London - The Jahshaka Project (www.jahshaka.org), an open source project developing an open-source, real-time editing and visual effects application, has announced the release of the final version of Jahshaka 2.0 before moving to a new source code. The latest version includes new features and enhancements that improve stability and increase functionality.
The Jahshaka Project also is releasing Jahplayer 0.1.0, a professional-grade media player capable of playing uncompressed video and image sequences at resolutions as high as 2K and 4K in real-time. Jahplayer 0.1.0 is based on new source code that will serve as the basis for Jahshaka 3.0, expected to be released in 2007.
The Jahshaka Project is currently developing additional Jahshaka modules for editing, compositing, visual effects, animation, paint, and other functions that will comprise a complete, customizable solution for digital content creation.
Both Jahshaka 2.0 and Jahplayer 0.1.0 and their source codes are available for free download at www.jahshaka.org.
Under development since 2000, Jahshaka has had more than 500,000 downloads to date.
Jahshaka is hardware-accelerated using Open GL and operates on Microsoft Windows XP, LINUX, and Mac OSX platforms. The new source code underlying Jahplayer features an Open API architecture that is designed to encourage the development of plug-ins and other add-ons by third parties. Similarly, it is Python-based to facilitate scripting.
Jahplayer is capable of playing image sequences and digital video in various industry-standard formats, including Windows AVI, QuickTime, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2. It supports A/B playback as well as custom aspect ratios and resolutions. It offers reels support to facilitate the categorization of image sequences and video files. The view can be set for timeline, filmstrip, asset or playlist. Playback color depth is 32 bits per pixel.
The player also offers a complete sequence analysis toolkit. Red, green, blue and alpha channels can be viewed separately. Additionally, Jahplayer supports histogram display with A/B comparison.
Jahplayer can be integrated into a variety of workflows, including, when combined with a color corrector, Digital Intermediate (DI) pipelines. The player is adaptable to both large production facilities and small independent producers, and can be applied to a variety of media applications, including feature film postproduction.
