The first prototype

Mewa Film is now available for download here. This is a prototype version and so is not a stable version. This release is for windows operating systems, but Linux and Mac OS operating systems will also be supported when a mature design is reached.

For installation instructions see Mewa Film User's Guide/Getting Started.

This release provides a non-linear editing tool, called montage (this name might change) where video files are shown as a sequence of images layed off horizontally. The video files can then be assembled and cuted using intuitive actions as "drag and drop" and "rubberband selection".

To perform image processing operations and create 3D effects on video, Mewa Film delivers a unified 2D/3D compositing node graph. This node graph is capable to handle HD resolution images and preview any node output at constant video frame rate.

Because all node graph operations are accelerated by graphics hardware, the node graph performance will depend on your graphics hardware.

Animations can be modeled using the curve editor, or through the use of expressions. Mewa Film exposes its internal structure and functionality through a script interface, so the user can animate node parameters using expressions but also automate repetitive tasks by writing simple scripts.

The current scripting interface stands on top of a java script engine, but this will change soon, as a new language is being designed. I will talk about it in a future post.

To extend the out-of-the-box feature set of Mewa Film with high performance tools, Mewa Film provides an open, extensible architecture, where anybody can create its' own image processing algorithms and 3D effects using Mewa MFX files.

What makes Mewa Film different ?

To better understand Mewa Film’s USP lets compare it with the most popular products in the market.
Autodesk and Avid solutions come with an expensive licensing and an expensive hardware. The hardware that comes with the latest Autodesk solutions is not dedicated hardware anymore, it uses consumer hardware. Why pay for an expensive suite (hardware) when you can have the same performance using consumer hardware that you can buy on the shop by a much cheaper price and be upgraded anytime you want? That’s what Mewa Film does it offers the same performance as other professional post production suites, if you have a very good graphics card.

Then we have desktop solutions like The Foundry, Eyeon Fusion and Apple Shake. These solutions don’t take advantage of graphics hardware they use proxies (low resolution images). With Mewa Film you always work with full resolution images.

Visual effects is all about innovation and Mewa Film give you freedom to create your own visual effects with it’s original technology called MFX files. It allows anyone to create their own image processing algorithms, or 3D effects and run them on accelerated graphics hardware. Read more about MFX files here...

Mewa Film has many other unique features, but I will talk about it in the future posts.

Why another visual effects application?

Mewa Film born from an idea to create a visual effects software application that could offer high performance taking advantage of modern desktop hardware. An application like that would significantly lower the price barrier to entry in video production by eliminating costly software licensing fees and expensive dedicated hardware, but performance was not enough reason to start creating Mewa film. It needed to be more than that.

Understanding how most popular video applications work, like flame, eyeon, shake and others, It seemed to me that those applications have some legacy limitations, because they needed to stick to their initial design as they grew or just because they thought it was the best choice, these big software companies were never capable to redesign a completely new approach to create visual effects, something that would change the current artist work flow to offer more creativity freedom and increase productivity.

That's why I decided to create Mewa Film, a different, modern and intuitive approach to create visual effects. Mewa Film 1.3 alpha is a test release and contains some of these ideas.