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

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?

[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: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

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: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.

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.