's amazing! While the MPAA is campaigning for new restrictions on content, the artists at the studios are using and helping create open source. Having Linux and open source as a crucial part of studio operations may help executives rethink their corporate position on open source and Linux issues.'"

Comments

Two studios are listed

[burgburgburg]

Silicon Grail (now part of Apple) and Rhythm & Hues are the only listed studios involved in the development. And after the GIMP committee declined to incorporate the Film GIMP features, Silicon Grail stopped sponsering it. So Rhythm & Hues is the only continuing sponser.

Re:Two studios are listed

[tempest303]

the GIMP committee declined to incorporate the Film GIMP features

Anyone know why exactly that is? Why wouldn't they want to do this?

CMYK, and GIMP UI vs. drop-down menus

[timothy]

I'm really glad to see that Film Gimp work (which seemed dead or at least very sleepy for a while) is actually continuing. Thanks, Robin Rowe!

As I understand it (can anyone improve my understanding?) a lot of the work done for Film Gimp will likely end up rolled back into Gimp. This sounds great. I hope though that the "right click" menus are not completely replaced; I rather like the way they work. I understand that a lot of people don't like them, though ... I just hope that any new menu approaches are offered as options rather than The New Way.

CMYK is the constant complaint I hear wrt to Gimp vs Photoshop, even from people who aren't sure what CMYK is or why they should want one for the kitchen. So I do hope that film gimp work results in CMYK support.

So after "that awful interface" (not my opinion, but hey) and CMYK support, what's the *next*-biggest complaint people have about the GIMP? :)

timothy

Free Film Project

[iamdrscience]

Does anybody know if this uses anything from GNU's Free Film Project?

I haven't really heard much about the project myself and so I haven't looked, but from what I read on GNU's info page about it it seems pretty interesting. Also the GNU Octal stuff seems interesting, what about that, every decent film editor has at least rudimentary sound manipulation utilities.

If they're not, can anybody give reasons why? Projects like those and GYVE (GNU Yellow Vector Editor) are things that confirm my faith in GNU and RMS in my times of doubt.

Re:Open Source Pioneers? Or $$$ Saving?

[airrage]

You are absolutely correct. Their product is movies, and so, they want computer power to be a commodity product, not something they have to pay a high-gross margin on (thus making more in the long-run).

If you look around there shop I bet you would find a) low-cost, low-power workstations clustered together b) distributed computing c) generic hardware d) open-source software where possible e) in-house custom software.

Look at it this way: most people get paid daily (whether they know it or not), but some people choose to drive to work in a Lexus, while others, a Maxima. Does the Maxima driver do it for a love of Maxima's, or because it puts more money in his pocket at the end of the day?

Just because it's Monday and your car won't start doesn't mean that somehow the day of the week is related to your car not starting.

By the way, I thought we hate the movie industry here, and now we laud them for use of open-source?

I'm out.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what the studio workers position is on MPAA/Palladium/TCPA et al.

They hate the TCPA Initiative just as much as you and I.

I have a friend who works for a major studio in Burbank, CA. Once I asked him about TCPA and Palladium in general, and he said the company execs sent out few bulletins in the past regarding secure computing, which was ironically a study done by Microsoft. What's notable here is that the wording described in the bulletin hinted how TCPA would stop the major studio motion picture leaks that hit the scene, hence preventing piracy.

So employees are being lied to also, just to answer your question.

Open source gives studios a headache

[Crayola]

Yes, the larger animation studios are using open source/Linux, mainly because SGI is having problems and the cost/benefit on an SGI IRIX box is really slipping. You'd think that they'd love the idea of "free" software, but it really drives them up the wall. When you're working on a multi-million dollar project, the last thing you want is legal liablity because some Joe stuck some patented or copywritten code into the module you use on the movie. With proprietary code, the guy selling the software takes the legal heat for mistakes like that. With open source, you're on your own.

Not to say that it's all bad for the studios or open source. The place I work for shelled out money for an open source developer to finish some of his development work on a program they wanted to use. Cheaper than buying a commercial package, and everyone benefitted.

But the biggest reasons the studios go for Linux is the cheaper/faster hardware (despite all sorts of compatibility headaches -- getting reliable 24 frame per second playback for 1k images is a little touchy) plus reduced porting costs for their legacy IRIX software and avoiding the whole Microsoft headache. The sysadmins really don't want to go there, and the studio doesn't really want to start springing for license packs for a few hundred users and a few hundred renderfarm machines.

Re:Open source gives studios a headache

[Chops]

When you're working on a multi-million dollar project, the last thing you want is legal liablity because some Joe stuck some patented or copywritten code into the module you use on the movie. With proprietary code, the guy selling the software takes the legal heat for mistakes like that. With open source, you're on your own.

Curious. By what logic would the end-user of a Free product be liable for such a situation?

And what's special about that?

[Ektanoor]

Some good years ago I read an interview from some M$ developer in one serious journal (PC Magazine? Byte? I don't remember) where is showed pride that Windows95 had some piece of code that was taken from some free source. It seems it was something related to those irritating "lemedoitfoyou" wizards that populated Windows since then. Moreover, Windows has some features that were directly taken from X interface.

That's one example taken out of the *NIX world. On *NIX world we have tons of examples on how certain "purities" dissolve in the mass of needs and wishes of its users.

The fact that Warner Bros uses GPL is nothing extraordinary. And, frankly, it has nothing to do with their stances for protecting ownership. The problem of content, information sharing going beyond software is something to be dealt with extreme care. A film, book or other media content is not a product of software exclusively. And the means to share it should be completely different. In our software world, we still may play a barter between programs and things related to them. In the other spheres of activity, like films and books, the author is usually offering something that cannot be retributed in the same way. I am not a writer and I cannot offer a book for every book someone offers me.

Anyway, the restrictive politics that MPAA and its cousins play, surely hurt everyone. They are creating a feud out of certain media and they are seriously hindering the chances for people to have a right for information (entertainment is also a form of information) in these environments. Considering this highly restrictive stance and their use of free software tools is surely a paradox. But it does not mean they should free something. Anyway, their money helps a little our world, right? But they should be more democratic and flexible in what relates to the media they work with. Because if they will keep this stance, the consequences will backfire at them. For example, they may produce new fresh laws that will hinder developers from making cheap software they highly depend on...

Re:Um, no

[tolldog]

Maybe not on the desktops, but on the render farms, some studios have more linux cpu power than most research institutes.
At a fairly small studio, we had 500 dual proc systems clustered. I know that the larger, California based studios have at least twice as many. And some places make a big deal about ordering 200 boxes...

-Tim

Dumb Question.

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

From the article:

Movies are normally scanned at 2k wide resolution and 16-bits per pixel component. A significant difference between Gimp and Film Gimp is color depth. Gimp uses 8-bit component (24-bit rgb), and Film Gimp uses 16-bit component (48-bit rgb). Even though you can't display uncompressed 16-bit on a conventional monitor, it becomes apparent if you work in 8-bit and later print back to film. Film has more dynamic range.

If a conventional monitor can't display the colors at that depth then how does the film editor know exactly what will end up on film after printing?

Re:Dumb Question.

[jdbo]

That's the first time that I've heard this explained for non-pros in any sort of sensible way (and I read a good number of digital video/FX magazines). Good job!

make, just don't view

[wardk]

isn't it a bit odd that movie studios are aparently embracing linux to MAKE movies, but seem to desire it being illegal to VIEW the same movie on linux (via DVD) ?

When will they learn?

[stubear]

Question: What are the implications of Film Gimp?

Film Gimp is the most successful open source tool in feature motion picture work today. Programmers at many studios are helping development, including Rhythm & Hues, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and ILM. This is great cooperation in an industry that historically has been rather secretive.

Studios have become the leading desktop users of Linux. Three hundred Linux desktops at Dreamworks. That's amazing! While the MPAA is campaigning for new restrictions on content, the artists at the studios are using and helping create open source. Having Linux and open source as a crucial part of studio operations may help executives rethink their corporate position on open source and Linux issues.

Movie studios migt be giving back to the community by helping develop the tools but this is completely different from the studios giving away the IP created with these tools. Because the studios benefit from OSS is not enough reason for the studio execs to allow their IP to be freely distributed. Don't expect this to happen anytime soon, if ever.

Perhaps RMS should add a line to the GPL which requires any work created with GPL based tools must be given to the community under the same terms as source code.

No, give ME a break.

[Tokerat]

I am so sick of hearing this argument about DRM. DRM as it is now envisioned will NOT stop anyone from writing an OS to work with any platform. It will not prevent Linux from running on x86. It will not make Microsoft the One OS Provider (although, they'd like it too).

First let's go over what DRM is going to be:

1. X86 CPU manufacturers are (in the most likely senario) going to add instruction opcodes, or more likely, additional BIOS interupts, which are used for isolating a segment of memory from all but a "trusted" source, a process of some sort, be it a driver, application, whatever. It will be authenticated by a key, yadda yadda. The point is, the HARDWARE will lock-out access to this memory block by all other processes on the machine. Therefore, program A cannot read, write, touch, smell, send a love letter too, or call program B's protected memory block on the phone to say hello. To the rest of the machine, sans program A, this block does not and never did exist.
2. Microsoft is implementing "Palladium" as the software end to this scheme. It will be a system in Windows which does the work of authenticating the use of these features as an abstraction layer in the Windows API. Windows Media Player, for example, might download encyrpted content from the 'net into a protected memory zone, so other programs would be unable to rip it for saving & possible later re-distrobution. It could also be used to completely isolate processes from each other in hardware, which would also prevent many types of viral activity (but not all, imagine a process is taken over by some network exploit and code is saved to the disk, it woudl work in any isolated segement it is loaded into...), and improve general security of sensitive e-mail, documents, data in general.

The way I see it, this scheme offers ADVANTAGES for Linux. For one, Linux won't impose the pay-for-use services I can envision Microsoft and MPAA/RIAA types pushing for (i.e. imagine the MPAA strikes a deal with MS, and each time you watch a DVD in your computer, you are charged a $0.05 fee, with no way around it, in addition to not being able to rip the DVD [well, using the standard driver, anyways :-D] ). People will be sick of yet MORE "Windows bullshit" on their computers, and perhaps attempt to make the jump to Linux as their operating system. This process will be accellerated as some Linux distros become more and more user friendly. This very thing is already working for the Macintosh, and DRM isn't even bothering Joe Homeuser or Grandma E-Mail yet! Secondly, Linux could utilize these new opcodes/BIOS features in it's own implementation (remember: Palladium is part of Windows only) for security use. Imagine recieving an PGP-encrypted e-mail which is loaded straight into hardware locked memory. How's THAT for secure? The usual other advantages apply, such as better protection of memory because the hardware forces it, etc. Who knows, this might even solve many of the buffer overflow problems seen in recent years, just make a small protected block as a buffer. It's hardware isolated, it can't overflow anywhere! (Well, as long as the hardware implementation is decent, which has yet to be seen.)

Then there is always the "YEAH RIGHT" crowd, those who insist this is root of all evil and I should remove my head from my ass and smell the reality. Most would also claim the smell before I took my head out of my ass would match this particular reality, but I'm not quite so sure (heh). Think about it, if DRM is going to cripple hardware to the point where it will destroy the open source community, a community which has proven time and again its methods work and its craftsmanship is that of quality - a community which the government (of both the US and foreign nations) has begun to take notice of and actually embrace - a community which competes directly with Microsoft; do you really think they'd get away with it? The NSA has their own Linux distro. Suddenly Microsoft and Intel create a system which only allows Windows to run on previously open hardware?

The DOJ would flush them both down the toilet for extreme monopolistic practices before it would even be reported on Slashdot. The recent court desision also left a somewhat open end for amendments to the settlement, I'm sure that would "get in on the action too".

I really wasn't a big fan of the whole DRM idea when I first heard it, but the Slashdot crowd tends to get a little over-excited at times. Between seeing what this whole DRM project has evolved into, and given the current state of the technology world (and for that matter, the world as a whole), I dont' see how it wouldn't be complete suicide for DRM-supporting companies to lock out potential 3rd-party developers of any kind. The system is meant to protect content, not monopolies.

Unless it's a monopoly on content. But that is a different discussion...

Because there is no other choice

[MrEntropy]

I hate to run a cold shower on your collective open source hard-ons, but the reason most studios that are Linux based use GIMP as their paint tool is because there is NO OTHER CHOICE. I work at one of the studios listed in the article. The artists on my team doing texture painting will actually go look for a 5 year old SGI octane with Photoshop 3.0 to use because it is faster and easier to use than GIMP. Let that settle in for a moment. These kids love fast machines, they crave them like crack cocaine. However, they will go sit in front of a 250MHz boat anchor and use a product released 8 years ago because it is a better tool. GIMP has a UI that that the Surgeon General should place warnings on for RSI risks (repetitive stress injury for the non acronym types.)

The availability of Deep Paint or Photoshop on Linux would signal the end of GIMPs use in studios. It is not a matter of free as in beer tools, it is a matter of Total Cost of Ownership. If it takes my artists 3 times as long to produce paintings/textures in GIMP as it does in Photoshop/Commercial Tool X, I am walking straight into my Producer's office with a P.O. for Photoshop licenses. Because at the end of the day, our highest costs are labor, not software. And we are not zealots. We, as the rest of capitalistic America, want to make money. And we can't do that with inefficient process.