OpenShot Video Editor

OpenShot for animatronics control?

Asked by Hank Dietz

My brother is the guy behind http://animatronicsworkshop.com/ and I'm a computer engineering professor at the University of Kentucky. Together we're working on ways to very cheaply build animatronic puppets for middle/high school kids to use for creating and performing their own fully automated shows. There is software for animatronic control, but nothing I've seen is both free and good, and just about nothing runs under linux. I'm wondering if I could adapt OpenShot to control shows?

The best software around is the non-free, windows-only, Visual Show Automation (VSA) from http://www.brookshiresoftware.com/ . I'm not trying to duplicate it, but to create a simple free alternative that will run on Linux (and maybe other platforms -- android would be great). OpenShot's video and audio editing are directly usable for a performance backdrop and audio output. Here are the things I'd like to add:

1. Be able to do a full-screen video preview (perhaps on a second display) for performing the animatronic show.

2. Control movement of servos over time, ideally with a way to have manual movements (e.g., with a slider) recorded during a dry run. Could be seen as a variant of key-frame animation using something like an audio channel: give amplitude/value at key times and smoothly interpolate between them.

The servo output would be driving something like the Pololu Maestro Series USB controllers. The servo control would also allow control of lighting, etc., during the performance. I believe that would be enough for simple animatronic shows.

I have other alternatives and am open to suggestions, but I wanted to first see if anyone thought adding this to OpenShot would make sense....

Thanks.

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Jonathan Thomas (jonoomph) said : 		#1

Hi Hank! I'm not sure if OpenShot would be a great fit for this type of functionality, but certainly our animation components could be adapted to control "anything" over time.... such as servo motors, etc... OpenShot is primarily a video editor, and is best at combining videos and not controlling live events.

However, maybe I'm not understanding how you intend to use OpenShot. =)

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Hank Dietz (hankd) said : 		#2

Jonathon,

Animatronics are not exactly live events -- they are entirely scripted. Think Disney Hall of Presidents or Small World exhibits.

Normally, one records a base audio track, perhaps with background video for the set, and then adds annotations to that controlling motions in sync with the audio/video tracks. It is nice if the motions can be "recorded" by having the animator perform some motion sequence using manual controls (e.g., servo position sliders) and have the animatronics package remember them. One needs to be able to cut/paste/stretch/shrink tracks freely to edit the animatronic show.

It certainly seems like OpenShot's interface is very close to providing the right control model. Animatronics software often isn't very good at managing coordination of different media along with the servos, which OpenShot is quite good at....

Anybody else interested in this?

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Jonathan Thomas (jonoomph) said : 		#3

Thanks for the additional info! It is very interesting indeed. =) I am currently too busy to take on this project, but maybe in the future I would certainly be open minded to helping add animatronic control and key-framing into OpenShot. That would be cool. Also, I'm not sure if you or your brother are interested in funding work on these features... but that would certainly speed up the timeline.

Thanks!
-Jonathan

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