I’m a complete idiot when it comes to mental arithmetic and aspect ratios. Everything else I can convert in my head, and yet … here is an absurdly simplistic solution:
Built in Java. Now, should Jaymis and I set about building our own open source alternative with lots of powerful features? (I expect I can work out how to program division.) Feature requests?
Exciting things are afoot. As hinted, I’ll be Visualisting my way around the country soon. Touring Australia = Large chunks of time sitting on a bus, so when that hits I expect to be a veritable fountain of CDMotion content (including some of that hot new NAMM gear, stay tuned), but until then it looks like things are going to be a little… cramped? I don’t expect to have much time to devote to devote to the extensive, handcrafted editorialising we’re all used to.
Which is a problem, as I have loads of awesome stuff to tell you about, and it just can’t wait two months. So my plan is to do a series of Pocket Reviews, getting all of the salient points (which are quite easy to write) without the filler (which takes time to get right).
First up: My Russian Spy Lens - the Zenitar 16mm Fish Eye - arrived today.
US$150 including shipping from East Wave BestOptics. I’m using it on my Pentax *ist DS. The Digital SLR Focal Length Multiplier is 1.5, so it’s probably closer to a 24mm lens on this camera, but still gives a beautifully wide view angle, and plenty of lens distortion.
We’ve covered Lightroom from early in the beta. Now adobe have put up a product page, thanked the half-million beta testers, and announced that Lightroom won’t be a part of CS3, but will be shipping mid-feb, for an introductory price of US$199 (until May, then $299).
I feel that $200 is quite reasonable for the standalone product. I’ve been loving Lightroom for my image tagging, cropping and simple colour correction needs, and for gifted amateur photographers who want a little more power but don’t have the time or inclination to learn Photoshop it’s absolutely superb. I can definitely see where Photoshop users would want to use it instead of Bridge though, so I’d hope that there will be some of Lightroom’s workflow improvements implemented in Photoshop CS3, or that a bundled version will be available at a later date.
Vista Compatibility: Works, but no CD or DVD burning
Robert of Flight404 fame has posted his initial dabblings in Quartz Composer.
I find it rather exciting that a Processing Ninja such as Robert can find inspiration in QC. I have a terrible head for languages - both human and machine - so I’ve been wondering whether a node-based environment may be easier for me to grasp.
VJing with flickr? Clubbing with Yahoo Maps? Flash/Flex and Apollo-based apps present some interesting new ideas. We’ve been tracking the excellent Flash 9-based Onyx VJ tool, among others, and it’s nice to see the “open source Adobe-based VJ app” category growing. Mute is very early in development, perhaps not as far along as Onyx, but here’s a quick look at what it offers:
You can grab the Windows beta now, or inquire about Mac compatibility.
I like the open source idea here, because so many visualists are developing their own projects and need a way of integrating them without reinventing the wheel. In sound software, this is pretty easy — just route audio from one place to another. But in visual software, you need everything to be integrated on the same output to the display, even more so if you’re not using a mixer (and many of us computer-based folks aren’t).
Let us know if you’ve got projects of your own or want to share more about Mute or other tools.
Video overview from the product creators:
Thanks to Yansky for the great tip!
Move over, Adobe — Ubuntu Studio, due in April, promises to put a full, completely open-source graphics package together for Linux. The OS and apps will all be bundled together for easy installation. We recently covered pure:dyne, a high-performance visual OS. Ubuntu Studio looks a little friendlier and broader for newcomers; it’ll be interesting if it can make Linux installation and configuration easy even for the truly lazy — to make Linux graphics an impulse install. (I can test that, certainly.) pure:dyne I’m expecting will remain the best choice for Pd, but Ubuntu Studio looks like it may be promising, as well.
In a single install for PCs and Macs, Ubuntu Studio packs a lot of firepower:
Pd is included, but not with all the goodies in pure:dyne, so if you’re interested in patching, that’s still the way to go. In fact, I notice this is generally missing tools for live visuals. We’ll have to keep an eye on this, though, as plenty of VJ/visualist/video tools are on the wish list, like gephex and freej. Most promising: veejay for dyne. Anyone who might be able to help contribute and put that together, I’m sure they’d love to have you!
Full list of packages
Ubuntu Studio Wiki
Analysis for music from Create Digital Music
Linux is looking better and better as a fully open-source, multimedia-optimized operating system for visualists. Adobe has announced the availability of Flash Player for Linux. The bad news is, it’s x86 only, and as expected, there may be some issues. But the good news is, it’s here, and early reports indicate it works. Even as a regular Mac and Windows user, I can see building a cheap PC box for an installation and saving the cash I’d normally have to spend on a Windows license. Download Squad has some good commentary and links. If you’re on Linux, just go grab the player the normal way, and you’ll get a Linux option (neat!)
Flash Player 9 for Linux Final Released
What else does this mean? It means you can go fully free + open-source with your next VJ set, taking advantage of the ActionScript 3-based project Onyx pictured here:
I’m converting a PC laptop here to a Linux-only box. One of the first things I want to test: video4linux Flash support, if Adobe delivered that as promised. If you’re trying a mixed-OS environment on the Mac, be sure to catch the other gem from Download Squad, a how-to for MacFUSE, which gives you Linux volume access on the Mac.
I spend most of my performance time with electronic musicians, and suppose most CDMo readers would be in a similar situation. I don’t think it’s necessarily that live electronica requires a VJ to be visually stimulating (Ponyloaf prove this gig after gig), but those whose music making time is centred around synths, samplers and laptops seem to be more aware of the firepower that a fully armed and operational visualist can provide.
So I was surprised to get a call last week from local Alt/Folk/Rock hero and Australian Idol 2006 finalist Bobby Flynn (If you’re not from Australia and haven’t encountered Bobby, Youtube and Wikipedia can get you up to speed). Apparently Bobby is putting together an Australian tour, is at least partially aware of the power of a fully armed and operational visualist, and had heard that I was such a creature. So after conversation, dinner, beers, and a couple of hours with my python wrapped around his girlfriend’s arm, it was decided that I should join his merry little band. Oh, and there’s a gig in three days at QPAC. Ready? Did I mention that I didn’t have a reliable gig machine as I managed to spill beer on my Thinkpad at Elements:6? No? Well I guess I’d better sort that out before Saturday then.
So I put together a Small Form Factor PC based around the Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard and a Lian Li PC-V300B case (writeup coming), organized mounting of a projector and improvised screen (QPAC can’t provide us with any screens at all? Stage managah, please!), managed to squeeze in time for rendering some new materials and a practice with the band and still arrived at the venue on time, with all my gear, and having had over 4 hours sleep the night before!
It turns out that VJing for a folk rock crooner is quite a different experience to the DJs and electronic acts I usually work with.
Was 2006 the year that manufacturers really started paying attention to visualists? Sure, the DVJ-X1 has been out for 3 years now, but prices of video mixers and custom video hardware like the DVJ mean it’s not really a tool for aspiring VJs to dip their toes into the form. So purpose-built VJ hardware has been the exclusive domain of established, touring VJs (or DJs adding video to their performance). The VJ-in-training-and-on-a-budget has traditionally been confined to either off the shelf DVD players and a cheap video switcher, or shoehorning midi control into a laptop based, software solution, and praying like hell that nothing crashes.
This situation seems to be changing with increasing speed. While in previous years there has been a trickle of midi controllers and hardware, the flow is now increasing. We now have VJ-specific gear from Pioneer and Numark joining the flow of cool new stuff which can be shoehorned into controlling your favourite VJ app.
So in the face of this impending revolution of awesomeness, here comes the first NAMM VJ announcement for CDMotion: The Numark VM03-MKII.
Hoorah! It’s just like the VM03, but with slightly bigger screens and individual image control settings for each. Kind of like the M-Connection MC-100NP but 50% more expensive!
Can we talk about new cool stuff now please?
In the immortal words of Burt Bacharach:
Beware of The Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The Blob
It’s true, Burt. Tracking multiple blobs in an image for motion tracking, in order to analyze a video source to track points of movement within that image, is hard. The open source, multimedia processing Pure Data library Gridflow does a lovely job in a new patch by Mathieu Bouchard. Found via the excellent PD-Announce list, which manages to be useful but not overwhelming. Mathieu writes:
It’s actually my own implementation: it’s not been ported from anywhere else. Each cross is centered on the centroid (1st order moment) of its corresponding region (”blob”), and the size of the cross is the square root of the area of the region.
I will make another version which will use rotated rectangular crosses. The two lines of each cross will represent the two radiuses of the standard deviation of the region, and the angle will represent the angle of the standard deviation. I will use [#moment_polar], an abstraction based on [lti.Jacobi].
Mathieu explains how to get it (ain’t open source great?):
If you get your GridFlow from the CVS, just update and you’ll have [#labeling].
(It’s called like that because it “labels” each region of the picture with a different number, so it creates something called “a labeling”).
You’ll find lots of Pure Data goodness at Mathieu’s site. See the full image of the patch.
Mostly, I’m going to use this as yet another excuse to go grab the pure:dyne Linux distro. GridFlow and Pd are already on there, so you need to know very little about setting up Linux and installing them. pure:dyne should be Intel Mac ready any day now, and it’ll boot from a key, a hard drive, or a disc, so it’s very easy to just boot it up and give this stuff a go. I’m dying to run it on my MacBook, so I’ll post here once that version becomes available. (Note, Mathieu observes that of course this is too new to be on pure:dyne yet … but that’s okay with me; it still demonstrates the utility of Gridflow, and there’s nothing stopping you from using pure:dyne as a starting point and switching to CVS if you can handle a little bleeding-edge code.)
2
