Offline rendering with a unix server

Noxalus · Post by **Noxalus** » 01-03-17 7:11 am

Hello everyone

I would like to perform offline rendering to record a Synthesia video for a specific MIDI file on a unix server to automatically create a video when someone upload a MIDI file on my server.

Do you know if it's possible?

I saw that an app called "Synthesia Video Creator" is available on the website, but only for Windows and Mac OS. I did some research and found out that Linux support was dropped several years ago and that the source code is closed now.

I've heard that Mac OS is based on the Unix kernel, it's not easier to have a Linux version of Synthesia now that a Mac OS version is available? If not, why not make public the source code to allow developers to add Linux support? (Linthesia was a good example of what the community can do).

The other good thing with a Linux support is that we could use it to create a small HDMI key containing Synthesia on a small Linux distrib (like Raspbian with the Raspberry Pi).

To get back to the subject, I also see that people use Synthesia with Wine on Linux, and that it does the job. Is someone already tried to use "Synthesia Video Creator" with Wine too?

Thanks a lot for your anwsers

Post by **Nicholas** » 01-03-17 8:45 am

The next time we do a feature pass on the video creator (scheduled just after Synthesia 11 goes out the door), adding a command-line interface is on the list. Then you'll be able to batch things automatically on Unix/Linux using Wine.

Otherwise, we don't have any planned Linux support at this time. Looking at site traffic, we generally use the 1% threshold to determine when we might be able to finally drop support for old platforms (i.e., Windows XP or macOS 10.5). Seeing as how Linux has never crested 1% (in the last 30 days it stood at 0.79%), it would be a misappropriation of development time, site real estate, and support bandwidth to go down that path today (as much as I like the platform, personally). Open source isn't an option, so that is check and mate for a Linux version for now. Sorry!

(To get the app lean enough to run on Raspberry Pi would be a lot more work than a simple port. There is a Final Optimization that still needs to take place in our graphics pipeline. I'd like to try and get it done by Synthesia 12, but until then, small hardware platforms like the Pi don't have any hope. The same optimization is going to more than double the frame-rate on all of the lower-end Android devices out there, too.)

Noxalus · Post by **Noxalus** » 01-03-17 10:33 am

Thank you so much for this perfect answer!

I will wait for the possibility of using Synthesia Video Creator on Windows with the command line before to do any test on Linux with Wine.

Is there a way to be noticed when such features are released (like newsletter)?

Keep up the good work

Post by **Nicholas** » 01-03-17 10:43 am

We make those kinds of announcements in the Development Updates section of the forum. RSS is starting to feel a little long in the tooth these days, but the forum software has a feed for just new topics in that section, so news will only pop up in your reader when something major has been announced.

Noxalus · Post by **Noxalus** » 03-19-18 3:59 pm

Hello!

I was wondering if there are news related to this question. I'm still wanting to render Synthesia video on a Linux server, but from what I saw, it's still not possible to use SVC with command lines, am I right?

Your position regarding to Linux port and/or open Synthesia sources didn't move neither?

Post by **Nicholas** » 03-19-18 4:15 pm

All of this is correct. We haven't added command-line support to the Video Creator yet.

And a native Linux version is still as far away as ever. (Sorry! It still boils down to not having the maintenance resources to support it.)

Noxalus · Post by **Noxalus** » 03-19-18 5:51 pm

Ok, thank you for your answer