Revisiting Video Players

So a little over a month ago, I made a wonderful post about video players and the like. Funnily enough, after shuffling around the internet I happened to end up finding a video player that is perfect for windows. By perfect, I mean it's just a build of mpv for windows. From what I can tell, the build works about the same as it does on linux, but of course instead of just direct build of mpv, there is a front-end that you could use instead...

It's called Baka-MPlayer and although the interface is somewhat lacking, it's not like I usually watch my anime without it being in fullscreen anyways. All of the dead basic stuff are included, so sub tracks, chapters, hi10, etc. all supposedly work. Resource-wise, it's less hungry than my installation of MPC-HC (usually 15% of my cpu and ~300MB of memory), though for all I know, it could be due to the filters and stuff I have. The mpv player takes around 130MB of memory and 4~8% of my cpu with the baka mplayer front-end taking another 50MB, adding up to a little over half of the resources used by MPC-HC. It also has some strange other features that I have never seen in a video player before...like having microsoft Sam/Samantha say the ID3 tag title, and voice recognition of all things.

So pretty much, you could say "Baka Pause" while doing other stuff, or any of the other voice commands without actually needing to do anything to the player. It's hilarious for all of a couple minutes that you can further extend for another minute since you can actually customize the call name for the program ("Baka") to anything you want...*cough* "imouto" *cough*. Also, since it's a build of mpv, the idea is that your viewing experience would be just as badass as it would be on linux.

Anyways, it mega-simple to get running and doesn't require any sort of mucking around with filters and codecs, thus instead of MPC-HC, this video player now gets the top position in my book as the go-to video player for my anime needs.
The website and github for the project are below:
http://bakamplayer.u8sand.net/index.php
https://github.com/godly-devotion/Baka-MPlayer

Drawing Tablets are Fun

I have a tablet and it's amazing even if it isn't...but what can you do with a tablet?
Obviously you can draw with it and thus we get to look at applications that our tablet can utilize.
- Paint Tool Sai
- OpenCanvas
- MyPaint
- Gimp
- Krita
- FireAlpaca

So to go down the list, we'll start with GIMP because forget starting with the top of the list, we don't need to follow normal structure of thought. All of the screenshots are taken from windows or linux and most of  the self-drawn images were not exactly the most dedicated of drawings. The colored ones were just images that I happened to have already drawn and used for other things, but seemed to serve the purpose well enough.

GIMP:

 

For a free option, it's not terrible but granted it isn't exactly the cream of the crop in terms of use with a tablet. The interface is pretty standard and you can manipulate the tool windows to your liking (floating or single-window mode). The sensitivity and brushes can be customized and all, but being the lazy guy I am, drawing with gimp out of the box isn't spectacular.

In other words, GIMP should stick to being an image editor rather than a tablet drawing editor, but on the plus side, it is multi-platform.


OpenCanvas:

The not free or multi-platform alternative to the free and/or multi-platform programs which may or may not suit you more. Interface is kind of meh in my opinion. It's not lacking in features, but those window borders do take up space unless you hide the windows.

OC ends up being decent (moreso than GIMP), but those useless window borders are a real annoyance and it isn't free (there is a trial version to play with though). At least, they are still developing the program, so I guess your money could be worth it.

FireAlpaca:

With another free alternative, firealpaca is a relatively newer program available for Windows and Mac (no linux love unfortunately...even though it uses qt :/). Window management is...amazing. Pretty much the coolest I have ever seen with as much customization as GIMP. By default, pressure opacity is off for whatever reason, but it isn't hard to enable.

FA is still being developed and there is a suggestion box on their website (so you could always send in suggestions to the team), best of all it's still free, meaning it's totally worth a try...though that lack of linux love...requires some plugs into that suggestion box of theirs.

Krita:

The next logical choice in my illogical list pickings is Krita, the free, "kind-of multi-platform" program from the Calligra suite. It's window management is decent, though you can't exactly do anything you want like in FireAlpaca. It's a rather mature project though and of course is still being worked on.

In the end, there is nothing really terrible that I have to say about krita. It's well made and for the most part, does what it's supposed to, but if I had to nitpick, that right click circle menu thing makes no sense to me and is kind of an annoyance with my pen...since it has buttons and thus right-clicks. It's probably best used under a KDE/QT environment since it is a QT application after all, but I currently don't use KDE and LXQT isn't exactly out yet...Maybe one day I'll swap to QT stuffs.

Paint Tool SAI:

The tool that many dA members seem to swear by, and not without reason. It's a fairly cheap buy or you could try it out with it's 30-day trial. Tool bar management is about the same as krita and you can set keybindings yourself. Supposedly the brush engine is marvelous, but I'm an amateur in this sort of thing so the best I can say is that I enjoy using SAI.

Paint tool SAI is windows only, which is really depressing, since it is a rather well made program (and then there is the part about it being not free...). It also doesn't seem to be in development anymore, with the latest version being released in...2008.

MyPaint:

Last but not least is the free MyPaint. It's a nifty little program that could be considered a decent replacement to Paint Tool SAI and is my favorite for linux at the moment. It even has a brush pack that mimics the SAI brushes. The windows are all floating, can be toggled with keyboard shortcuts, but there is the window border...though in linux that is more of a convenience (most window managers are fairly flexible).

To be completely honest, I enjoyed drawing with MyPaint more than the other programs available for linux due to simple annoyances with my pen and tablet...which probably could have been fixed if I cared to put the effort to it. The updates are kind of infrequent compared to krita or gimp (though it isn't like MyPaint has a huge team of people behind it...), but is totally useable as it is anyways so having updates at all is a plus.

It doesn't really matter what program you want to use (not like I'm the one who can make artwork anyways, so whatever floats your boat), but at the very least you can take a look at what each of the interfaces look like and some of what you can get from the program.