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Have you ever run into a problem where your favorite Python IDE can't determine the type of a variable, and thus you get no auto-completion? There is a built-in function in Python called isInstance(your_variable, type_of_variable) that is designed to compare a variable to a class type, and return true or false. However, just ...

There comes a time in every man's life where a single goocanvas.Canvas widget just won't cut it. Imagine you need two separate canvases for your interface, but you want them to scroll together with a single scroll bar. How would you solve this problem?

First, to enable a goocanvas.Canvas object to ...

As you know, I am creating a complex timeline for my non-linear video application. I had the choice between the GnomeCanvas (which is obsolete) and a lesser known goocanvas (which is cairo based). I originally choose to use the GnomeCanvas, because it is much more well known, and there is more documentation for it.

After ...

I have a new favorite Python IDE, and it's the Wingware IDE. That's right folks, the Eclipse IDE (with PyDev) does an admirable job, as well as The Eric Python IDE, but neither are as impressive as Wingware. From this point forward, I dumping the other IDEs and going 100% with Wingware.

Why ...

Here is a quick update for everyone following this project. I am working on an prototype timeline, using the Gnome canvas, GTK, and Python. So far my "prototype first" methodology seems to be playing out nicely. It is allowing me to quickly test out various libraries, GUI techniques, and design patterns, while allowing me to ...

I never thought licensing free software would be so interesting. Before I start releasing more source code, I figured it was time to understand what the Free Software Foundation and GPL (General Public License) is all about. So here are my thoughts about licensing free software:

Why Even Bother?
To write software and not license ...

Since starting this journey, I have had the pleasure to meet many people inside the Linux video editing community. The PiTiVi project (lead by Edward Hervey) has contacted me about joining their project. PiTiVi is a Python, Gstreamer, and Gnonlin based non-linear video editing project.

I have also been in contact with many members of ...

I have completed my first real Python program, which is a video / audio file inspector (and player). Simply download the source code, and run the "Inspector.py" script to start the program.

Click here to download the source code.

Here is a screen shot of my program:


This program has accomplished 2 important things for ...

Ever wanted to export a frame of video to an image file (such as a PNG file)? Well, here's how to do it with gstreamer. These examples use the gstreamer command line syntax (gst-launch):

Export a DV file frame to a PNG file:
gst-launch filesrc location=/home/jonathan/capture003.dv ! dvdemux name=demux ! dvdec ...

I've spent the past few weeks putting together a working Python example, which allows a user to select a media file (audio or video) and display all the various information I can find (such as height, width, duration, position, frames per second, codec, etc...). One of my blog readers informed me of a module ...