[Bf-committers] GSoC 2017: Introduction, Sequencer Playback Optimization

[Jonathan Ni]

Good evening Blender developers,

My name is Jonathan Ni, and I am a student at Cornell University (Ithaca,
NY,
USA) pursuing a Bachelor's in Computer Science (B.A.). I've always been
interested in 3D rendering and animation and how it's done, which is how I
discovered Blender back in 2009 (2.49b). I have a long coding background,
and
in the past few years, I've developed an interest in optimization and
parallelization of code.

Having done many personal coding projects, as well as some group projects,
I'm
comfortable with C/C++ (particularly low-level stuff) and Python for coding
and Git and GitHub/Bitbucket/etc. for version control. I also have some
some
OpenGL experience in development of an Android paint application (via Java).

With regards to Blender: as a frequent user of Blender's Video Sequence
Editor
to edit my own video projects, I realize the need for improving its
performance, as fairly complex but still common setups will render the VSE
slow and unusable.

Although my experience with contributing to open source projects is
limited, I
would appreciate the opportunity to work on optimizing the playback of
Blender's VSE system. I have an idea of using the GPU device to accelerate
processing and playback, which I discuss a bit more in my final proposal.

Regards,

Jonathan Ni