Ardour lead developer Paul Davis has announced the release of version 3.2 of the open source digital audio workstation (DAW). The biggest new addition in this version is video support, a feature on which developer Robin Gareus "has worked for a couple of years", according to Davis. Video support allows users of the DAW to easily extract, edit and mix audio tracks associated with video while being able to see the video in a preview.

The new video feature can display imported video tracks with frame-by-frame granularity in a timeline and allows users to lock audio tracks to individual video frames. After the editing work is done, users can then export the mixed audio track into a new video file. The feature is designed in a modular way and several workstations can be combined so that one shows the video timeline while another allows the user to edit the audio. A dedicated video server can also be added to this setup which will then take care of the actual decoding and archiving of the edited files and assets. The developer points out, however, that Ardour does not provide actual video editing capabilities.

Other changes in Ardour 3.2 include the ability to chain together several LV2 plugins, an improved window management workflow and some user interface tweaks. The developers have also fixed a number of bugs and improved the German and French translations of the program.

The source code for Ardour 3.2 is available for download from the project's web site under the GPLv2 or later. "Ready to run" binaries can be purchased under a name-your-price model for at least $1 and users can also subscribe for $1, $4 or $10 a month to support the development of the application. This subscription model was set up to allow Davis to work on Ardour full time.

(fab)