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

                   [[[  FreeJ 0.8.1 "ISCREAM"  ]]]

          RASTA SOFTWARE FOR THE FREEDOM OF VIDEO CREATION

:: 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 more.  All the
resulting video mix can be shown on multiple and remote screens,
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 slick console interface; can be automated
via javascript and operated via MIDI and Joystick.

FreeJ's sourcecode is written in C, C++ and assembler, 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




:: FREE AS IN VEEJAY

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

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

FreeJ is released as free software with the intention to foster
creativity, artistic expression and research indypendently from
proprietary business products: to avoid that commercial companies own
the performability and reproducibility of our creations.

JAH BLESS YOU FOR THE GOOD OF YOUR CREATIONS, THIS IS RASTA SOFTWARE!

Recently Jaromil received support for FreeJ development: he was invited
to publish its code in an installation for the Withney ArtPort CODeDOC
(Ars Electronica 03), while during 2003/04 development is ongoin with
the support of the Netherlands Institute of Media Art.

Since the end of 2003, among other contributions, a brilliant coder
joined the project: Kysucix, contributing to new core features.

For the time being, FreeJ is employed in various video performances and
installations, but also used for medical analisys visualizations.
And its horizons of use are now growing with scripting of operations,
encoding to Ogg/Theora, live online streaming and more.

Both active 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 tour of the online tutorial
(see http://freej.dyne.org documentation section),

go to the USAGE file which has a complete reference table for
hotkeys and advanced console use.




:: REQUIREMENTS

To run FreeJ is necessary to have:

- a working GNU/Linux workstation
  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

Optionally, you want to have installed the following libraries:

- SDL image library http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/

Text Layer:
- FreeType2 libraries http://freetype.org

PC x86 assembler effects:
- NASM netwide assembler compiler http://nasm.sf.net

Live video Layer:
- BTTV / WinTV and similar cards supported by a Video4Linux driver

For better fullscreen support try to add to your XF86Config  file  the
modelines in doc/x11.modelines



:: HOW TO INSTALL IT

download a binary for your operating system from http://freej.org

OR read the INSTALL file and compile from source

if it's too hard for you, consider trying dyne:bolic
*** http://dynebolic.org (just download, burn and boot it on a PC!)

Debian GNU/Linux users you can
# apt-get install freej
from the unstable/testing branch
while TGZ binary packages are provided for lucky Slackware users.







:: DEVELOPERS

 Denis "Jaromil" Rojo       - FreeJ author and mantainer

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

 documentation, testing and user case study by:
 Anne-Marie Skriver and Marloes de Valk (Montevideo Time Based Arts)
 
 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.freenode.net channel #dyne

A mailinglist  for  further  discussion  about  FreeJ  is  running  as
<freej@dyne.org>, subscription is opened and  anybody  interested  can
send a mail to <freej-subscribe@dyne.org> to join. Online archive is
on http://lists.dyne.org/freej




:: AVAILABILITY

The source releases of FreeJ are made available on
       *** http://freej.dyne.org ***

FreeJ is also included in binary form, ready to be used, in the live
bootable distribution
       *** http://dynebolic.org *** RASTASOFT REDEMPTION SOFTWARE
just burn it and boot it!

SVN (latest development version) is also publicly available on
http://code.dyne.org/viewcvs.cgi/?root=rastasoft .
Get it:
svn co svn://code.dyne.org/rastasoft/freej





:: DISCLAIMER

FreeJ is (c) 2001 - 2004 by Denis "Jaromil" Rojo
         (c) 2004 - 2005 by Denis "Jaromil" Rojo,
                            Silvano "Kysucix" Galliani

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 2 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.