The Jahshaka Project (www.jahshaka.org), an open source project developing the first complete, open-source, real-time editing and visual effects application, announced the release of the final version of Jahshaka 2.0 before moving to a new source code. This latest version of the software includes new features and enhancements that improve stability and increase functionality.

Simultaneously, The Jahshaka Project 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 and featuring a robust set of image analysis tools and basic editorial functions. Jahplayer 0.1.0 is based on entirely 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 together comprise a complete, customizable solution for digital content creation.

“We are very excited about the debut of Jahplayer,” he added. “It is a powerful, useful tool that will immediately benefit visual effects producers and post production houses. But we are even more excited about the future as other modules become available and the potential of this open source tool becomes apparent to users worldwide.” 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 plugins and other add-ons by third parties. Similarly, it is Python-based to facilitate scripting. “The new source code was designed from the ground up to make it easy for users and developers to create enhancements and plugins,” Gonçalo noted. “Individual users can tailor customizations to suit their particular applications and workflow.”

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 seamlessly 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, included feature film post-production.