Film Gimp Released For Mac OS X

An anonymous reader writes "Film Gimp, the most popular open source tool in feature motion picture work, has released its first Macintosh version. Film Gimp is now available for Mac OS X, Linux, and SGI Irix. Film Gimp is a frame-by-frame retouching tool used by motion picture studios as an alternative tool to Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp was used on the movies Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little, and other productions."

Comments

Blowing my Excellent karma on this one

[Znonymous Coward]

Phase 1. Imagine Beowulf cluster of these.
Phase 2. In Soviet Russia?
Phase 3. Profit?

Re:Blowing my Excellent karma on this one

[Salsaman]

Hey, I was gonna use that .sig :-P

Photoshop Trolls

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Everytime The Gimp gets mentioned on /. in the last 6 months or so, the threads get polluted with Photoshop Trolls/Zealots with multi-post missives about how Gimp is a toy, good only for SourceForge Logos, and how it is considered by them to be a UI trainwreck.

Well, next time, link 'em back to this posting.

There is a professional and sophisticated use for The Gimp as a high-end tool, which doesn't require proprietary colour-space models, or CYMK matching printed output.

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll just point to this and say "It's only used on kiddie films like Scooby Doo and Harry Potter... *real* films use Photoshop."

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[ip_vjl]

I love Photoshop, but I wouldn't really consider it for this type of work. It really works best with single images - not working on a video sequence.

Even though I wouldn't trade Photoshop for (regular) Gimp, I wouldn't have any qualms about using FilmGimp if that's the tool I needed for the job.

I don't know why so many people are so passionate and interested in the tools other people use. Using the same tool doesn't make somebody a good designer/director/programmer/etc. When was the last time you went by a nice house being built and said "Say, nice work. What kind of hammer you using?"

- vin

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[Znonymous Coward]

No doubt. Everything looks better on a Mac. I wish it used the Aqua 100% interface and not X.

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yes, if lots of people use it, it automaticly makes it good (so windows must be better than any UNIX to, right?).
And porting any app to OS X automaticly improves it's usability.

I appologize if Film GIMP is completely different to, and much better than GIMP GUI-wise. Either way, GIMP still has a bad GUI, and I'm not sure what linking back to your post is supposed to prove.

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[foo12]

There is a professional and sophisticated use for The Gimp as a high-end tool, which doesn't require proprietary colour-space models, or CYMK matching printed output.

Except to my understanding GIMP != Film GIMP. They may share a common lineage but are targetted at entirely different markets. The fact that Film GIMP is fantastic for its userbase doesn't change the fact that plain-old GIMP, while very useful for RGB work, is effectively useless for even basic prepress work.

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[UberLame]

Being pure aqua is unlikely, since FilmGimp is based on GTK. However, things will get significantly faster when GTK gets a good cocoa port. There is some work in progress, but it isn't really ready yet. However, this still doesn't mean that it will look like Aqua.

To port FilmGimp to run natively on Cocoa is an undertaking that it doesn't sound like anyone is trying to take. Heck, nobody is going it for regular gimp either. And the windows ports of both are based on GTK for windows, not native. So, don't expect it anytime soon.

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[Alan Partridge]

why use Photoshop when you can use Commotion?

this whole story baffles me, film GIMP is a Commotion competitor, not a Photoshop competitor.

Re:Photoshop Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp is a toy. But I wagerly await the day it will be able to replace PhotoShop fully. I use PhotoShop several hours every workday and can say that Gimp does not yet compare (though the scripting looks interesting) And yes, it is because of the need for CMYK, Lab and Duotone colorspaces. But I have to say that the only thing good in PS7 is Mac OS X support. Other than that, Adobe seems to be making it worse. I can't wait for Gimp2 to have CMYK space. Also, as other posters have noted here Photoshop and Gimp are not really relevant to the discussions on FilmGimp. FilmGimp is a different app to serve different needs, and I for one am interested in it.

Fink unresolved-dependency blues

[frequnkn]

This seemed like a cool thing to try, as I've been following the Linux development for a while, but I can't seem to find "dlcompat_dev" in fink, and the film-gimp install fails without it.

As far as I can tell, my fink config is listing all trees. I know it wouldn't break my arm to install something manually, but it's just nice to see more complete install packages.

Otherwise, congrats to the team on another much needed media tool for OS X!

Re:Fink unresolved-dependency blues

[Imarkius]

I've got dlcompat-dev on my system. Are you running an archaic fink version?

Re:Fink unresolved-dependency blues

[benh57]

It is unfortunate that they decided to announce this and distribute (invalid) fink .info files on their own, rather than waiting until the package was accepted into the fink distribution.

Cool. Any other replacements?

[eingram]

I'm willing to give anything a try. I recently got into creating my own short Star Wars films and used Photoshop to add in the lightsaber effects frame by frame.

Can Film Gimp load any kind of movie files? The problem with Photoshop is you have to (or as far as I know) use something like Adobe Premiere and convert the film to a .FLM file, then load it into Photoshop. When you do this, you lose all audio (which can be easily added back in, but that is just an extra step in a already long process). Will I need to convert it into something Film Gimp can read?

What about editing software for OSX, Linux, etc? Something similar to Ulead Video Editor? I'd love to make more movies and actually use legit (read: free) software and not be scared to post them.

And yes, I know I can Google for these answers, but it is better to have answers from people who have used the software and know what is good and what works (versus the company telling me it is good and works).

Re:Cool. Any other replacements?

[i_am_nitrogen]

Cinelerra is kind of cool, from heroine virtual.

Adobe's .FLM format is extremely simple. I've always been threatening to write a .FLM loader for GIMP. You can find a PDF that describes the .FLM layout on Adobe's site somewhere.

I know all this because I've been wanting to do the same thing: lightsabers in GIMP instead of Photoshop. I've never had much success with the OSS video editing software though; Cinelerra seems to be targeted at the $80000 HDTV workstations with which it is frequently bundled.

Re:Cool. Any other replacements?

[protohiro1]

You used photoshop!?! I love photoshop, but this is not what it is for. FilmGimp is overkill. Do you need to print these star was movies onto film, thus requiring super high resolutions and bit depths? The product you are looking for is after effects.

Re:Cool. Any other replacements?

[UberLame]

FilmGimp only loads sequential frames. Like:
frame0001.tiff
frame0002.tiff
frame0003.t iff ...
And of course, all audio is lost.

I don't know how hard it would be to write a macro to make the task easier once loaded. Do you at least have a macro to let you select two points and have it draw the saber in between?

By the way, there is no company behind FilmGimp. The closest is Rhythem & Hues who have a developer or two on staff. But they don't control the project.

Re:Cool. Any other replacements?

[eingram]

Do you at least have a macro to let you select two points and have it draw the saber in between?

I actually would outline the [toy] lightsaber in Photoshop using the polygon tool, then use fill, then add blending effects (inner and outer glow).

We added a lens flare for the frame the lightsabers came in contact (at the point they came in contact, too). It came out pretty good, except we filmed at night and sometimes lost visual of the toy lightsabers and had to guess the length and position of the saber resulting in "jumpy" lightsabers.

*shrug* I'll give FilmGimp a shot sometime. Too bad theforce.net only has tutorials on Win32 software. I just hope TFM for FilmGimp is good. ;)

Re:Cool. Any other replacements?

[protohiro1]

Again: use after effects. There is the "beam" effect which draws a vector line that is blendable. It is also keyframeable, so you won't have a problem with jumping. Better still, it renders motion blur and you will get a much better effect.

Re:Cool. Any other replacements?

[UberLame]

Err, there isn't really much of a FM for filmgimp. It really isn't that hard though.

Screenshot

[FriedaHogworthy]

My favorite thing about this story is that the Film Gimp screenshot features an image of the space shuttle flying over my home! Wellington, New Zealand. Nice!

Re:Screenshot

[Basehart]

I saw the space shuttle/space station combo about 2 months ago flying over my apt in Seattle, WA., USA at about 6:45PM one night. VERY impressive site. Was watching Nasa TV and saw that it's track was headed towards the NW USA. At the time it was just passing over Japan. About 15 minutes later there it was. Super bright light moving quite swiftly through the sky, it was catching the setting Sun's rays full on and headed over towards the approaching darkness in the East. SUPER COOL.

Quartz GIMP?

[bsharitt]

I noticed that the article said that there may be a Quartz port of Film GIMP in Q4 2003. Has the regular GIMP been ported to Quartz yet? I know the last time I used the GIMP on OS X, it used X11 like Film GIMP apparently does.

OS X? Not really...

[jonwiley]

Folks who think this will run natively on OS X will be disappointed. It runs on X11. So no pretty Aqua interface.

You need Fink to make it work.

Re:OS X? Not really...

[Theom]

You mean the ugly interface that too eye candy too literal?

Re:OS X? Not really...

[Theom]

Talk about unfair moderation, the guy who likes aqua gets moderated up. But when I state my honest opinion it's flamebait...

Movie Industry and Opensource?

[Geek Boy]

Wonderful. The movie industry fights opensource at every turn (ever heard of a DVD), yet welcomes it with open arms in the back office where they actually create the often crappy pieces of work that they make their money off of.

I wonder how good it is for the rest of us that they even use opensource. Do they let their own people view the movies on their workstations?

Re:Movie Industry and Opensource?

[UberLame]

>Do they let their own people view the movies on their workstations?

Of course not. Their own people are supposed to be working at their workstations, not watching movies.

And Rhythem & Hues basically paid for the development of FilmGimp, so for those of us who needed something like that (there are a few scientists using it, amoung others), it is very good that they use it.

Re:Movie Industry and Opensource?

[Mac Degger]

Scientists? What are they doing with something like FilmGimp? Touching up their experiment videos to make the facts fit the theory?

Altho this is meant to be funny, I still am curious...

This is not OS X

[davids-world.com]

OS X integrates Darwin and Aqua (and more). A OS X program has an Aqua interface. That's the main difference between an OS X application and a Linux program. Film GIMP seems to run under X Windows, which happens to run under OS X.

If you apply the same logic, Quark Express is available as OS X application (as it runs unter Quark), and my 1995 file comparison utility égale is an OS X app, as it runs in an Atari TOS emulator (MagiCMac OSX). Wow, I could write programs for OS X way before it was released. Amazing!

Re:This is not OS X

[kalidasa]

The difference is that Fink is not an emulator. X provides a different video layer, but the underlying system code is Darwin, not that of an emulator.

Re:This is not OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

So it builds for Darwin. There is nothing OSX specific about this release. Darwin specific, yes. OSX specific, no. "OS X native" usually means it's made for OS X. This isn't. XFree86 doesn't even ship with OS X.