
 -=:[ dyne.org autoprod ]:=--- -  -- -   proudly presents:


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                        [[[  FreeJ 0.9.1 "BeTV"  ]]]

                           http://freej.dyne.org


:: OVERVIEW

FreeJ  is a  vision mixer:  a  digital instrument  for realtime  video
manipulation used  in the fields of dance  teather, veejaying, medical
visualisation and TV.

It runs a  video engine in which multiple layers  can be filtered thru
effect  chains  and then  mixed  together  with  images, movies,  live
cameras,  particle  generators,  text  scrollers and  scripted  vector
graphics.  All the  resulting  video mix  can  be shown  on a  screen,
encoded into a movie and streamed live to the internet.

FreeJ can be controlled locally or remotely, also from multiple places
at the same time, using its ascii console interface; operations can be
automated via  javascript, also MIDI  and Joystick controllers  can be
scripted.

FreeJ's sourcecode  is written in  portable C and  C++, it can  run on
GNU/Linux  and Darwin/OSX platforms,  PC-x86 or  Mac, and  is released
free under the GNU General Public License.



:: FEATURES

++ reads and renders layers from multiple sources:
   webcams, TV, divx/avi movies, images and txt files
++ can encode in Ogg/Theora video, recording on local file
   and streaming live to an online Icecast server
++ can be controlled from remote: VJoE - VeeJay over Ethernet
++ can be scripted in procedural object oriented language
++ high precision looping of movie clips
++ plugin effects are chainable on each layer
++ very efficient video engine with multithreaded layers
++ Emacs/Vi style console with hotkeys and completion (S-Lang)
++ multiple controllers at the same time (Midi,Joystick)
++ 100% Free and open source: GNU General Public License




:: HISTORY

This software started being  developed as a digital instrument Jaromil
used  in dance-theater  performances. Since  2001  ongoing development
took  inspiration  from   various  artists  and  programmers:  Andreas
Schiffler,  Roberto Paci Dalo',  Tom Demeyer,  Francescopaolo Isidoro,
Kentaro Fukuchi,  Luigi Pagliarini, Isabella  Bordoni, to name  just a
few.

Set the VeeJay Free! was the first motto for this software.

In 2003 Kysucix joined  development contributing the streaming feature
and helping  to include  the javascript parser.  He employed  FreeJ in
interactive installations while working with Studio Azzurro.

Since 2004 development has been supported by the Netherlands Media Art
Insitute employing

In 2005  Mr.Goil joined  the project writing  programmable controllers
and debugging the scripting environment.

In 2007  the austrian initiative Netculture lab  supported Jaromil and
Mr.Goil  developing the  BeTV release:  it enhanced  scriptability and
streaming, with  a major  cleanup of the  code and support  for Frei0r
plugins.

For the time being, FreeJ is employed in various video performances and
installations, but also used for medical analisys visualizations.

Developers are keen to accept projects and propositions in order to
sustain the development activity on this free software, please contact
us on http://dyne.org if you think we can collaborate.




:: GET STARTED

To start rolling with FreeJ you can have a look to the online
documentation on it website http://freej.dyne.org

Experiment with the  scripts and follow Piotr's tutorial  on the usage
of the console. There are many things that can be done with this tool,
let us know :) http://dyne.org/hackers_contact.php




:: REQUIREMENTS

To run FreeJ is necessary to have:

- a working GNU/Linux e u
  or Darwin/OSX -> see the documentation in README.OSX 

- SDL libraries http://www.libsdl.org
- PNG libraries http://www.libpng.org
- S-LANG libraries http://www.s-lang.org
- Ogg/Vorbis/Theora libraries http://www.xiph.org




:: HOW TO INSTALL IT

download a binary for your operating system from http://freej.org or
try dyne:bolic GNU/Linux http://dynebolic.org which includes it ready
to use from a liveCD which is also easy to install.

Debian GNU/Linux users can 'apt-get install freej',

Gentoo GNU/Linux users can 'emerge freej'

But if the package of your distribution is out of date you should
compile from source for the latest features.






:: DEVELOPERS

 Denis "Jaromil" Rojo        - FreeJ author and mantainer

 Silvano "Kysucix" Galliani  - TXT layer, encoder, streaming

 Christoph "Mr.Goil" Rudorff - Scriptability, MIDI and Joystick 

 documentation, testing and user case study by:
 Anne-Marie Skriver, Marloes de Valk, Piotr Sobolewski

 refer to the AUTHORS file for a full list of contributions

You are very welcome to join, there is a lot of space for modules and a
pretty clear (and almost freezed) API to be used.
You can follow development activity, just visit http://devel.dyne.org




:: DISCUSSION

Come and visit the irc.dyne.org channel #dyne

A mailinglist for further discussion about FreeJ is running on
http://lists.dyne.org - come and join us there :)





:: DEVELOPMENT

The latest development version is publicly available on our subversion
repository:

 # svn co svn://svn.dyne.org/rastasoft/freej/trunk freej

Please download and run this code if you want to submit a bugreport or
a patch or propose and test new features on our mailinglist.


:: DISCLAIMER

FreeJ is (c) 2001 - 2007 by Denis Roio
         (c) 2004 - 2005 by Silvano Galliani
	 (c) 2005 - 2007 by Christoph Rudorff

Statically included libraries are copyright of the respective authors.

This source code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Public License as published 
by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License,
or (at your option) any later version.

This source code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Please refer to the GNU Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Public License along with
this source code; if not, write to:
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.



