Studio Daily has a sneak peek video of the new Magic Bullet Looks - a plugin for After Effects and other hosts, as well as a standalone application for applying ‘looks’ to footage. The Magic Bullet Looks workflow is quite innovative, and when you see it, you’ll probably have a ‘why didnt I think of that’ moment - see for yourself, I wont give it away. While not geared for visualists in any sense, its definitely a useful tool (as are almost all Magic Bullet plugins), but it got me thinking a bit about the standard metaphors for working with live video, effects chains, mixer buses and the like.

I really like the simplicity of Magic Bullet Looks. Im curious what innovative work flows could be made for working with live footage. Any suggestions or applications for mixing live that have given you pause for their workflow and interface?

Check out Magic Bullet Looks at Studio Daily

With all the attention on the other parts of Final Cut Studio 2’s fixes, released in an update yesterday, it’s worth noting some major tweaks to Motion. If you’ve been playing with Motion and found some — erm, kinks, as you tend to get in point-oh releases — this is great news. Motion 3 was a huge release, with lots of motion analysis tools and new 3D generators, cameras, and vector paint, so accordingly some of the biggest fixes in the Final Cut Studio update impact Motion.

Normalized flipping - new feature: When working with text on a path, the new Flip Normal shortcut menu option makes it easier to flip based on segments of a curve — i.e., one control point at a time. (Don’t worry, if you have to ask, it’s probably not an issue.)

Tracker size - new feature: I was already pleased with Motion’s tracking options, but the new Tracker Size lets you customize the size of the region you’re manipulating for better results. This is a bit like changing the range of what you’re tracking: you can configure it to track small details or bigger moving features.

Performance workaround for trackers: Motion does work in real-time, but complexity can slow it down — that’s just fundamental to some of what it’s doing, and the fact that it’s an open-ended tool. But this update does address some of the bottlenecks. “Soloing” a tracked object, for instance, can keep cameras in a scene from bogging down the system. That’s a step, but I’d love to see controls over entire compositions as far as what renders and how, so you can manage system performance, which is still an issue even on fast machines.

Optical flow disk management: Optical flow analysis (for smoothing between frames, retiming, and so on) requires rendering hard disk files; now you can manage those files.

Better thin shape performance: I’m still testing this to see how much of a difference this made, but this is promising, as I found shapes a bit slow.

Lots and lots of performance/stability fixes: Thin shapes are improved. Stability of shape and paint strokes and motion tracking behaviors are improved. Situations that could cause the software to stop responding have been fixed: certain tasks related to retimed audio scrubbing, third-party filters, reordering “Point At” behaviors, the Zoom Layer behavior, Directional Blur filter, cloned Clouds, Timing pane tabs, Lens Flare behavior, Curves Steel Menu template, Brush Source well, Mac Pro export, multiple filter dragging, and Frame Blending’s Optical Flow parameter. I’ll add, incidentally, that I used many of these features without incident, so some of the specific conditions are — well, very, very specific.

If anyone has experience testing the update they want to share, please do. Motion gets a lot less attention than its big brother Final Cut Pro, understandably, but it’s a fascinating tool for visualists.

“It’s … alive! ALIIIIVEEE!!! They said I couldn’t do it. They said I was mad. They said I couldn’t cram an entire “broadcast workstation” into a laptop, with jog wheel and faders! But my creation liiiiives!”

Yes, this one’s truly a monster. It’s a Windows laptop. It’s a video controller, with buttons and jog wheel. And it’s a mixer: four video channels video plus six channels audio. At the very least, it’d solve Jaymis’ gig rig troubles. This one box does it all. Of course, you’ll have to go to Korea to buy it, and part with 10,000,000(KRW). Wait a second. I have no idea how much that is. (Hang on, currency conversion … US$10,786.78, which actually isn’t all that bad if it works. Yeah, enough with that $100 laptop, one laptop per child, whatever. Let’s talk $10,000 laptop — one laptop per visualist.)

XENO Website (look for CCTOP in the bottom right corner, if it’s still there)

Via: AVING USA: All-in-one broadcasting equipment ‘UCCTOP Xeno’

Naturally, the internal mixing capabilities mean this little workstation can be an all-in-one video studio, on location. (Sony has done something similar, as mentioned in comments.) XENO is pushing the Internet broadcasting angle, as in this diagram.

I’m embarrassed not to know any more about this beautiful beast. If our South Korea-connected readers could clue us in, it’d be much appreciated.

Thanks to Joshua Ellis for the tip!

We’ve said it before, but worth mentioning again: Resolume, with its super-clean interface, reliable performance, and support for extras like Flash files and open FreeFrame video effects, is bar-none our favorite Windows-based performance. It runs nicely even on my old Pentium M Toshiba laptop, and powers Jaymis’ globe-trotting tour with rockstar Bobby Flynn. If you’re looking to get into the program, Kat Black from visualist trio VJzoo has some good news:

Thought your readers might find this useful - we’ve released the handbook from our courses last year free for personal use. Covers the basics of PC-based VJing using Resolume, making loops etc. Linked off the forum at http://resolume.com or from our site http://VJzoo.com

Featured: Basic PC-based VJing techniques, VJzoo’s perspective on VJ-ing, Creating your own VJ loops, Formatting content for PC-based VJ-ing and using Resolume v2.3.

Introductory Manual to Resolume [PDF]

Here’s VJzoo setting up their rig and rocking Sevilla, Spain, because churches totally get me hot:

And even if you’re not on Windows, you can reap the benefits of the Resolume peoples’ generosity on free media treasure-trove Archive.org:

We’re in the process of uploading a bunch of clips to Archive.org, although geez it’s exhausting. I’ve been working constantly for three days to upload two new batches of clips. So far, only one works:

http://www.archive.org/details/68_Urban_Vector_VJ_Loops_by_VJzoo

The other ones… Argh.. Maybe in another day or two, will let you know. None of them are as weird as our vintage CVI clips - although thanks for even being nice about those ;)

In case you missed them, you can catch the full set of CVI clips:

Glitch, Synthetic and Real: Free Vintage Fairlight VJ Clips, Glitch in Jitter

Hope Kat will forgive me for posting that whole email, but it brings up a good point — Archive.org is great, but maybe we need a new, faster service for uploading visuals. Would you be willing to pay for such a service, if you could pay a flat fee for uploads and then use bandwidth freely or cheaply?

Australians: If you happen to be in Perth, Australia — and, really, if you’re anybody, I’m sure you are — VJzoo is at the center of the Perth audiovisual scene. (The scene does sound genuinely awesome. How many hours does it take to fly from Melbourne or Brisbane to Perth again? Might have to drop by and see more of the continent.)

Tired of flat surfaces? Joanie Lemercier, known by the name antivj, was seen here recently with a terrific tutorial on Wii VJing. Now antivj is back with a terrific video performance, projecting onto 3D forms.

just did a new video, and I thought you might be interested as well: it’s a visual performance I did in January (for clubtransmediale festival in Berlin). The idea is to use regular projectors to project on 3D elements and volumes instead of screens. It’s called “visual mapping” (here on some sculptures done by visomat)

Visomat, Inc. did the polygonal forms, as Joanie added a second layer of “light sculpture.” It’s far more satisfying than just watching virtual polygons projected: the 3D forms are real. Video and lots of images at the project site:

Light Sculptures @ Club Transmediale

I hope we’ll see this more regularly. Of course, that probably means some of us visualists not lucky enough to have a collaborator better learn some physical sculpting skills fast — and re-learn how to get projection onto surfaces!

Some more shots of projects I sketched while in Ben Fry’s Processing class:

And heck, even extremely basic, fundamental code starts to become a fun exercise, like a mind workout for 3D translation and quick coding:

As we got into the later days, I was really interested to watch as my colleague’s work tended to get more painterly and organic. The ability to do this quickly is really encouraging.

I’ll definitely be debriefing with some information and code examples soon — probably after I develop more of what I was thinking about while at the workshop. But I can’t say enough about how great it was to get to work with Ben and absorb his unique insight into his tool and artmaking in general. It’s really made me want to devote a great deal of new time to Processing — and has given me some sense of the best directions to take that work. Still on the road here (hello, airport lounge!); more soon.

Some sketches from the first day of Ben Fry’s Processing class here at Anderson Ranch. What was striking to me is that you really can cover the essence of setup and coding syntax in a day, even for people not familiar with programming/Java. You’re instantly translating code into visuals, so there’s immediate feedback — not a big slog through how the environment works before something actually happens.

Since I have spent some time with Processing, I took the opportunity to try to push some of the examples in a different direction. Speed is not necessarily my forte (with anything, really), but it was fun to try to throw together a sketch as quickly as possible. I didn’t even worry about checking for errors; I actually decided that if the compiler was regularly throwing errors because I accidentally left out a parenthesis, that meant I was moving fast enough. Even though we’re starting at the beginning, though, I’m rapidly filling up holes in my knowledge about Processing and picking up endless tips — it’s really extraordinary to get the chance to work directly with Ben Fry himself! And not only is it an opportunity to get close to the source, but, as I expected, he’s a fantastic teacher, as well.

I’m also trying a new way of working, which is to regularly keep a visual log of what I’m doing. Plaqs’s Skitch, a hot new Mac app currently in beta, takes care of that nicely. It allows me to quickly take screen grabs and post them either to my Skitch page or (as here) Flickr, so I have a record of various iterations — some successful, some less so. More on that and how TextMate makes life easier with Processing coding on Mac soon.

Stay tuned for more…