FOSSwire

Ohio LinuxFest is definitely one of my favorite Linux and open-source conferences. If you’ve never been to a Linux conference, now is a great time to begin. If you have, it’s also a great time to experience this conference.

The main reason you should go? It’s free. OLF is funded by sponsors, so you aren’t required to pay to get in (though you certainly can upgrade your conference pass if you choose). The only thing you have to do is register. Registration closes on September 19th, so be sure you’re not left out!

From Ohio LinuxFest: Back to the Future of Linux!:

Don’t miss your last chance to register for Ohio Linux Fest! A mere two weeks away on September 25–27, it’s coming faster than a Free Software freight train!
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People come to OLF to meet with others that have helped create things like the backbone of the Internet, FireFox, Linux and the Apache web server. If you come to Ohio Linux Fest you will gain a unique perspective of this community. You will see the technology and some of the faces that have made possible such a wonderful change to the digital world.

There are some great speakers at the event, including Doug McIlroy, the inventor of the UNIX pipe, as a keynote speaker:

The featured keynote speaker this year is Doug McIlroy, a major contributor to the great grandfather of Linux and a direct contributor to code that powers many of the Unix products of today. Doug invented the concept of pipes inter-process data streams that no true Unix / Linux geek can live without. This concept made its way into less stable products as well from other proprietary vendors.

It’s definitely an event you don’t want to miss. Visit the Ubuntu booth and there’s a good chance you’ll see me there.

OLFU training classes will be offered the day before the event on the 25th. This is, literally, a bargain. This years training will be guided by LOPSA Where else can you go and get a days worth of training for only $350.00?
What other crazy things will you miss out on if you miss OLF? You’ll miss cool Tee Shirts, the yearly After-Party, the Free-Geek Columbus Linux Basics and more. Don’t be sorry that you didn’t register for the event.

There’s a rumor about that some people go to OLF for the after-party.

Regardless of your reason, make it a point to register. You’ll have a great time, trust me.

See you there!

This.

The File menu has been around since the dawn of user interfaces. But do you know what? It has overstayed its welcome. The File menu has been abused in far too many applications.

A File menu should deal with files. That’s it. Open a file, save a file, print a file, quit editing the file. Some, no.. most applications have been using the File menu to do everything from opening new windows to changing preferences. They don’t belong there: opening a new window should go in a Window menu, and changing preferences should be under Edit or Tools.

Here are some specific instances I’m talking about. I’m not trying to pick on any application or developer, these are just applications I have installed at the moment. But they should be fixed.

• Firefox, Epiphany, Opera, and many other browsers are abusers of the File menu. A browser generally does not have a whole lot to do with files at all. Two, maybe three items on their File menus might actually fit. But things like Open Tab, Location, and Send Link? No. It would make more sense to rename the File menu to "Browser" or "Web".
• GNOME System applets like system-config-printer-applet that only have one option in their File menu: Close. Really?
• Seahorse has a File menu that will create, import, or export keys and passwords. It kind of makes sense, but a something like "Key" or "Keyring" sounds more in-context.
• GNOME Terminal has a File menu that doesn't have a thing to do with files.
• Evolution has a huge File menu that has little do with files. "Mail" or even "Evolution" would be more appropriate.

• Synaptic's File menu could be "Package," but considering there is already a Package menu other things would need to be reorganized.
• Olive's File menu has more to do with branches, though some items would fit as File.
• GConf Editor's File menu has five items for managing keys, two of which are disabled unless you know what you're doing.
• D-Feet has a File menu that allows you to connect to different D-Bus sessions. I can't quite put my finger on what this should really be labeled.
• Devhelp, a documentation browser, has a File menu that opens new windows and prints.
• Many, many more.

Again, if you’re a developer of something on this list, don’t feel too offended. Glade (a GTK+ designer program) sticks a File menu on new menubars by default, so it may just be an oversight. That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be fixed.

There are programs where it does make sense to have a File menu: Gedit, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, PiTiVi, and other applications that edit files as their main function.

Instead of dropping the File menu, it should be renamed to something more useful. Even though many applications abuse the File menu, there are plenty that do not. Banshee has a Media menu; Rhythmbox has Music. Most GNOME games have a Game menu. Baobab has Analyzer. Totem: Movie; Vinagre: Machine; Empathy: Chat; Gwibber: Gwibber.
Yes, even renaming your File menu to the name of your application might even be a good option.

So the next time you’re designing a GUI, keep in mind that your menus should make sense. Do that and we’ll have world peace. Well, maybe not, but it will shut me up.

Desktop Linux isn’t necessarily the first platform you’d think of going to for video editing. Despite that, there are several great projects that offer video editing functionality; things like PiTiVi, Cinelerra and Kino to name just a few.

Jonathan Thomas wasn’t satisfied with the existing video editing solutions on Linux, however. They weren’t easy enough to use, powerful or stable enough. Enter OpenShot, Jonathan’s solution.

Let me say right up front — the project is in a relatively early stage of development. There are plenty of things not yet completed or that don’t work quite right just yet. But I’ve had a brief play with OpenShot, and I am really quite impressed.

The interface will look familiar if you’ve used any other timeline-based video editing package before. You have a project bin on the left, a preview monitor on the right and the timeline at the bottom, where you arrange the clips in sequence to make your movie.

You can’t capture clips directly from a video camera at the moment, but if you are able to get video captured via another source, you then just import the video into OpenShot. I had some old PAL DV footage lying around. I just went to File > Import Files and selected the files.

Right away the clips just appeared in the Project Files area. It just, sort of, worked — I didn’t have to wait any time for the clips to be processed or for any conversion to take place. Now I did only import three clips of fairly short length, but it really was an easy, slick process.

You can then drag the clips to the timeline and arrange them. You can use the Razor tool to slice the in and out points of a clip or split a clip into two and rearrange it. It all really works in a very friendly, familiar way if you’ve ever done anything like this anywhere else.

The only thing that did throw me off with the timeline is the fact that the clips don’t seem to ‘snap’ to the edges of other clips, for example, so at times it feels quite difficult to line clips up one after another without having black space in the video between them. Having a satisfying ‘snap’ feel to the timeline where appropriate would really enhance it.

When you’re done, you can export the finished sequence into an array of formats.

Again, I’m going to admit to being lazy. I just accepted the default settings and exported — and it just worked, again. It is somewhat of a complicated dialogue box if you’re not into video codecs and standards and all of that, but you don’t necessarily need to spend time fiddling with it — the default settings will produce something useful (provided you can play back the codecs in your favourite media player).

There are issues with this project. I found the interface a bit — blue — and not really to my tastes. Also, the icons feel a little bit indistinct and unclear. It’s quite difficult to see quickly what each icon does and I did find myself taking a few minutes to get to grips with which button was which because of that.

Some keyboard shortcuts I’d expect to work, such as the Delete key to delete a highlighted clip in the timeline, spacebar to toggle pause/play in both the timeline and the clip preview in Project Files, to not yet be functional.

I want to stress again that this is an early in-development project. Despite that, it’s the most user friendly, simple video editing program I’ve used on the Linux platform. It just seems to have the attitude of a program that follows conventions, is really simple and just plain makes sense.

There are a lot of features more demanding users may expect before it can be accepted perhaps by a more seasoned video editing audience, but OpenShot shows promise and real potential to be the best home-orientated video editing solution on Linux.

You can download some pre-built packages for Ubuntu as well as source code from the OpenShot Downloads page. If you’re into video editing with Linux, give this a try.