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-Chapter 1.  Multimedia Workflow on GNU Linux
-Table of Contents
-What is a Workflow?
-Monolithic vs Modular
-What is a Workflow?
-Sample Workflows
-Slackermedia is a blank canvas. There is not one "right" way to create your
-Slackermedia system. While Slackermedia does divide packages into broad sets,
-there is no pre-set that says "install this if you want to make music" or
-"install this if you want to make videos" and so on. You need to know what you
-want to do, and how you intend to do it, before building your system.
-In other words, this chapter contains a bunch of advice, which, as the cliche
-goes, is the one free thing in this world that no one really wants. You don't
-really want to read this chapter; you want to build Slackermedia. However,
-unless you've got experience as a production co-ordinator, this chapter will
-probably do you some good. Think of it as the green vegetables of Slackermedia
-and give it a read not because it's all that good, but because it's good for
-you.
-What is a Workflow?
-Different disciplines have different methods of creating content, and different
-people work in unique ways. However, there are common elements from any
-production to another, and the basic methodology of getting a production from
-idea to finished product is called the "workflow".
-The term "workflow" refers to the entire process of production, not just what
-happens in the computer system being used on the project. However, since so
-much of modern production happens on a computer, the computer workflow is a
-often a determining factor in how the rest of the production will happen. It is
-important, therefore, to understand certain unique aspects of the Free Software
-workflow.
-Monolithic vs Modular
-Much of the GNU workflow is defined by its inherent modularity. This is very
-different than the popular tendency to consolidate broad functionality into one
-"one-stop shop" application. They are two different philosophies that are not
-really exclusive of one another; it makes sense to keep different tasks
-confined to specialized applications because this divides work among many
-applications and makes troubleshooting much easier, but it also makes sense to
-have an application designed to a specific goal to also include capabilities to
-complete all the steps required to achieve that goal.
-You may be used to the popular mega-applications that provide methods for
-everything in a perceived workflow, and you may see the logic in that kind of
-design, but consider the two approaches carefully:
-Monolithic
-The Video Editor
-    You are an editor who has footage on harddrives delivered to you each week.
-    You have no deck, camera, or other capture device and you will probably
-    never need to capture footage into your non-linear editing solution. Why
-    then does your NLE of choice feature eight different ways to capture
-    footage but no way to do something simple like color code the video regions
-    in your timeline, and no capability to understand divx or wmv or flv, much
-    less xvid or theora?
-The Photographer
-    You are a photographer who requires a digital darkroom for re-touching. You
-    do not need watercolor emulation in your brushes, you do not need to be
-    able to open images from x-ray machines, you do not even need typesetting.
-    Why does your bloatware digital darkroom application feature all of this
-    and more in the main application when it could instead be included as
-    stand-alone plugins or insertable plug-ins for those who do need these
-    kinds of features?
-The Graphic Designer
-    You are a graphic designer working on websites, promotional materials,
-    invitations, logos, and any other job you can get. Your needs are diverse
-    and unpredictable. You are trying to choose between a few popular software
-    titles but find that they are all major investments both in terms of money
-    and their learning curve. While they all seem to do the same thing, it also
-    seems that one specializes in photography, another specializes in materials
-    emulation, another in design layout, and so on; you need a little of it
-    all, but you want each part to be done well.
-Modular
-The Slackened Video Editor
-    You're a video editor who gets footage delivered to them on harddrives and
-    will never need to capture footage. You find kdenlive, an application that
-    edits video without enforcing logging, organizing, and capturing footage.
-    It's sleek and fast, and even has a plug-in architecture for effects that
-    you may or may not use (it's up to you!).
-    It also doesn't ship with 20gb of pre-fabricated motion graphic effects
-    that you'll never use, but you know that there's blender or even Libre
-    Office for that. You like that you're free to use ffmpeg or dvgrab for
-    importing footage if you need to, or you can fall back on the user-friendly
-    GUI of kdenlive if needed.
-The Slackened Photographer
-    You're a photographer with simple digital darkroom needs. You've taken the
-    plunge and switched to GNU Linux, opting for Slackware with the
-    Slackermedia tutorials helping you set it up. You find that darktable or
-    digiKam handles your digital darkroom needs and even allows you to upload
-    instantly to a wide variety of sites, so you can deliver proofs to your
-    clients quickly and easily, regardless of what vendor-specific sphere they
-    happen to be associated with. It's lightweight, task-specific, and it
-    doesn't try to manage your files for you with over-complex database
-    backends that separate you from your data.
-    It also lets you do minor retouching, but knows that for serious retouching
-    and compositing, you'll simply open the picture in an external image
-    manipulation application. Because it it is designed to integrate with the
-    KDE software suite, digiKam's interface is familiar and easy to use.
-The Slacker Graphic Designer
-    You're a graphic designer with diverse and unpredictable needs, depending
-    on the job you've managed to pick up. You find that on GNU Linux, the
-    applications are smaller and less feature-rich, and you like this. When you
-    need paint-brush emulation, you launch Krita and plug in your graphics
-    tablet and create the textures you require. You bring that layer into the
-    GNU Image Manipulation Program and do the integration of photographs with
-    the textures from Krita. You bring a low-res version of that into Inkscape
-    for elaborate vector-based layers and fanciful type-setting. You
-    re-integrate all of that with GIMP, as needed. Depending on what the
-    graphic will be used for, you pre-flight in Scribus or simply export
-    straight from GIMP and upload to the client's server right from your
-    Dolphin file manager.
-    On a rare occasion, you find yourself in need of importing some rare
-    formats that even GIMP will not recognize, but you find a plethora of small
-    applications on sourceforge.net or Slackbuilds.org that will import these
-    formats and convert them to something the other applications in your
-    workflow will understand.
-As you can see, there are many times when the modular approach makes more sense
-than the monolithic. There is an immediate convenience sometimes with the
-monolithic; depending on how well-structured your workflow is, you may find
-yourself confounded when you suddenly have to find a new application to do a
-task that you'd never had to do before. While in a monolithic application, the
-solution to that may be found in a sub-menu of the sub-menu of a menu, in the
-modular approach you may be faced with no hint or indication of where to turn.
-However, these are mere growing pains that are eliminated once you've found the
-solution; they tend to happen only once: the first time you are faced with the
-issue that requires a new solution. And in the mean time, you have no need to
-deal with bloated software with more menus and features than you can ever hope
-to either understand or use.
-What is a Workflow?
-It is important that you approach your workflow carefully and deliberately when
-setting up your multimedia studio. Simply throwing together a collection of
-applications that are tagged as "multimedia" or "graphics" or "audio" is not
-the correct solution in GNU Linux any more than it is on blackbox vendor
-software. The artist knows best what s/he needs from the computer, so the
-artist should determine what s/he must have on the computer in order to get the
-work done.
-If you have never served as a producer (or in software terms, "project
-manager") before, then this concept may be new to you, so we will review it
-here.
-. List all of the major tasks you are expecting to do on the computer system.
-    Use general, broad terms here, such as "edit video", "retouch photos",
-    "motion graphics", "clean up audio", and so on.
-. Do a second pass of this list for the specific steps involved in each major
-    task you wrote down for the first step. For example, a video editor might
-    list:
-    Edit Video
-    Log footage
-        Review all footage with video player with variable speed control and
-        spreadsheet for notes
-    Capture
-        Capture video from tape or drive
-    Organize
-        Organize by scene number and take number
-    Edit
-        Video editor with sync sound and color correction tools
-    Print
-        Export full quality for director's approval
-    Edit
-        Re-edit, rinse and repeat
-    Motion Graphics
-    Spec
-        Get initial sketches from director
-    Create
-        Create graphic sources with graphic applications
-    Animate
-        Do first draft of motion graphics
-    Render, Export
-        Export low res version for approval
-    Render, Deliver
-        Do full quality render, deliver for integrate into final edit
-. Now do a third pass of your list and assign known software applications to
-    each task. If you are familiar with only the mass-market blackbox
-    applications, then list these. If you know some Free Software solutions as
-    well, then list those. If you are uncertain what application addresses a
-    list item, then do not make an assumption or guess; list it as something
-    that requires more research.
-. Do some research to learn what application will address each list item.
-    Make sure that everything you know you need to do can effectively be
-    achieved with what is available to you. Be prepared for many different
-    applications to surface in the Free Software world; due to the modular
-    nature of its design, it's only natural that there will be a software
-    application just capture video from a deck, or a separate application from
-    your graphic design application just to change color space and compression
-    settings, and so on.
-. Look for ways to automate your workflow. If there are repetitive tasks that
-    you may have had to do one-by-one in your old non-Free workflow, you should
-    look at these tasks in a new light. Quite possibly there will be scripts
-    that you can write (or find someone to help you write) that can be run on
-    your Free Software system to automatically perform adjustments or
-    processing without any intervention from you.
-. With the help of Slackermedia, build your Slackware GNU Linux system
-    according to the requirements you have specified in your list.
-. Gather raw material. This is a step that is easy to overlook in Free
-    Software because it is not often addressed, but the fact that many of the
-    vendors providing the non-Free applications package gigabytes of extra
-    content for you to use in your work means that whenever the artist needs
-    something random like a cursive font or a paint brush shaped like an oak
-    leaf or a bear paw print, or a music loop of South American drums, or a
-    high-res sand-texture, and so on, the artist has it available to them
-    within a few clicks.
-    Note
-    Free Software lacks the luxury of having gigabytes of licensed content to
-    ship along with their software. Again, this is a double-edged sword that
-    has the benefits of cutting download size by orders of magnitude, and also
-    fights the pre-fabricated feel of art produced on Free Software as opposed
-    to the off-the-shelf solutions, but means that when you do need some extra
-    raw materials, you must go out and find the content yourself.
-    Sites like flickr.com , freesound.org , and openclipart.org are veritable
-    bastions of free culture, offering Creative Commons content for easy
-    download.
-    To further address this need, the Slackermedia project itself gathered
-    supporters from around the globe to do an initial crawl of the Internet to
-    find free raw materials for artistic endeavor (such as fonts, clip art,
-    sound banks, and so on). The content can be found as a torrent file on the
-    Slackermedia.info website.
-Sample Workflows
-Only you know your specific needs, but sometimes it helps to get an idea of how
-other people work. Here are some sample workflows to get you going in the right
-direction:
-Video Editing
-Log footage
-    Use Dolphin and Mplayer to review and use Dolphin to organize and name your
-    footage; this gives you the advantage of having filenames that match their
-    content, regardless of what video editing application the clips are being
-    used in.
-Editing
-    Use Kdenlive for its robust editing features, transitions, effects, colour
-    correction, and even basic compositing (chroma keying, etc).
-Titling
-    For quality titles, use Blender for its ability to integrate 3d space into
-    motion graphics and titling and overlays. Its learning curve might make it
-    impractical for quick and basic titling.
-    The animation program Synfig Studio will also do titles and effects,
-    although a learning curve applies here as well.
-    If your titling needs are basic, use GIMP, Inkscape, or even Libre Office
-    to create high-quality .png or .tif files and import them as images into
-    Kdenlive.
-Audio Correction
-    For minor corrections (lips smacking, pop removal, plosive softening, etc),
-    open a sound file in Audacity and correct the problems. Your changes will
-    update automatically in Kdenlive.
-Soundtrack, Soundmix
-    After you obtain picture lock, start the sound mix on either Ardour or
-    Qtractor. To do this, export each individual track from Kdenlive and import
-    them into the DAW of your choice. When the mix is finished, export a final
-    mix and re-import that into Kdenlive for final output.
-Visual Effects
-    Export scenes as image sequences and import them into Blender for some of
-    the industry's most powerful compositing, particle emulation, 3d modeling,
-    and other visual effects.
-Final Render
-    Kdenlive offers uncompressed output in the form of huffYUV/PCM, as well as
-    compressed output to all major formats (xvid, mp4, ogg theora, webm, h.264
-    via x264, and more). For customized compression schemes, use ffmpeg
-    directly.
-    Always export an uncompressed final version of your work first. View it for
-    quality assurance. Upon approval, label it Goldmaster and then generate
-    compressed versions as needed.
-Audio Production
-DAW
-    Use Ardour or Qtractor or Rosegarden as the main hub of the audio
-    production.
-    Note
-    If you're doing basic audio editing, then Audacity may be all you really
-    need.
-Waveform Editing
-    Use Audacity, which specializes in waveform editing, for cleaning audio,
-    removing clicks and pops and plosives, and so on. If you edit the original
-    file then the changes you make in Audacity will update automatically in
-    your DAW.
-Effects
-    Effect packages include the Steve Harris LADSPA collection, the Calf suite,
-    and Jamin. The Steve Harris set act as plugins to your DAW, while Calf can
-    be used as plugins or as an external application, and Jamin is external
-    only.
-Synths
-    Any DSSI software synth can be used as a plugin for your DAW, and synths
-    like amSynth and QSynth are external synths that can be routed into your
-    DAW. There are many soft synths available.
-Drum Machines
-    The premier dedicated drum machine on Linux is Hydrogen, which can be used
-    as an external application routed into your DAW.
-Samplers
-    Linux Sampler is the primary sampling engine for Linux and can be routed
-    into your DAW.
-Mastering
-    Once your sound has been mixed to near-perfection, plug Jamin into your
-    master output channel. With Jamin's powerful compressor, you can adjust
-    final output levels. With its customizable EQ, you can ensure optimal sound
-    for different types of speakers.
-    Once you're finished mastering, export your work as final, uncompressed
-    gold masters.
-Graphic Design and Print
-Layout
-    Use Scribus as the central hub for bringing together the different elements
-    in a layout. Scribus is a powerful layout program, good for books,
-    pamphlets, posters of any size, banners, single pages, album art, and
-    anything else going out to CMYK printers. It is resolution-independent, can
-    track and embed fonts and color swatches, produce reader and printer
-    spreads, and much more.
-Graphics
-    Use GIMP to create or adjust rasterized (bitmap) images. It's not, in spite
-    of the cliché, a Photoshop clone; it has a language and structure all its
-    own, but once it's learned it is a powerful imaging environment.
-Illustration
-    Use Inkscape for vector-based graphics such as logos, illustration,
-    sketches, or even page layout or over-all design, quick mock-ups, and much
-    more. It can also embed or link to rasterized images, perform masks, and a
-    number of advanced imaging functions that will tempt you to make it the
-    center of your graphic production.
-    Krita is also vector-based but focuses more on materials emulation, making
-    is a powerful tool for trained illustrators.
-    MyPaint lies somewhere between Inkscape and Krita, with a dynamic brush set
-    that interacts nicely with tablets.
-    Finally, the Gimp Paint Studio set of mods for GIMP will provide material
-    emulation for GIMP, but as rasterized images only.
-Conversion
-    For colorspace or format conversion, or batch processes that you repeat
-    frequently in your workflow, the command line application Image Magick (or
-    its variation Graphics Magick) is priceless. It can be complex but the
-    website and the internet at large offer enough recipes and examples to make
-    most common tasks trivial to learn.
-Font Management
-    Font Matrix activates, deactivates, sorts, and previews your system's
-    fonts.
-Photography
-Digital Darkroom
-    Professional photographers may use Digikam as a photograph manager and
-    digital darkroom with the usual powerful set of features associated with
-    most KDE applications. The Kipi plugin set adds to its features. And yes,
-    it does RAW, too.
-    For HDR photography, there is Luminance HDR (formerly qtpfsgui), which
-    creates an HDR file from a set of images of the same subject taken at
-    different exposures. Supports basic editing of images plus tonemapping.
-Everything Else
-    See the Graphic Design list for tools relating to image re-touching,
-    design, and presentation.
-Web Design
-Coding
-    Use GNU Emacs or vim as your text editor; both are popular coding
-    environments and each have a variety of modes that will do everything from
-    syntax highlighting to auto-completion and even rudimentary code
-    validation.
-    Kate is a more traditional text editor, with a visual list of open
-    documents, syntax highlighting, organization of code blocks, and more.
-Previewing
-    Between Firefox, Rekonq, and Chromium, there is little to be desired when
-    test-driving website designs. Rekonq has a user-agent switcher built-in and
-    the other two have user-agent plugins available.
-    Install the Firebug addon for Firefox to analyze how browsers are rendering
-    your code and to catch problems in your code's structure.
-Graphics
-    See the Graphic Design list for tools when creating graphics for sites.
-FTP
-    Konsole is a one-stop shop for everything you need to push your changes to
-    the web server. With ssh and rsync, pushing your latest code can be done in
-    a single command.
-    ncftp is a traditional FTP client, featuring bookmarks for locations,
-    usernames, and passwords. If you do not have ssh access to the server, this
-    is the next best thing.
-    If you prefer a GUI solution, try FileZilla, a simple and convenient FTP
-    application. Or just use Dolphin, which seamlessly integrates with remote
-    servers as easily as it does your own computer!
-Version Control
-    Git, the version control system used for little projects like the Linux
-    kernel, the KDE desktop, this book, and much more, can manage all of the
-    changes you make to your codebase, and restore from old versions as needed.
-    A powerful tool that is simply not even on the radar of any proprietary web
-    coding solution.