Apertus February News Update

Hola amigos, February is upon us, and so is another news update for the Apertus Project.

Introducing Apertus
Our new Project Leader, Sebastian Pichelhofer, has created a video introducing the Apertus Project and explaining our intentions. The video has subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Catalan (just press the "CC" button on YouTube's player to choose the one you prefer)


As an Apertus Community member, consider it your duty to share this with contacts, friends and professionals whom you think might find this to be of interest.

The video's URL is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvI7rJ_AZys

Apertus Stereo Rig
Community members Nathan Clark and Winnie Yang have developed a new Apertus rig for stereo 3D cinematography. Needless to say, we've all been blown away by their ingenuity. Congratulations goes out to them and their stunning machinists!!





New Dictator Concept (Dictator II)
Sebastian has started working on a new concept for the Dictator hardware interface. He is currently applying for art sponsorship/state funding (based in Vienna, Austria) to develop a prototype unit.

The new design came about when he started to create a 3D model of his previous Dictator concept. As pointed out by Sebastian, there were several design flaws with the prior design:
- The wheels would always be getting in your way when the operator tries to reach for the buttons next to the LCD
- Having buttons left/right of LCD requires the text on the LCD (showing each button's function) to take up pretty much the entire display.

In the new design, the buttons are located above/below the LCD (in a similar manner to the Arri Alexa layout), which solves the problem of wasting the limited space available on such a small screen.



Sebastian's new design concept is focused on allowing a DOP to also operate the DICTATOR with only one hand when shooting with a shoulder rig.


New Website (launching soon)
Work is continuing round the clock on our revamped website http://dev.apertus.org/

Public access is currently denied whilst the new site is a work-in-progress. Data from the current site has been edited, reviewed and transferred into a layout that is professional, sleek and easier for new community members (and non open-source users) to understand. No release date has been set as of yet, but take our word for it that things are going to be DAMN cool when the new site launches (hopefully soon...)!


Community Map (on new Apertus website)
Apertus is an International Project, and it is simply remarkable to realise just how far our community of engineers, developers, artists and followers extends across the planet. Here is a snapshot indicating where some of the Apertus Team members are situated:




Preparing Apertus for the Libre Software Meeting
The Libre Software meeting is not until July, but plans are in the works for how to best grow our community and spread awareness of the Apertus project at this international summit.

Sebastian has suggested that we make an Apertus film about the event, with the possibility of streaming talks and presentations live to the web with Elphel cameras. Nathan is also interested in having a real-time stereoscopic Apertus rig, setup and functioning in our booth. The awesomeness of all this is still sinking in!

Michael Green has offered to run a workshop on the future of cinema and where our project fits in. This will also give us the opportunity to discuss a wide range of digital cinema topics.

Sasha is then planning on delivering a 10-20 minute presentation examining how we've fostered an international community of engineers, developers, artists and followers through our project website and online forum. The intention is to follow this up with a discussion analysing the success/disadvantages of our forum and whether its implementation is a viable strategy that other open source projects might benefit from.


Following up on the VLC issue from January's newsletter
In last month's newsletter, we mentioned that newer VLC versions were not displaying the data stream generated by the Elphel camera correctly. Following up on this issue, we can now say that the problem has been alleviated. To correctly display a live-stream through VLC (Version 1.1.11 and later), either flash your Elphel camera to an image compiled from the latest source code or manually install the fixed streamer as described here:
http://apertus.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2190

As a quick fix -if you don't want to rebuild an entire Elphel camera flash image from source- you can replace the camera internal /usr/local/bin/str binary with this one:
http://apertus.org/forums/download/file.php?id=285

Run "sync" on a camera terminal afterwards to clean crc checks with the changed file. If you have any questions or feedback, reply on our forums in the following thread:
http://apertus.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5&start=30


2012: The Year of Apertus
As the next key stage of development approaches, we'd like to thank everyone for providing so much critical support and feedback. Members from Telenoika: AudioVisual Open Creative Community (Barcelona, Spain) have contacted us to express their interest in developing software tools and/or plugins for working with Apertus camera footage in Blender (http://www.blender.org/). All progress here will be reported in the following months.

2012 is already shaping out to be a spectacular year for Apertus. However, we can also foresee that greater contributions will be necessary before we're in a position to release our powerful new prototype. At present, there are but one or two bottlenecks stopping our design from meeting the desires and requirements of industry professionals. To combat this, we're gearing up for a flight that will make Apertus surge on the radar.

Unfortunately, our projected flight-path is also going to take us right through the storm clouds. As this month's newsletter draws to a close, we extend a special invitation. Dear friends, collaborators, radicals and colleagues, help spread the word of our project and join us as we prepare to break through the very roof of the stratosphere. Stay tuned to our forums and website as more information regarding new developments will follow shortly.


Best wishes to you all,
Sasha