First, from a recent 'git log' command:

commit f94d5a07541a672b4446248409568c20bca9487d
Author: Justin <justin@localhost>
Date:   Sun Sep 11 21:52:27 2005 +0000

    Vss2Git

diff --git a/jmde/mediaitem.h b/jmde/mediaitem.h*
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52b8a8f
--- /dev/null
++ b/jmde/mediaitem.h
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
#ifndef _MEDIAITEM_H_
#define _MEDIAITEM_H_

#include "pcmsrc.h"
#include "../WDL/string.h"

class MediaItem 
{
public:
  double m_position;
  double m_length;

  double m_startoffs;
  double m_fade_in_len, m_fade_out_len;
  int m_fade_in_shape, m_fade_out_shape;

  double m_volume, m_pan;

  WDL_String m_name;

  PCM_source *m_src;
};

class AudioChannel
{
  WDL_PtrList<MediaItem> m_items;
  double m_volume, m_pan;
  bool m_mute, m_solo;
  WDL_String m_name;
  // recording source stuff, too
  // effect processor list

  // getsamples type interface
};


#endif

* Trivia: guess what jmde (JMDE) stands for?

..and to think, back when we used VSS we didn't even have commit messages! Soon after, "AudioChannel" became instantiable and went on to be known as "MediaTrack", and as one would hope many other things ended up changing.

Wow, 9 years have gone by.

I've been having a blast this week working on something that let me make this:

The interesting bit of this is not the contents of the video itself -- 3 hasty first-takes with drums, bass, and guitar, each with 2 cameras (a Canon 6D and a Contour Roam 2) -- but how it was put together.

I've spent much of the last week experimenting with improving the video features of REAPER, specifically adding support for fades and video processing. This is a ridiculously large can of worms to open, so I'm keeping it mostly contained in my office and studio.

Working on video features is reminding me of when I was first starting work on what would become REAPER: I was focused on doing things that I could use then and there for things I wanted to make. It is incredibly satisfying to work this way. So now, I'm doing it in a branch (thank you git), as it is useful for me, but so incredibly far from the usability standard that REAPER represents now (even if you argue that REAPER is poorly designed, it's still 100x better than what I've done this week). You can't go put half-baked, poor performing, completely-programmer-oriented video features into a 9 year old program.

The syntax has since been simplified a bit, but basically you have meta-video items which can combine other video items on the fly. So you can write new transitions or customize existing transitions while you work (which is something I love about JSFX).

I'm going to keep working on this, it might get there someday. Former Vegas fans, fear not, REAPER isn't going to become a video editor. I'm just going for a taste...