 Hi, I'm Paul Brown and we are here interviewing the keynote speakers for Cannes. We don't know at this moment if they will be speaking on Saturday or Sunday, but it doesn't matter because both keynotes are going to be very interesting, so watch them both. Today we're going to talk with Jean-Baptiste Maradelle and Eugène Moore from the Katie in life project, which is a very exciting project. It's a video editor, which is free and open source and it's making waves, to be honest, not only on Linux desktops, but on desktops of Mac and Windows and everything in between. So welcome Jean-Baptiste and Eugène. Thanks. Hello Paul. And let's start with, okay, Katie in life at this moment has, is becoming super popular, but it wasn't always like that. I remember back in the day that Katie in life had some strange moments in its development. I would, and I know for a fact that you folks were not the first people to attempt, to create Katie in life, let's say. Can you tell us about a bit the history of Katie in life, who started it and what happened that it nearly disappeared, but didn't thanks mainly to you guys? Yep. So I started to get involved in Katie in life. It was I think around 2005. And at the moment, the original creator had already almost left the project. It was very, very basic project, but one of the only open source editing solution. And a few, maybe a few weeks or a few months after I started to get involved, the two people working on it did stopped, stopped developing it. Who started it? I never met him, but it's a guy called Jason Wood, who started the project maybe in 2003 or something like this. So we're talking about a project that is 20 years old. Yes. Yes. I mean, that is, that is a long time for an open source project in any, I mean, KDE as a desktop plasma now is only 25 years old. So we're talking about a long, long time. Okay. Sorry. Continue. Yeah. So it was also, it was the early years of video editing on computers. It was on free software. There were almost no solution. So I was very interested to be able to do editing, video editing on Elix. That's why I got involved in the project. And then by chance, at the same time, because in the first version, Kdeen Live was using a completely different video engine that was developed by another guy who stopped working on this. So at the same time, about MLT started to be available, the video engine that we are still using today. And it was, at the time, it was really powerful and it was quite easy to develop the interface around it. So it was kind of a chance that this came up here. So by the time you started working on it, the original developer was already, had already left the project. Yes. If I remember correctly. Yeah. If I remember correctly, maybe I had a few one or two exchanges, but mostly. And you, Eugene, when did you start working? Yeah, I started or helping. The initial thing was my youngest son makes some photos and some videos. And he asked me how to cut now this vacation or holiday videos he recorded on on a video editor. He thought, yeah, Premiere would would be nice. And I say this is a killer. And anyway, it's not free. And then I went out to the internet and look what's available. I found shot, shot cut, which is very close to a video editor, which I like. And then I found Kate in life. It was roughly 2017 2016 2017. And then we started with it. My youngest son started to edit it. And I thought this is a quite interesting video editor 2007 17 back now five, six years. And I thought it's worth to involve. It's free. And then I start, let's say helping on the forum answer questions because I have a background of Premiere Pro. And I could answer some questions. And I understood a bit the mechanism of Kate in life because it was some similar as Premiere it was. And then yeah, I get asked from the core team. If I joined the team. And this was roughly 2018. When I joined the core core team. But it was already on a stable thing. And the point was it was available on windows. Because this was a must because all all around me are all on windows and vessel ported it to windows. And this was really a starting point. Two things. You said that Premiere was a killer? Yeah, from the from the from the size of the thing. And it's not you have to install and you have to get the key and you need a lot of space on your hard hard drive. And for some small video editing, I thought this how to learn Premiere until you have your first cut stuff like this one. My son was then 10 years old stuff like this. So I thought it's a bit too complicated for him. And it's too heavy for his PC background. And this is why I looking for a leaner smaller video editing soft software founding in Kaden, Kaden live. Hey, Kaden life has got a bit heavier, though over the I mean, there are so many features now. I mean, more heavy about how much space it needs on the hard drive stuff. I have never I admit I have never used Premiere. I I am a I am a Kaden live boy through and through. So I don't know. I have no I have no reference. I mean, okay, cool. Back in 2017, by the way, is when I first met you, John Baptiste, which was in Maria, you went and you gave a talk on Kaden live and you gave a talk about the new features. And I remember thinking, ah, Kaden live is really, really making progress because you introduced some new features that that were, I think, for the time, quite advanced. Okay, but so that, Elgin, that's a that is your interesting origin story of why you would be interested in in a video editing software. So it is for your family. But what about you, John Baptiste? I mean, what are you more interested? What are you interested in as a developer or because you had some some movie need, some video editing need that you had to satisfy and you wanted to satisfy with free software? It's a bit of both. At first, it was, I did an art school. And I was when I when I left the school, we were still working on analog videotapes. So we could it was the start of audio editing on on on computers, but video editing was still on tapes. And I was doing some some some videos for myself. And then I since it started to be available with computers, I got interested in it. And I had a few documentary that I was I was doing at the time that I was interested to work on Linux on my own video editor. Right. And you said, okay, so your your child needed a video editor. But obviously, you obviously have a very technical background, you weren't just going on the internet and looking for stuff. Because you eat very soon. If you discovered it in 2017, and then you are invited to participate as a developer in 2018. That was that's a short track from going from, you know, user to core developer. What's your background? Yeah, my background is as shop up. This is really similar. We once oh, this is really far far back with VHS VHS cameras. Oh, yeah. VHS camera, you know, we made not a movie. I was in a theater company as a Farine in Switzerland. And we made a video. What is all needed to make a theater to be live from from people who who who learned the rule, let's say from people who are in the kitchen to make some meals stuff like this one. And then we do this all on VHS. And then we have really a linear editing we have to to recorder one was the player and the other one was the receiver. And we cut this one together on a new tape, let's say, but completely linear. This was really the starting of filming for me. This was 1984 something like this one one of the first video I made with colleagues together. So you are an actual video editor or were you a director? No, this was just hobby to be honest. We make the storyboard by ourselves. We ask other people to help we were there. I think 20 20 years old stuff like this one. And then we even make music on this VHS video. And then we had on the end a master video which we make copies. And I think it's I have still such a master tape at home. This was really our first video. And it takes about 20 minutes or something like this one. But it was a huge work. And we made and if you made some mistake on the copy paste on this VHS record, you have to go back and go again stuff like that one. And you have to be all really careful to not make too many copies. Right. The VHS tape is really sensitive of making copies. And then we put music on it. We pull we make off. We make over speaking on this video as well. Because it we have two channels, one channels was the original tone and the second channel for stereo, the second channel, they put music on it. And if you listen to it today on one box, you have the original tone. And on the other box comes the over the new tone from music on because this was completely limited these days. This was my starting point going into videos. Right. But okay. You said you used it at the school. You used to make videos at the school? No, I did an art school. So I did some video editing, but not with KD in life. No, my school was finished for me. So you went to art school? Yes. I mostly worked on videos at this time. Okay. So you're a proper videographer? Yeah. You don't practice, let's say, right? No, not much. No. But okay. But so the jump from videographer to developer, how did that happen? I have always been into computers. As you said before, my first computer was a ZX Spectrum and I was like 12 years old. My father was doing a program on IBM systems. And so I started very young to be interested in software development. And you jumped to free software? Yeah, it was quite a few years later. But yeah, I've always been interested in sharing things. So when were you first made aware of, let's say, the KDE project? When did you discover that? And how did you discover that? I don't remember exactly. I think I had a discussion with a guy who at the time you could buy magazines in the shops with DVDs on it or CDs. I think DVDs were not CDs. CDs that you could just put in your computer and install Linux. So that's how I started. Yeah. Do you remember your first distribution? I think maybe it was a shoes or no, there was also another distribution. No, it was one of the first, I think, that was a bootable. You didn't need to install it. But I don't remember. Knopix, I think. That was a live distribution. Yeah, that's awesome. What is your education? What did you study at college? You're asking me? Yes, sorry. I do the normal schooling in Switzerland here. And then I make apprenticeship as a tools maker. Afterwards, I'm going to school again to be an engineer. Then now I have an after-study diploma as well. I'm more, let's say, business administration as an add-on. So you're an engineer? Not anymore. Yes, I'm an engineer as I work as an engineer. And then I make my after-diploma study and now more, it's more business administration. I tried to figure out, okay, sorry. I tried to figure out how you got into software development. So you were a software engineer? Were you a software engineer? No, no. I learned as well. I step in with computer with a ZX Spectrum, I think 1983. I started programming basic. This was really nice because you could program graphic as well. You do not need an additional framework stuff like this one. And I programmed or made some programs together with my brother. And then later on I switched to Sinclair QL and then switched over to a PC afterwards. And I was not really a developer in that sense. But programming, yes, it says something to me. But what I have done is during my life now, I'm more involved with huge projects. So I'm more a project director, you can tell. And I have a bit of a clue of supply chain management. And I'm not an active programmer. I'm advocating life with documentation. This is what I can do. C++ and Qt, I have absolutely no clue. So I think I help better on the other side what I can do. And I can involve me more about project management and supply chain focus on work. Yeah. Right, cool. So I mean, this is so common. Obviously, a lot of people who are developing KDE projects, a lot of them are trained, certified software engineers and developers. But there is a large percentage of people who are not. So this is a great example of how when we say, oh, but you can help us too because we're a community and stuff like that, people say, oh, but I don't know how to program. But first, you can learn. And second, not everything is programming. Definitely not. Documentation. How useful is documentation for KDE life, which is a complicated piece of software and you need to know the tricks and how to use it and the features and the tools. Talking of which, of this last version of KDE life, this last version of KDE life has come with lots and lots of stuff. And lots and lots of stuff have happened recently in KDE life, like there has been the fundraiser, which was successful. So that means that you can implement more features. But of the last batch of KDE live versions, which is the feature that you are both most proud of? That you think that users should definitely take a look at? Yeah, I can say this is the sequence implementation we have done in the 23.04. I think this is a big step ahead. Jean Paptiste dived really deep into the code to doing this one. This is something which shortcut not can do because it's on the same framework behind. And I think this is really something Jean Paptiste can be proud of. We're talking about the nested Titan lives, right? The nested sequences. I knew that was going to be the answer, but okay. Well, I tried it and it's amazing. It changes everything. But what's interesting maybe it's from my point of view is this integration with the sub title. I think we have a big community on YouTube. And I was really surprised that out of the blue, some developers pops up and make some additional code just for sub titles. I think this was something which the community never really asked. We implemented Jean Paptiste has this really well done now with these artificial things with whisper, with speech to text was a big implementation. And I never thought we get such a feedback from the community, especially silent feedback, let's say, and a lot of help behind for the sub titles, especially. The people want this one and it was not so on our timeline, let's say Jean Paptiste, I guess. It was just a pick up from the community. Yeah, it's interesting. This has been, I mean, I monitor the news about among other projects cleaning life. And yes, both these have been the most featured, most featured feature. Sorry about the redundancy, commented in blog posts and in technical journals and stuff like that. It's been nested timelines and the whisper. I haven't tried the whisper. But I guess it saves a lot of work. Because if you're going to put out a YouTube video and you want good subtitles for our languages. And even you can do translation. So if you take the speech to text in whisper, it translates automatically as a sub title. This is really great. And even it finds the punctuations, let's say, and make a complete sentence. I was really surprised as I have tested this whisper. I'm going to try it with this video. Yeah, I think it's one thing that I like with KiddyLive. It's that we are using dozens of other open source projects. And sometimes it's like in the case of Whisper, it was very, very easy to integrate. So we just provide an interface to use great, great tools and to put everything together. That's one thing I like in KiddyLive. It's really putting together lots of projects and making them easy to use. Right. I'm not going to ask you the next logical question, which is what is coming up next, because I understand that this is going to be in your keynote. And people who want to find out about all this should go and watch the keynote in Academy. But we can talk about how people can contribute to KiddyLive. KiddyLive for everybody who's watching this is as all KDE projects, completely open, open community. So people can join. And as Eugene explained, can just contribute one thing that they're interested in. If it's good enough, it will make itself, it will make its way in, or it will be helped in or whatever. So how can people help with development? Where can they go and ask to help? How can they contribute if they don't have the knowledge to develop? And also, well, third one, talk about in a minute. Those two. Where do they have to go to contribute in development to just get going? And what can they do if they don't have the knowledge to develop for KiddyLive? So if someone is interested, we have a matrix channel, KiddyLiveDevil, where people can join and ask questions and we can help them to focus on things. And we also do some help because KiddyLive is a very large application. So it's very hard to, I shouldn't be saying that, but it's not easy to get into it. So we try to be welcoming to interested developers. And Eugene, I want to. Yeah, I can only say when we have one developer, really, like Jean-Pap, this we need three people in the background. So let's say, just answering questions on the forum, it's a big help. Checking our buck, buck tracker is a big help. Answering on our matrix channel is a big help. So what I see is when Jean-Pap this is coding, we need three people just in the background to keep the communication to keep the communication alive. And this is as well a big help. Also documentation, right? I mean, every new feature you add, you will have to document. So people helping you, Eugene, with the documentation, that would be helpful too, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah. And I think the problem at the moment is a bit that the documentation lives on a git repository. And this is a bit the hindrance for non-developer. I'm at the moment writing a documentation, a quick one, how this is really working and implement this and implement this one, but people can just go in our normal channel like Matrix and load up some Word documents. I say it's Word documents, please implement this and that. And I think, yeah, just start and communicate what you like to implement. Maybe you find some mistakes or have made some screenshots and then I can help in the background just implementing this one. And then maybe they come to the next step and say, now I like to make a merge request really in the documentation. And I think it's just step-by-step, right? Would have to be a Yeah, another way that people can help also to test the development version before we make a release. This is something that we lack a bit because KDLavis has become a very large project and we have some automated testing for some of the regressions. But yeah, we saw with the latest release that we cannot test all the automatically test all the configurations. So having more people testing the beta versions would also be can also be very helpful for us. Yeah, I mean, very recently there was some problem that you found when the new version was already out there because people actually tested it. The automatic testing didn't pick it up. It had to be the people that actually picked it up. So yes, of course testing. I mean, we're going to put all the addresses for all these things down here so that you can read where to go to the matrix channel, where you can go to the main release, where you can go to the bug report thing, etc, etc, etc. All that will be here. There is another way, I think, to contribute, which is kind of new, which is you can build your own effects and upload them to the KDE store and then download and then other people can download them and use them. So with that, you are actually helping other users with effects and creating a community, etc. I think that's a very interesting feature that is also quite new. Not really. No, we have it this long time, I think five years. This KDE store is not so young and it's implemented in the store itself. But I think the people were not really aware of this feature. I knew the KDE store was out. What I was not aware, as you very well point out, is that you could actually upload, you know, combined effects to it and then share them. I had no idea until, I don't know, about half a year ago maximum. So I realized that then. So yeah, it's another point that although this may have existed for a long time, I wasn't aware of it. So I assume that other people were not aware of it. Again, we will put the address or instructions down here so that you know how to upload your own effects to the KDE store and you can share it with other people. Okay, so very good. The other thing that people can do is fund the development. So KDE life has a permanent fundraising going on. You can become, you can donate one so you can become a regular sponsor and this will help continue the development of KDE life. The fund raising is really important is what has given us, for example, these new features, both the nested timelines and the whisper feature and many others in the new version of KDE life would not have been possible without the help of people funding us. So if you like KDE life again, look down here, click on that link, go and help us fund it. Okay, so we're going to see you again in your keynote. Is there anything else you would like to tell us about KDE life that will not, you know, break the secrets or give away any secrets of what you're going to talk about? Yeah, I don't know. So many things to say about KDE life. Maybe just one thing that is a bit historic, but it's KDE life. For the, I think the first seven years I worked alone on the project. At some point it became too much pressure and I almost stopped working on it. That's when the project almost stopped. And then I did the moment when I really joined the KDE community where we really started to have a team around KDE life. And I think that's one very important thing to have a team. As Eugene said, we need people behind the scenes also to work on various aspects. This is one thing that is very important. This is also very rich and motivating. So this is one thing that I like to sometimes to emphasize and that we are a community and we are part of KDE. That's one thing that I really like about the project. Yeah, also, I mean, you are the main nearly unique developer. It would be great if there was some more developers. So that goes out to the people watching us too. If you have an interest in this project, please come and help develop it. As we have said several times, it's completely open, it's completely free software. So there are no barriers except those of your knowledge. There are no barriers for people contributing to this. Hey, Eugene. Yeah, I would say the same. The whole backup as we have with KDE, the whole resources we can use, the server, the home page and all this infrastructure stuff. And as I said, as need the people behind who helps Jean-Baptiste keep them back free, let's say for developing and then just make the notes for the announcement, make the translation in different languages stuff like this one. This is really need additional people not knowing a coding stuff like this one. And I think we are now a group of four or five people just behind also just together. And without this one, it would be impossible to have such a big software life, let's say, and even with the help of KDE in the background that we could grow as we saw Jean-Baptiste with this language issue we had on Windows and on a Mac, KDE or a developer from a different angle have just a good idea how to solve something. It would be really, really helpful. And maybe, sorry, maybe one last thing. We're also trying to look for new ideas to stay up to date. Of course, we are also thinking about what to do with AI stuff because it's something that is going to have a major impact on video editing. So it's also interesting in an open source project that you can explore many different things. And I think I hope that we will also have some interesting things coming out of these ideas. So you won't use the suggestions? Yes. Really? Well, sorry, I didn't understand that. One suggestions from the users? Oh, no. I have enough ideas on myself. That was the point that very often, you know, there are so many ideas coming in that sometimes you go, okay, enough of ideas, let's get to actually doing something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yes, I get your point. Okay, so it's been great talking to you. We will meet again at the Calamity, as usual. Will you be going to Calamity, Eugene? Yes, together. Because you were not there last year? No, I was never in the academy. This is your first academy? Yep. Oh, wow. Okay, that's good. Yeah. I know Jean-Baptiste has been several times because we have met several times there. So anyway, so it's been great talking to Jean-Baptiste and Eugene. To everybody who's watching, remember, academy is from the 15th to the 21st of July, and it will be held in Thessaloniki in Greece. The conference days are the 15th and the 16th, which is the weekend, and that is where you will be able to hear the keynote, including the keynote from the KDLive team, of course. So we'll see you there. And thanks, Jean-Baptiste and thanks, Eugene. Good night. Yep, thanks. Thank you. See you. Bye.