Ubuntu Studio Announced

lukeknipe writes "Ubuntu has set up a page for the April release of the Ubuntu Studio. An ambitious project, it is described by Ubuntu as a 'multimedia editing flavor of Ubuntu for the Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional who is already familiar with the Ubuntu-Gnome environment.' They've set up an Ubuntu Studios Wiki for the project, and their stated goal is to have a the package ready for use in time for 'Feisty Fawn'."

Last Rev

I am so waiting for "Zany Zebra"

Re:Last Rev

I'm looking forward to "Hussy Ho" that should give Linux a certain sex appeal.

Re:Last Rev

They didn't start at A anyway, Warty Warthog > Hoary Hedgehog > Breezy Badger > Dapper Drake > Edgy Eft > Feisty Fawn. There's nothng stopping them from having another release with the same letter. Besides, it's only a codename, there's still the year.month system they have to distinguish releases.

Re:Last Rev

Actually Ubuntu's first release was nicknamed "Dirty Sanchez", which was the source of that distribution's distinguished choice of color scheme.

Re:Last Rev

Hah. Once they go past "Zany Zebra", I can't wait for Anty Aardvark Ate Apples. Followed by Brown Bear Brings Beer.

Good news

This will really help attract even more dedicated linux users. As a multimedia enthusiast, I left Linux because of the lack of multimedia support that was integrated to some level and that worked. Hopefully this will bring back some others who may have left for the same reasons.

Re:Good news

Did you read their page at all? Their wiki says their plan includes "Use only packages in official Ubuntu repositories" ... That'd make it just plain Ubuntu, but with certain packages preloaded, rather than the current defaults. Just like Kubuntu and Xubuntu do.

Maybe a neat idea, but I wouldn't put much effort into it if it was my baby, and I certainly don't approve of the slashvertising of it before it's really even started. Vaporware is a BAD thing for Linux.

Would be great...

I've yet to see a good video editing software for Linux.. Maybe the new Ubuntu will show me what I've missed?

Re:Would be great...

While I cannot comment on Kino, Cinelerra has a "community version" [cinelerra.org] which is an unofficial fork(?) of the project. This version is generally recommended over the official release because it is easier to build and contains bugfixes that the original may not have incorporated yet. The projects goal is to provide more timely bugfixes/patches to the original Cinelerra as developed by Heroine (which only releases updates every several months). More information can be found here. [cinelerra.org]

For those unfamiliar with the history of Cinelerra, the developer(s) are anonymous so as not to jeopardize their current employment status; apparently the author(s) believe there might be a conflict of interest with regard to their day job(s). Regardless, Cinelerra is an excellent product though it is probably overkill for most home users. The learning curve is relatively steep as well. There is a slightly dated (circa 2003) yet interesting article which has an interview with "Jack Crossfire" (pseudonym for the developer(s)) that covers some of the directions the software is taking which can be found here. [linuxdevcenter.com]

The Ubuntu Way of doing things ...

... is what was desperately missing within the Linux/OSS community. Just looking at that splash page of the Ubuntu Studio project made me utter a sigh of relief. Visual and outer skin consistency are things that Linux has seruiously lacked up to now. Ubuntu - basically a not-like-shit-looking version of debian - is what OSS needs to finally succeed in the real world. They use Gnome (which I don't like) but if they continue to improve it style as they did I couldn't care less.
Seeing this, one knows that OSS will prevail and Ubuntu will be at the helm. Nice prospects indeed.

Re:The Ubuntu Way of doing things ...

The Ubuntu Way of doing things ... is what was desperately missing within the Linux/OSS community.

You mean a millionaire prepared to spend lots of his own money with no prospect of short-term return? Yeah probably. Maybe if Linux distros became even more like sports teams, we'd have cheerleaders as well!

Hrm!

This might be the distro that might attract me away from my redhat core. I started with redhat 3 back in the day and progressed with each new release and now I'm using fedora core 6. People have been bugging me to try Ubuntu (in spite of the fact that they keep calling it "Oou-Buhn-Too" or even "You-Buhn-Too") But given that this one aims to cater to an interest that I haven't fully explored yet...? Maybe it's time.

Great Idea

This really is a great idea for a distro. In my own experience, I've found that keeping workstation task (web, e-mail, programming, etc) and multimedia tasks (DVR, editing, etc. as well as games...) on seperate systems works out for the best of both tasks. The two have a terrible tendancy to conflict with each other...

One may be working on a job that will take hours, while the other may need a quick reboot ASAP. One may need 99% uptime, while the other serves it's purpose just as well at 95% downtime. One needs quite high-end hardware, latest drivers, and frequent updating of software, while the other is better handled by older, lower-power, more reliable hardware and old, known-good software. One can be tucked away in a corner, while the other often needs to be nearby. etc.

Plus, it's no secret that many multimedia tools are a serious hassle to get up and working in the first place. Different toolkits and widely varying interfaces abound in this space. Good luck trying to INTEGRATE them with each other, on your own. My multimedia system is filled with shell scripts, which do the job pretty well, but aren't very elegant solutions. Doing something in a convoluted way is sometimes quicker and easier than trying to adapt the scripts that, for example, convert between formats for different editing tools.

Sweeeeet

I've been meaning to get back into recording, but ardour has been putting me off it for years. Perhaps the Ubuntu team will dig out something that doesn't require the user to script stuff to get going. I've been meaning to check out Beast ( http://beast.gtk.org [gtk.org] ) but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Anyone got any other good audio apps.

As for the comment I see about no good video editing apps, I've had marvelous success with kino. I did a documentary on a Stop Bush demo when the bastard came to Canberra. It doesn't have as many flashy looking transitions as iMovie ( which is admittedly the only other video editor I've used ), but on the plus side, it doesn't have horrible cut & paste bugs and crashes and other bullshit that iMovie has.

The wrong direction

I fail to see the point of forking an entire Operating System for the sake of haveing 4 or 5 applications installed on it.

Why not just build packages than can be installed to the main Ubuntu distro(s) already out there?

Re:The wrong direction

I fail to see the point of forking an entire Operating System for the sake of haveing 4 or 5 applications installed on it.

To us pro-audio guys this is great news. My guess is you're not into pro audio. You must have missed my other post [slashdot.org]. You'll see, the number of applications is significantly bigger than that.

Secondly, pro audio is a field that places some very specific requirements on the OS. For years on end, I've needed to manually rebuild my kernel to include Ingo Molnar's low latency patches. Without these patches, linux audio will either suffer dropouts (not a huge deal for gaming but intolerable for pro audio) or feel sluggish. For quite a while, doing pro audio on Linux meant following endless HOWTO's, patching the kernel, and so on. A fork prevents this, without bothering other users with features that are not ready for prime time. *That* is the point.

I'm thrilled to see that after years, a lot of the progress that has been made has found actually ended up finding its way into the mainstream kernel, and I'm sure this will keep happening. I'm particularly happy about ALSA being part of the kernel now. I've also gladly welcomed the O(1) I/O scheduler, and recently, at last, as of kernel 2.6.18, Ingo Molnar&co's low latency patch finally made it into there. No more re-compiling the kernel for realtime support!

Re:The wrong direction

What he's saying is that the needs of people doing pro audio on Linux are considerably different from the needs of someone using Linux as a server or general purpose desktop OS. Serious pro audio users NEED the realtime patches to the kernel--trying to track something and hearing what you've played in your headphones a quarter of a second after you've played it is simply not acceptable for something that needs to be perfect down to the millisecond. So in this case, yes a fork is necessary. It's this attitude of "You don't really need that, do you?" that hurts Linux in the eyes of many people who know what they're talking about. The same can be said for the repeated claims of "You don't really need CMYK support" for the GIMP. Because in order for Linux to be taken seriously in certain fields, these issues need to be addressed. And when I say "seriously", I mean widespread professional adoption, not just hobbyists or people willing to pull their hair out to get something working right.

Far fetched?

They might have done some advancements in various aspects such as easy installing and various hardware detection (not that they are the first) but there are no elements yet to build such a project. Maybe a studio for the masses for basic photo editing but no way for professional stuff. I'll be happy at least to be able to edit or compress the mjpeg's from the digital camera in avidemux on ubuntu out of the box. Any improvement matters, good luck. Len [www.len.ro]

Linux audio software

Linux audio is maturing at a rapid pace. Where at one point I considered it not mature enough for studio use, this is rapidly changing. With Ingo Molnar & co's low latency patches being integral part as of kernel 2.6.18, the hard part is taken care of.

The rest is a matter of finding the right audio and music software. Here's a list of the software that I've actually used personally and that I consider the best of breed audio and music software for Linux. You will find these packages to fulfill most any audio need you might have. If you are going to get started on Linux audio for the first time, check these out before anything else.

Transport:

JACK audio connection kit: supported by almost all linux audio software.
Allows routing audio between jack-enabled applications. Use with qjackctl.

Mixing:

Ardour: Multi track Digital Audio Workstation. Very complete and definitely very usable. Main downside: Not all mixing parameters can be MIDI-controlled by an external mixer (yet), this is currently my main obstacle to integrating my mixer into my linux audio chain.

Audio editing:

Rezound: A decent wave editor. Feature rich, although not very suitable for multi-track work.
Audacity: Another good wave editor.
mhwaveedit: A small wave editor, which, although a bit limited, I've found very reliable for recording jack streams.
Gnu Wave Cleaner: To remove noise, pops and crackle from recordings. Works well, but unfortunately is rather unstable. Make a backup of your audio before denoising it.

Soft synths:

ZynAddSubFX: A very nice virtual analog synth
fluidsynth: Sample-based synth, use with qsynth or (better) java-based fluidgui
LinuxSampler: More powerful sampler than fluidsynth, albeit with higher latency
Aeolus: A virtual pipe organ. Believable to the untrained ear.

Composition:

soundtracker: IT-tracker style music editor
hydrogen: A drum machine (or more accurately, a drum sequencer).
Rosegarden: A MIDI sequencer. Use in combination with one of the above soft synths. I've experienced some trouble combining both MIDI and audio inside the same project.

Real-time processing:

LADSPA plugins: Effect processing for almost any purpose. Most prominently absent is a good pitch corrector/auto tune.
freqtweak: Create all kinds of interesting effects by tweaking parameters in the frequency domain.
Jack-rack: Process incoming JACK audio in realtime.

Other:

amidi: Command line utility to dump incoming MIDI traffic and send MIDI traffic.
              Very useful for MIDI diagnostics
hd24tools: A jack-enabled suite that allows playing disks recorded on Alesis HD24 recorder.

Main things I feel are still lacking:

- Replacing audio peaks by drums: I've written a small tool, drumreplacer, which does this for a single audio channel. However it is rather limited and uses a lot of CPU. Still a far cry from the capabilities of drumagog.
- Auto tune
- A tool to 'unwobble' wobbly drum tracks in real time

Jokosher

You left out Jokosher. It's still less than a year old, but it's probably already one of the best, and it's only going to get better. Jono Bacon (the guy who started the project) is an employee of Canonical, and I'm pretty sure Jokosher is one of the applications open in that screenshot on the Ubuntu Studio website, so you can expect it to be one of the "killer apps" in Ubuntu Studio.

Has potential

I think that this flavour of Ubuntu will convert quite a few people that I know if it manages to do what it advertises.

I got quite a few friends who are wow-ed by the latest advancements in the linux desktop enviroment and wanted to convert their workstations to running Ubuntu. The main reason why they're not doing so(most of them are video editors and sound engineers) is the lack of pre-installed tools for audio-visual editing. Having such flavours of Ubuntu will probably make their conversion to Linux easier :)

No use without HW support...

What's the point of me installing UbuntuStudio if there's no support for my RT-X100 video editing card? No real-time effects. No hardware encoding. Perhaps no DV grabbing either.

Until hardware suppliers ship Linux drivers (with all the interoperability issues of standardising drives for so many things) its pointless. I'm sticking to Windows for my video editing and music mixing. Linux for everything else though...

all try anything for a laugh

its worth a shot - was introduced to linux with the scientific linux distro, whilst not completely horrific it was not the most pleasent experience (still forced to use it) ubuntu however was much better (perhaps because my knowledge about linux had increased a little, "why use ubuntu then!" i hear you cinics say ;)), so yeah, i'll use it. Look forward to it

Dumb question

What's the reason for developing a whole new branch of Ubuntu for a specific purpose? (Such as the EDUbuntu) Why not just have a list of programs that people might want to download. Are there really changes that need to be made at the operating system level for multi-media editing?

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

ISO Format

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266678 [ubuntuforums.org]

I don't know if anyone will find that interesting. The votes are basically deadlocked between CD and DVD... Turning point in the format wars?

Targeting Feisty sounds foolish to me

That's only three months from now. I can already see it being "almost done" at that time, and of course it's such a good PR doohickey that they'll push back Feisty two months rather than wait for Feisty+1. And then the integration will still be half-assed. Save it for 7.10 and do a killer job, guys.

If you can't wait: 64 Studio

I've been trying out 64Studio [64studio.com] v1.0 over the last couple of months. Debian-based, with a core set of audio apps that fit on a single CD, and JACK to glue them all together. Ardour and Rosegarden work well, and it wasn't hard to get my USB audio & MIDI gear working with standard modules. Includes some decent graphics / video programs too, Blender3D, CinePaint & more. If I have one wish, though, it's for more synthesisers in the base package, and even a general-purpose sampler. (QSampler only supports GigaSampler files so far, not building your own sample sets, as supplied.)

I'd love to..

but I'm still waiting for support for my Sound Blaster XFi :(

yawn

I wish i could say I was excited with this. Unfortunately, it's probably another project put together by individuals who don't 'get it'. Simply including Audacity & video editing software into a distribution doesn't make it multi-media centric. You have to include packages to make use of specialized AV hardware which currently don't exist.

Currently I run a 24 track based home studio and would love to convert it completely to linux. Alas though, until drivers are created for Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU - http://www.motu.com [motu.com]) hardware this distro is just more chaff waiting to be swept up and forgotten.

Unless...

Unless they send copies of the distro to the producers of the hardware, and show them that there is an OS tailor made for their hardware and their customers, just waiting for them to make the drivers. In other words, Ubuntu may be trying to offer up a chicken to get the hardware manufacturers egg.

Wired?

Has anybody tested out Wired [epitech.net]? I never got around to installing it myself, but it looks promising as well. Just wondering since it does not seem to be mentioned here at all...

Text made me hungry

At first I thought it said "Tasty Fawn"

video editing too? Good luck.

So, has anyone ever gotten Cinellera to run long enough to comment on usability? I've tried many, many times to compile the thing, and the prepackaged binaries I've found are hideously unstable. I've heard about a community version, but don't know how far along it is... hoping it's useful-ish. They've written their own widget libraries and codecs, so it's really not that flexible. Similar story with Jashaka, very hard to get to compile, and when I did, I seem to recall it wasn't a video editor so much as an effects mixer for video. Thanks to this story I've discovered kino, which is happily packaged for Ubuntu... but so far, also doesn't work. Freezes up when I try to load a video file. I'll keep trying, but I've always been a little surprised at the sorry state of video editors on linux. I've also been annoyed that whenever the subject is brought up, there's always a bunch of "I've never used it, but there's cinelerra" posts. Yes, I know you haven't used it, that's why you're suggesting it.

All I really want is a simple video editor for making anime music videos, and for this, I currently have to boot Windows to use Premiere.

pure:dyne

How about pure:dyne [goto10.org]?

From their site:

pure:dyne has been created to provide a complete and ready made environment for artists and developers who are looking for a free operating system dedicated to realtime audio and video processing.

pure:dyne is a GNU/Linux live distribution based on the new dyne:II core. You don't need to install anything, pure:dyne is running from the CD itself. It can directly boot from virtually any PC machine, or Intel Mac, and the optional hard-drive or USB-key installation is just a matter of copying one folder.

This particular live cd brings you the latest exotic FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software - read more) such as Supercollider, Icecast, Csound, Packet Forth, Fluxus and much much more, including of course Pure Data and a great collection of essential externals and abstractions (PDP, PiDiP, Gem, GridFlow, RRadical, PixelTango ...).

Congrats

I just want to congratulate the team who took over and pushed through with the vision I once had.

I'm happy back on debian, but this is a good milestone that I am happy they [will eventually] have reached.

Ubuntu Developer

I'm personally more intrigued by the idea of an Ubuntu version meant specifically for developers. Give me the normal Ubuntu system (sans useless desktop things like games, media players, etc.), add on a nice IDE maybe, throw in build-essential and the relevant sections of the UNIX manual, and I'd probably make a mess of myself in anticipation.

Currently, I make these modifications myself after a fresh install at every new release. I'm really just asking Canonical to make my life even easier. ;-)

Dyna:bolic will do

Dyna:bolic under Ubuntu base will do fine for studio. No need to pull the fussy hair over all this. (Fly like a sly raven)

Go back to sleep

Just get back to sleep. This release is for those who are awake and want to contribute I guess.

Re:Wake me up...

Anyone can plan to do something, but how many of those projects are finished?

Anyone can plan a well-polished gnome based distro, but Ubuntu are one of few who've delivered.

I'd give alot more credence to a well funded organisation with a proven track record than the announcement of YALM project.

If they're announcing, they're probably confident about delivering.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

I'm afraid that even in the hands of a "pro" Photoshop has a hard time producing music...

Prior Art

I don't think it'd be hard to roll DeMuDi or Dyne:bolic into an ubuntu-themed & flavored distro. Both of those are working systems, if not yet sporting the famous Ubuntian ease-of-use.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

Your sig betrays you!

Try opening a 56 GB image with GIMP and watch it paifully die.

Last time I checked, XP couldn't allocate more than 2 GB to a process.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

I mean, graphic pro-men use Photoshop, that is the only graphi program that can work with really big images (and it does it well). Try opening a 56 GB image with GIMP and watch it paifully die.

Your advertisement for Photoshop belongs elsewhere.

If this is your only specific complaint, I can quite easily dismiss you by saying that a great many paid professionals don't want or need to handle "56 GB" images.

Animation guys use Maya, WheelBuck or something similar,

What theoretical "guys" use is irrelevent.

but there is NOTHING of similar quality here (or freeware or OS for that matter).

Everything is still in development, so that list will change. Besides, you aren't even constructively criticising, you're just bitching and whining that proprietary apps are (magically?) better.

Ok call me a troll if you want, but DON*T TELL ME for fuck sakes that this is for the pro.

You are, and it still is.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

Let's see I'm a pro and I use:

3D Studio Max, XSI, Maya, Zbrush, Avid, Fusion, Nuke, Combustion and Photoshop.

Only one platform runs all of those: Windows.
None of those programs are included in this "multimedia pack for professionals". So uhh yeah, my complaint is with the parent... this isn't a professional package at all.

If you use Photoshop day in and day out you would know that Gimp isn't acceptable. And it's not because it doesn't load obscenely large files it's because it's a sub-par application.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

No I know people who use: FCP, Shake, Pro Tools, Smoke, Inferno, Gimp (but he admits he only uses it as a hobby, for real work he switches back to XSI), Modo, Mudbox, Cinepaint, Vue, Audition, Zeno and a million other applications large and small. Proprietary and Free. I use hundreds of open source tools. I even have some scripts that I wrote for 3D Studio Max that run off of a MySQL server.

I've tried Gimp. I worked at a start up studio and for a while they were still even in the buying phase and hadn't picked up a copy of Photoshop yet for the modelers. So we all used Gimp. It was obnoxious. I don't hold any sort of dogmatic appreciation for one piece of software over another. I am constantly changing software and hold no allegiance to manufacturer, distribution model or OS. I use Shake on Linux and Mac (the linux version is much much faster, or at least it was before 4.1 and Intel processors, I havne't used that release yet.). I use any tool I can find that does cool stuff and helps me work faster. If Photoshop became "Gibbed" and was released as open source, and Gimp got renamed as "Photoshop" I would migrate to Gibbed. If something really cool was as good or better than photoshop and was Open Source or even just free I would grab it immediately. I just learned Zbrush after several years and now Mudbox is out. After playing with it I want to add it to my toolset as well.

When it comes to editors: There is Avid, Smoke, Premiere/FCP (practically the same application) and Vegas. Vegas is annoying as hell to edit with on anything longer than 10 minutes so that leaves two options. The current offerings in the Open Source market are useless. Although Smoke does run on Linux, so that would be my preferred "Linux Video Editor". Avid/Premiere/FCP is just a matter of preference and platform choice.

So while I don't say what I use are the only options (far from it, and even then I didn't even list all the stuff I use. I'm using premiere right now at work while editing a reel. I've used FCP on projects in the past. I've sat at a smoke station briefly.) I do know what my options are because I've tried just about all of them. I've talked to people who have also tried them. I research products. I read reviews. And this package is not all that useful for a working professional right now in the visual fields. And not just because of small things like when a Nuke compositor is annoyed with Fusion. These are big huge deal breaker problems in just about every single selection.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

"Let's see I'm a pro and I use:

3D Studio Max, XSI, Maya, Zbrush, Avid, Fusion, Nuke, Combustion and Photoshop.

Only one platform runs all of those: Windows.
None of those programs are included in this "multimedia pack for professionals". So uhh yeah, my complaint is with the parent... this isn't a professional package at all."

You clearly haven't tried the latest version of Blender :) It is a reasonable replacement for many professional users and we do get people who are migrating from those various packages (although more are coming from Lightwave, Cinema 4D, Truespace, and other lower end packages) As a professional 3D artist you will find Blenders mesh modeling tools fairly comparable for SubD modeling; sculpting tools fairly comparable to zbrush (although with tradeoffs and limitations - we have native retopology currently but lack masking capabilites so you can only hide mesh); uv unwrapping that is superior to all of those listed; node based texturing is fairly comparable - it lacks certain shaders specifically a SSS shader. But given the list of software it sounds more like it will tend to be work that Blenders internal renderer is suited for (really it depends on a case by case basis). Its node based compositing and non linear editing (sequencing) are quite good - but not likely to knock any of the top end software out currently. While I don't expect current users of other major 3D packages to migrate to Blender as a replacement for their existing software (why go elsewhere when they already have a pipeline that meets their needs). Blender is already quite well suited for many professionals needs and is already in heavy usage by a number of small and mid sized studios for commercial 3D work (print and video advertising, architectural rendering, scientific visualization, feature animations, etc). It also is being used in some major studios unfortunately most are requiring NDAs about software used in their pipeline although we are seeking permission to do interviews with some artists on major projects that it has been revealed that Blender was used for.

Of course Blender isn't suited for all 3D animation tasks currently - I'd recommend against it for photoreal rendering involving animation of people; and against if for special effects work involving smoke and flame (ie volumetric rendering) and certain complex particle effects.

However that is a subset of all animation work - and those can and ofter are handled with specially dedicated software.

Just because a set of software that meets your professional needs isn't provided, doesn't mean that the professional requirements of others aren't being met.

LetterRip

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

Ok call me a troll if you want, but DON*T TELL ME for fuck sakes that this is for the pro.

You are trolling.

Your complaint seems to be specifically about the GIMP/Photoshop. Fine, many photo professionals use photoshop & won't accept anything else *shrugs*.

However, to conflate all multimedia users with PS users is....stupid.

For instance, users of cinepaint [sourceforge.net] for instance will dismiss photoshop as a "useless toy". They're not correct (its just not the tool for their job) - but neither are you.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

Depends on what you define as whining.

The problem I've had with just about every single large Open Source project is it requires me to contribute. I don't want to contribute to it, I want to use it. If I had time to contribute I would be a software developer not an artist. This is why projects like Apache do very well in an Open Source environment. People who use it, contribute to it and make it better, because using it is improving it.

Re:Yep, bloatware, and a mediocre one

They make Maya for Linux.