OStatic

When online video powerhouse Hulu recently released its own application for watching video, many observers interpreted the move as explaining why Hulu had asked open source media center player Boxee to remove support for its content. Hulu had been the number one type of content that Boxee users watched, and there were a lot of people who forecasted that Boxee was doomed. That's not so, though.?

Boxee officials have steadily posted workarounds for watching Hulu on Boxee, and Boxee continues to do very well on Apple TVs, where Hulu has no presence. The company is making some other new moves as well.?

Video editing software for Linux is, to put it nicely, quirky. Some editors only work with specific file formats, some work nicely for basic video editing but can be wildly temperamental on seemingly identical machines, and some are powerful to the point of overkill for the average user.

PiTiVi is a non-linear video editor based on the GStreamer multimedia framework. After hearing some positive comments, and seeing development efforts really picking up on the project, I decided to take it for a spin. It is very much in development, but not in the traditional sense. It feels very stable, and the interface isn't confusing or a hindrance. It is, at the moment, very basic when it comes to functionality. There are not plugins or extensions currently available (though feature requests are welcome). However, the project has taken the time to plan its path forward -- and with the basics down, I can't see why real headway won't come quickly.

Flickr is almost like Xerox, or Kleenex, in that its name is in some ways inextricably linked to the service it delivers. There are many other photo sharing sites, of course, with similar (or perhaps even superior) features and options. Maybe it's because it is one of the first services that's managed to grow, add features, and consistently stand out from the others, it is often the first service people try, and the one many ultimately choose to continue with.

Though Flickr has a browser uploader, there are limitations. It is slow, and on occasion it won't successfully upload anything. Flickr has desktop uploaders available that are generally faster, and allow for more image and metadata manipulation prior to upload. And for years, the desktop uploader page has shown official options for Windows, and Macs, and mobile devices. For years, there has been one uploader option on that page -- a third party, cross platform (and very serviceable) -- that is Linux compatible.

jUploadr continues to be a great tool (and though updates aren't frequent, it handles basic Flickr uploading tasks well). Don't let the fact that it's the only Linux uploader listed on Flickr's site make you believe it's the only option, or that Linux targeted uploaders are one trick ponies.

The Capital Times ran a piece on home-brew, open source DVRs (digital video recorders, in the tradition of TiVO). Though TiVO's software is open source, any unsigned modified code is blocked from running on these devices. Home-brew DVRs act like TiVOs, with a few side benefits. The article mentions, incidentally, that this is not a project for the faint of heart.

My MythTV box has been humming in my living room just shy of a year. It's not a project for a new user, but it's a better application, and less complicated to install and maintain than you've been led to believe.

This week, Canonical opened sales of legal multimedia codecs and DVD playback software to all Ubuntu users, regardless of whether the distribution was pre-installed on a purchased system or downloaded gratis from an Ubuntu mirror.

Fluendo handles the bulk of the codecs using the GStreamer framework. CyberLink offers DVD playback through a Linux version of its PowerDVD software.

It feels the most positive word that can be applied to this announcement is bittersweet. There are many more colorfully negative words that are applicable, as well.