Video Editing + Kickstarter Discussion

The Synfig team really needs to clean up videos and edit them before publishing them. I think it’s really important to give Synfig a more polished and professional look as this attracts more interest to its development. I’m willing to help with video editing, if you guys are interested.

I already cleaned up one of the videos to give an example. Here is the edited version of the bones video. Notice that I removed noise, edited out the pauses and ‘uuuuhhhs’ and added a lot of polish. The background music is royalty free, so no worries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-WciprpD8E&feature=youtu.be

download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-fAhFYDzamdsT1RBZHlOSEE/view?usp=sharing

Once Synfig has OpenGL integration and gets a little more cleaned up, I’m planning to make a big promo for it similar to these:

Elementary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYrobaenFCc

Microsoft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFE4rkSaKOY


I’m also curious if you guys are ever planning on launching another kickstarter effort? I looked at the old kickstarter page and I noticed a few reasons as to why it didn’t generate as much buzz as it could have:

#1: No video pitch! (very bad!)
#2: No goals listed for specific improvements (people want a feature lists)
#3: Not ambitious enough to ignite interest (They say ‘go big or go home’. Synfig needs to be more ambitious in its plans and ask for more money)

Okay, look at Synfig’s kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-free-paint-app-lets-make-it-faster-than-phot/description

Now look at Krita: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-free-paint-app-lets-make-it-faster-than-phot/comments

You could argue that Krita is more popular, but the point is that Krita is successful because they have a very streamlined plan with concrete goals. Not only that, but the Krita team are extremely ambitious in that they directly call out Photoshop and claim that they can out-perform them. This kind of language generates interest and gets people excited for the project.

I think the Synfig team should seriously start discussing another kickstarter effort. This time, establish goals from the beginning and make those features known. Then add more features as stretch goals. I’m willing to help you guys any way that I can. I can edit your video pitch, write up and format the pitch documents and spread the word everywhere I can.

If you guys pitched this program right and you showed synfig with a beautiful interface, you can sell the idea of what Synfig ‘could be’ which will generate a lot of donations.

Hello!

Wow, really good editing made from my draft video!

All demonstration videos were recorded very fast, because I had very limited time. I appreciate any help here!

About Kickstarter: I don’t think the pitch video and other reasons will help us to get a successful Kickstarter. We were keeping reasonable (small) goals for campaign to ensure that it will become successful. And if you watched closely to campaigns, every time we were almost at the fail.

The reason behind this is that Synfig community is not that big yet. Let me share a little experiment with you. We have made a Thunderclap campaign to celebrate the release of Synfig 1.0 - thunderclap.it/projects/253 … -animation
Note: there is no cost to participate - just give your voice.

In 8 days we haven’t reached even the amount of 100 people. You can blame it for not enough promotion, but we used all channels possible for that (direct emails to 1000+ subscribers, G+ page, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). That’s a fail and it shows a current picture very well.

So, currently I am investing my time into setting up other sources of funding Synfig development.

I don’t giving up on crowdfunding. But currently it’s not a good time for that. Maybe later. Thanks again for your willing to help!

What is your native language, BTW?

P.S. I have published the cleaned up video to G+ and updated http://www.synfig.org/1.0/overview/. Thanks!

You’re welcome also English is my native language. I’m willing to edit videos for you in the future, but could you please auto-hide the task bar in future videos? It makes the video look unbalanced, so it’s best to full-screen the program when recording.

Also, would you mind downloading the video and putting it on the official Synfig youtube account? I made the video just to show you the changes I made, but I didn’t expect you to directly link it to my youtube account.

Here is a download link to the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-fAhFYDzamdsT1RBZHlOSEE/view?usp=sharing

I’m going to make edited versions of the other videos and give you download links here. Everything should get cleaned up soon. :smiley:

I edited the bone image deformation video as well. Here is a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-fAhFYDzeXc0anlXaVZxTU0/view?usp=sharing

Cutout tool video has now been edited: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-fAhFYDzZ1RuZmVmQnM0VFU/view?usp=sharing

Awesome! I will upload them to YouTube channel then.

Also, maybe you want to add your name to the credits at the end of each video? Something like: “Editing by …”

About the taskbar: Yes, in my recent videos I hiding the taskbar. For the already recorded ones, I guess it is possible to crop video.

For the future videos I have one suggestion. In the title (at the start), maybe it’s better to replace “DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT” to “DEVELOPMENT REPORT”. Also, please avoid the stretched font.

Unfortunately, according to current situation, I can’t promise the OpenGL integration will be finished soon. It takes a lot of time and we have budget difficulties right now. But I believe that creating promo video will help to increase visibility of the project and attract more people.

We have one nice sample form Ahmed Ali - synfig.org/cms/en/gallery/co … dio-promo/
Sources are available, so it can be used as a base for the start.

Also, I’m curious about the toolchain you use for editing/postprocessing. What is your OS and which software you use? I’m asking that, because I can think about establishing better collaboration. If you use the open-source tools, then we can share files and instead of me talking “please edit this and that” I can make some edits by myself. This should make the collaboration more effective.

I’ll make sure to add development report and avoid stretched text in the future. :smiley:

I use Windows 7 and I typically use Krita for image editing and Blender for video composition. I also use after effects, camtasia and Anime Studio from time to time.

Here is a download link to a Blender File that has the pixel effect. Just change the subject text and render out the frames as a sequence of png files to get a cool transition that you can use in the video compositor.

download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-fAhFYDzOEZteTdQcGNVVDQ/view?usp=sharing

Also, if you guys can’t get the OpenGL render engine going in a reasonable time, have you considered making other smaller, but still important updates to basic workflow?

For example, a drop down menu for selecting the active layer in a switch group or the ability to show/hide animation channels that aren’t being used. These are really important and more simple features that probably should be solved before moving on to more complex tasks.

I’d also suggest getting rid of the concept of a “region layer” and an “outline layer” and instead just adopt the idea of using a single shape layer. When someone draws a shape, the shape can have it’s region and outline toggled on or off as needed. If the user wants the outline and fill to move separately but deform together, they they can just create a linked duplicate of the shape and turn the outline off on one and the region off on the other.

Speaking for ‘region’ and ‘outline’, I’d suggest just calling them ‘fill’ and ‘stroke’. It’s simpler language and is more easily understood by new users. Region is too abstract and outline is more verbose than necessary. Even children know what fill and stroke mean so it’s more of a logical choice.

Aside from all this, the ‘loop’ option for drawing curves should connect the ends of the curve together. At the moment the tangent handles for the ends don’t exist and the curves have to be closed manually which can get a little frustrating.

This is awesome! I am using Blender for video editing as well. So, we have the same toolchain and we can share the files for collaborative editing!

I have uploaded all videos to official Synfig channel now and updated http://synfig.org/1.0/overview/.

I understand what you mean. But in current situation, I see speed optimization (OpenGL) as a top priority and prefer to invest all current resources there. The OpenGL thing COULD be done in reasonable time, but we need a bigger budget. I am working on this right now. Your work on videos is also a big help here. :slight_smile:

Good job with the videos! 8)

Hey guys, I’ve got one really good suggestion that I think could generate a lot of interest. Create a ‘tablet mode’ for Synfig which makes the icons bigger and arranges panels so that they’re good for tablets. Windows 8 tablets are really starting to catch on and it seems like a good idea to appeal to those groups of people, since Flash and ToomBoom are essentially ignoring that market.

You guys have to grab up some market share where ever you see opportunity.

Yes, Krita did the same, they were funded by Intel for that. Great idea, but the speed is still a priority. :slight_smile: Tablets are generally have less performance than PC, so it’s critical.

Goodjob, Thank for links.

Intel just made a similar offer to Inkscape: inkscape.13.x6.nabble.com/Fwd-We … 73724.html

Maybe Synfig should contact that same guy and start some initial talks?

Interesting. Thanks for the hint!

I’ve been thinking about the best way for Synfig to utilize its limited resources. After you finish the OpenGL integration, it might be best to put all of your focus into building the Python scripting interface. If we could build tools and control the GUI with python scripts it would invite a lot of new people to generate code for the program.

This has been hugely successful for Blender and even Flash. I personally develop lots of tools and scripts for Anime Studio and would be more than willing to make new tools for Synfig. Basically, the C++ devs could fall back to creating functions and adding hard coded features. Scripters would take care of the GUI, tools and menu scripts. If you share the workload, it should make things easier.