[magick-developers] Alembik: image transcoding with ImageMagick

[Jakub Danilewicz]

Hi,

I have just subscribed to your mailing group, so first hello to everyone. :)

I would like to introduce to you a new open-source initiative called 
Alembik, which in brief is an OMA STI-compliant media transcoding server 
based on Java (J2EE) technology. OMA STI stands for Open Mobile 
Alliance's Standard Transcoding Interface, which precisely defines a 
contract between a client (needing some media file(s) to be transcoded) 
and a server (which carries out the transformation process according to 
the passed parameters set).

To my best knowledge Alembik (a word derived from the name of a device 
for alchemical transmutations) is a first open-source attempt to meet 
that standard.

http://alembik.sourceforge.net/

The reason why I am posting this information here is that one of the 
most important software dependencies of Alembik is... ImageMagick 
itself. Actually whenever the server receives a request for image 
transcoding, it delegates work to ImageMagickMediaProcessor, which 
constructs an appropriate command for executing your application.
 
http://alembik.sourceforge.net/alembikImageMagickMediaProcessor.html

Although the server already runs in several production environments, 
only a fraction of possible image transformations is currently 
supported. Moreover, the cooperation between the server and ImageMagick 
is based on shell command execution, which imposes substantial 
limitations on the process. We have been deliberating on introducing 
JNI-based communication (JMagick), but so far we have not made any 
decision yet.

As you see there are still lots of things to be done and plenty of paths 
to be pursued. :)

Although Alembik is now a open-joint-venture of two companies: Kimia 
from Spain and (Open) Reply from Italy, we warmly welcome all developers 
(or companies), which are willing to lend a hand in its construction. 
Given the scope of this mailing list we would like to invite 
particularly those, who are interested in developing a bridge between 
OMA-STI and ImageMagick worlds.

And most of all we encourage everyone interested in media transcoding to 
download, install, try and use our software.

We hope you will find Alembik useful and we cannot wait to read your 
feedback.

Best wishes for ImageMagick community from Alembik team,

Jakub Danilewicz
www.kimiasol.com