Thursday, June 19, 2008

FusionCast VI -- New Plugin: Stackswitch

Well, here we are already with another episode. Keep in mind that I plan on making shorter, more specific episodes now for easier searching on Youtube, etc. Because of this, the episode numbers are less important and more emphasis is on the plugin/features outlined.

Watch the original video here for annotations, and/or if you're coming from the planet.

Can you Digg it? >> Thanks everyone for putting this on the front page! And welcome, diggers!



This episode, we show you an all-new plugin: Stackswitch! Added by Onestone to gitweb, this plugin is a neat hybrid of the scale and shift window switchers. Take a look at the video for details!

Thanks a whole lot to Kate Linford for personally offering her track, "Hip Hop Bond" to use on this cast. I think you'll find it quite outstanding! A link to the track may be made available later.

Links:
Stackswitch on Gitweb
Original Announcement (onestone's blog)

Please email me at fusioncast at gmail dot com!
I am on IRC occasionally under the nick of gavintlgold on irc.freenode.net #compiz-fusion.
Also, comment by clicking on the link below.

Tip: did you know that you can sort my posts by the label "episodes" to only see my episodes and cut out the announcements and stuff?

36 comments:

Will Fuqua said...

Wow, that was a really slick video. Very professional!

Oh yeah, the plugin is nice too.

Fyda said...

Really polished video. You've made astounding improvements, and it looks like kdenlive is treating you well.

Those annotations worked out really, really well. :D It's great to have helpful labels pointing out what to look for, especially when comparing the effects of different settings (I think it might even be an example of the phenomenon called "change blindness").

(That, and the image quality isn't that great with YouTube; things get blurry pretty quickly. Mind you, one could always add "&fmt=18" to the end of any YouTube URL to see the higher-quality version...)

I was also wondering where the heck you got that 3D animated CF logo from, until I saw Blender in the credits. :o

Looks like I have a replacement for Shift Switcher now (just like Static Switcher replaced my Alt+Tab, this is totally going to be my new Super+Tab). Great stuff and massive kudos to onestone.

Gavin said...

Thanks! Right now, youtube has a link to a "Higher Quality" video below the vid. It's better than having to add some code to the link :P.

Gavin said...

Oh, and I guess I should release the blender file for people to play around with.

Kate said...

Love this plugin , Love the Video, stackswitch rocks, Kudos .

Anonymous said...

amazing stuff, my ubuntu desktop already looks awesome thanx to the hard work of the good ol developers @ compiz, and linux as a whole. i mean - this would cost a pretty penny @ MS or apple!

Gavin said...

I can now say with pride that today, I have gotten OVER 9000!!! views! :D

Anonymous said...

Great video, and that song is awesome! Where can I find more songs by this "Kate Linford" person?

Anonymous said...

Just to remind you, Compiz Fusion works on FreeBSD as well ;). But apart from that, nice video, nice plugin!

- SeySayux

Unknown said...

Dude, Stackswitch is da shiz yo! What a difference it ads!

JT
http://www.Fireme.To/udi

Anonymous said...

Looks very purty.

I'd like it if you could discuss how you made the clip.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Funny how they want to be Apple, but fail hard at it. It's sad somewhere. Really.

Just get a mac and be happy.

Kate said...

Anonymous said "Get a mac and be Happy" ......WHY ?. When you can have BETTER for FREE ,LMAO.... You are just MAD as hell that you paid a zillion bucks for a mac and it cant do half the effects that COMPIZ FUSION does for free . I have nothing but RESPECT for the guys who bring us all these FREE plugins on a system (whichever Distro you run on linux) which is free . I would eat rocks before i run WINDOZE which is why i run LINUX . Mac's are Great if you have LOTS of Bucks, ... BUT I LOVE MY LINUX AND COMPIZ FUSION and i Will ALWAYS support IT and the GREAT People who contribute to it !.

Gavin said...

True story: I used to only use Macs. We still have a Mac. But it's gotten slower compared to new hardware, and I've built myself a decent PC from parts I got online. When its graphics card is no longer good I can get a second one for SLI (for when the next Half Life comes out). I like playing Half Life on Wine.

Since my Mac is an old PowerPC, I can't run Windows or Wine on it for any good games. Running linux on it is also annoying because of lack of support for flash, etc.

Now what would I do if I was a Mac supporter? I would buy a new Mac! Having instead switched to linux quite a while ago, I know that that's just throwing money away! I spent a few hundred dollars on the PC that I'm running now, and I'll be able to have updates forever with linux.

My mac (a G4 eMac with Panther) can't even run the newest Firefox 3! All I use it for now is Skype (because for some reason Skype video doesn't work with my camera) and soon that won't be supported either! I really hate my Mac... I liked it when we got it, but now it's just ancient and expensive.

Gavin said...

To anonymous interested in my method of making videos:

First, I modeled a cube in Blender, mapped the compiz fusion logo to it, and added a reflective plane and some text. Than, I animated it and exported it as an mpeg4 file.

Then, I ran the command "xvidcap --file stackswitch3.mpeg --fps 15 --cap_geometry 1680x1050+0+0 --rescale 25 --time 200.0 --start_no 0 --continue yes --auto" in my /home/gavin/FusionCast/caps/ folder and demonstrated (in slow motion because xvidcap speeds it up) the plugin.

Then I opened up kdenlive, and imported the clips, into a *PAL* project (only works that way), along with the music which I converted from .wma with MediaCoder (a windows app that runs fine with Wine).

I proceeded to edit the video with kdenlive, adding text commentary and transition effects, all the while saving because kdenlive likes to crash.

I then exported the file as a 640*480 high quality mpeg4 and uploaded it to youtube. The end! :)

Gavin said...

For now we're going with an upload site for Kate's music: Hip Hop Bond

Enjoy!

Kate said...

THANKS for the plug , U ROCK !. If ya'll want any more Tunes i have a site Here...

http://www.thesixtyone.com/kateinked/collection/all/

Thank You !.

Anonymous said...

Terrible Music. Yes, James Bond is cool, but this is just "Bleh".

Kate said...

LMAO, thx dude next time we can use your track! roflmao.

Anonymous said...

Hi! I love that track, thank you so much for making it available Kate!

There is one problem though, and that is I can't download it from that location :(

Any chance it can be uploaded to another location?

Thankyou very much! :)

Kate said...

Hey Anonymous , Thanks & sorry i will get on it to sort the download.

Gavin said...

Didn't realize that that was a private download site... I'm not sure what to do because I've lost the password to my fusioncast web hosting... :-/

K@TE said...

i have uploaded the "Chilled Bond " track to another site .
you can get it from Here....

http://www.garageband.com/artist/kateinked/songs

It works , i just tried it.l8r.

Anonymous said...

YAY! It works! Thankyou so much Kate, your song is awesome! xxx

Kate said...

To anonymous, Your Welcome, and thank you very much.

ysNev said...

This is a very great plug-in...!
I'll try this as soon as I know how to..!

This is ysNoi...Ubuntu Newbie..

mitcoes said...

I only want a How to ... I'm a newbe with compiz plugins, I installed the Advanced desktop efects config on my ubuntu HH, but it does not work very well to install plugins - not easy to find -.

Kate said...

Hey Mitcoes , this is what i used to install compiz from Git.....

http://kavoor.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/compile-compiz-from-git/

Works good for me !.

ps, Dont forget to remove your installed compiz fusion with synaptic package manager or the two will clash.l8r.

Anonymous said...

Ubuntu users!

To get an updated Compiz (with the cube & sphere) and the stackswitch, add this PPA:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main

Then do the updates, you'll get cube and sphere plugin. To install the stack switch, paste this in firefox:

apt:stackswitch

Anonymous said...

I can't access youtube, could I download the video from elsewhere?

Unknown said...

You need to stop the focus on Linux and go with X Window.

You've needlessly kicked operating systems such as *bsd, and (Open)Solaris to the curb...

Anonymous said...

can't wait to explore your blend file.

Nicolae Crefelean said...

Kate, many thanks for the link! :D I love it!

Oh.. The video is great too! :D I have just found out about the site but I'll keep watching it. The vids are very nice. I like they're short and conclusive. Keep up the excellent work! ;)

Cliff Martin said...

I switched after 20+ yrs using lame-ass MS Windows to Apple's O/S X. However, about a yr. ago, I switched to Ubuntu Linux, despite my strong love and respect for Apple's O/S.

However, I really think that Steve Jobs and his Lieutenants are really clueless HOW important the Compiz-Fusion and Beryl Technologies are and how much further they are than what Apple has.

Dread Knight said...

Outstanding!

K M Nur said...

Hi,
I got the following, I wanna use stack switch.
[root@cafe moon]# rpm -qa | grep compiz
compiz-manager-0.6.0-3.fc8
compiz-0.7.7-14.fc8
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra-0.7.7-9.fc8
compiz-fusion-plugins-main-0.7.7-9.fc8
compizconfig-python-0.7.7-9.fc8
libcompizconfig-0.7.7-9.fc8
compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported-0.7.7-9.fc8
compiz-kde-0.7.7-14.fc8
compiz-fusion-release-1-6
compiz-gnome-0.7.7-14.fc8

I use kde, I cant locate git, how do I download and install stack switch plugin?