Introducing Myself & Offering my services to the Project

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Hi all Shotcut users!

My name is Giacomo, I’m a passionate developer from Italy!

At the moment I’m attending a VFX Course and I definitely think of myself as a wannabe VFX and 3D Artist!

I’m also a developer, I maily do web stuff as my main job, but I’m currenly starting to switch to something more 3D/VFXish, since I think it is waaaay more interesting and challenging!

Simply put, I’d like to mix my development and artistic skills, and one of the best way to do that is to code or contribute to the tool you use everyday!

I mainly use Linux, and I stumbled upon SC when I decided I wanted to switch to my Linux box for everything,Video Editing included. Suddently I realized SC was the software I wanted to start using and contributing to, because it’s cross platform, DE independent, based on Qt & C++, backed by MLT (which bakes also all the other free and open source Video Editors out there), with a clear vision for the future and loved by almost everyone in the community.

So here I am, a wannabe VFX artist/Video Editor and developer willing to help the cause of creating the best Video Editor software for the FOSS Community out there!

I’d like to start making my hands dirty on something, is there anything/anywhere I can start from? Do you have something like a “Quick Fix” section or “Fast TODO” list? In other words, how can I start helping you out?

I hope to find a very kind place to work in and contribute to!

best,
Giacomo

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Hi @giacomoalbe,
There is a list of “Quick Tasks To do” on the roadmap page:
https://shotcut.org/roadmap/

Also, you could search the forums for bugs in the “bug” topic and see if you can help figure them out:
https://forum.shotcut.org/c/bug

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Great to hear you’re keen to pitch in, thanks. I wish I had the skills to contribute. How many people are working on Shotcut at the moment?

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Hi @brian,

Thank you for the fast reply!

I’ll definitely check that out, I need to get a look at the code base study it and after that start contributing!

I’m really looking forward to start coding ahah!

That said, I’m too interested in knowing how many people are actually developing Shotcut. Do we have to rely on contributors on Github?

Thank you again for the support, I’ll let you all know my progress!

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The commit history is here:

There are not a lot of outside contributions. But they are welcome. Just check with Dan before you start a large project since he approves all PRs. You wouldn’t want to do a bunch of work and then have it rejected because it doesn’t fit in the roadmap.

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To get started, first learn to compile shotcut. Since Shotcut has some special dependencies, I recommend to try using our Linux SDK. To verify that it is really working, you can simply add some additional logging lines and then look for them. I now desire that someone who wants to contribute something new first submit a bug fix. It can be something from the Github issues list or something you found yourself. Besides the Roadmap page, see the numerous ideas here in the forum. Also, indicate whether you are interested in C++ only or QML/Javascript only or both.

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Hi @shotcut and @brian, thanks for your answers!

As the github README states, you are the main developer and contributor to Shotcut, happy to meet you both!

I successfully managed to install the SDK and to build the project using QtCreator, although I prefer to work from within the terminal (vim + qmake + custom scripts) rather than from an IDE, but nevertheless, now that the project has been correctly set I can work the way I like. So far so good :slight_smile:

And that’s a wonderful screenshot of SC working properly, with the “Today” version!

image
image.png2560×1440 171 KB

I spot 2 problems: the first is that whatever image or video I try to upload into the software make it crash. Console says this thing:

[Info ] <MainWindow::open> "/home/giacomo/Documents/Lavoro/LancioAfrica/photos/IMG_20170718_093601.jpg" /root/shotcut/shotcut/Shotcut/Shotcut.app/share/movit/texture1d.130.frag: Permission denied

It seems something related to file permission, but the folder /root/shotcut/ is not present nor created somewhere, so I don’t actually know what to do now.

The second thing is: how can I link my folder structure to the git repository? I’d like to understand how to actually contribute to the code base, so maybe you have another link with information on how to attach the Git repo.

By the way, maybe something interesting to start with would be to automate this “project setting” phase a bit, maybe to help others interested in getting into the project as developers to easily have a working copy of the software. The procedure you linked, in fact, was easy to follow but a bit clumsy and cumbersome. Something more “automated” would be easier to start with. One great thing I noticed is the fact that the project does not depend on anything more than the modified version of Qt and the Shotcut archive itself, so the build process is completely distribution agnostic, so this is veeeery good, at least for Linux.

By the way, those are simply ideas, I’d like to start putting my hands down in the code as soon as possible, so other tasks might be good as well!

In the end, do you have a mailing list or some IRC channel or something else to connect the developers or do you simply use the Forum?

To answer the question regarding “What I am interested in C++ or QML”, I’d dare to say that I’d like to work on both of them. My idea is to improve the usability of the software as well as the “range” of projects it is capable of handling (by stitching to the milestones in the Roadmap, of course) and also to improve performance and stability. I know those are very tough tasks, but I want to start somewhere and get better everyday!

Let me know then!

Giacomo

1 Like
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Congrats, you passed the test!

Do you have GPU Processing enabled? You need to set environment variable MLT_MOVIT_PATH to where you setup the Shotcut SDK. You can do that in Qt Creator > Projects > Run Environment.

how can I link my folder structure to the git repository?

The source directories in the SDK are git repos. I recommend that you fork Shotcut on Github, add that as a new remote, and push to that.

There are none of these for developers. There are usually just 2 of us at various points of time, and we communicate by e-mail when Github does not suffice. I do not always frequent the forum due to busy-ness, but I hope to change that. If you end up making contributions, there is a private category called “Lounge” we could use for development topics.

As for C++ or QML, I recommend QML first because there is a good chance you have little experience with it, and it is least exposed to MLT, which is going to be a steep learning curve. One thing you can do for the next release is to change the icons for the Composite toggle button on the Timeline track header for the light and dark themes. People are confusing the on and off states. I want keep split.png for the on state, but for the off state, I want to make the image be that of splt.png (multiple layers) with the popular circle-and-slash not symbol superimposed on it:

We can also change the oxygen icons for this function to be the same imagery as above (multiple layers and not) since split and merge are a poor fit. Lastly, I want to change the toolip on this button to say like “Composite is currently ___. Click to ____ compositing”. Just a suggestion. I will do it late next week if you do not.

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Hi Dan,

again thanks for the answer!

At the moment I’m a little busy, since I’m attending a course and I need to focus on lectures, so for the next few days I’ll be almost not available!

I used QML previousely on several projects, so I have a bit of experience, and I will be starting from there, too since I think that something could be done to improve the UI :slight_smile:

When do you plan to release the next version of SC? Am I still in time to do this “Composite Icon change” if I manage to do it during the next week?

I’m also having little trouble with the timeline, since it’s not displayed correctly in the compiled version I have, I need to investigate more what’s going wrong, I’m going to reinstall the SDK and see what happens. If I have still troubles, I will be contacting you.

Last question, I promise :slight_smile: How do you prefer to be contacted? Do you think that this forum post it’s a good way to communicate? (I don’t think so, to be honest) Do you prefer emails? Github issues? You mentioned a “private Lounge” category, but I was not able to find it (maybe because it’s private). May I have access to it?

Thank you!

Giacomo