Create Digital Motion » What Are Your Favorite Windows-Only Visualist Tools?

What Are Your Favorite Windows-Only Visualist Tools?

Related: ask-CDM, software, tips, vista, visualist, VJ, Windows, XP & more

Cross-platform visualism: Philipp Rudler, a member of the VJ collective montage sauvage, juggles Mac + PC in Gratz, Sytria. Photo: rawmeyn, via Flickr. So what’s PC got that Mac doesn’t? You’ve got a few ideas.

For no particular reason, we’ve gone super-Mac/Apple-centric here on CDMotion this week, so to even the score, I’m curious: what Windows-only tools do you choose for your visualist needs? The awesome DirectX-based free modular environment vvvv immediately springs to mind, along with our VJ app fave Resolume. Windows also happens to be a great gaming platform, which has interesting implications for visualists — anyone building custom 3D visuals in Microsoft’s XNA framework, for instance? I also like DirectX for video input at the moment.

But what else do you depend on, whether big apps or little tiny utilities?

(Hey, at the very least, Mac users, you’ll have a reason to boot Boot Camp, now Leopard-only.)

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31 Comments or Links

Comments

Brendan

Pilgrim R2 - Ridiculously powerful VJ app.

MidiYoke - Midi functionality.

November 2, 2007 @ 12:30 am

gavspav

Vjamm - possibly the best AV performance software by miles.

GlovePIE - because you can.

November 2, 2007 @ 4:46 am

GrooveWhiz

touch designer

November 2, 2007 @ 9:36 am

mike

visual jockey - quirky and sometimes frustrating but very flexible and good fun especially for making abstract feedback stuff. Hope they update it properly soon - get the image quality up and use hardware acceleration. also VVVV is brill.

November 2, 2007 @ 9:49 am

Robotkid

Vegas Video: The ultimate tool for creating AV remixes. Cut to bars/beats, and easy time-stretching!

November 2, 2007 @ 1:14 pm

kraftma

anyone building custom 3D visuals in MicrosoftÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s XNA framework, for instance?

still dreamin of developing my own 3d vj app for xbox360, using xna.
damm, that would be cool.

November 2, 2007 @ 2:40 pm

andreas

would say vvvv

November 2, 2007 @ 5:33 pm

tom

my vote goes to Vegas. VVVV does rock, but you have Jitter… (or Processing for that matter, specially for those that -like me- do not like connecting boxes). But Vegas is the perfect blend of NLE and HCI, I just love it.

November 2, 2007 @ 7:38 pm

Zsolt

Aestesis Elektronika Live
I really don’t know why it isn’t widespread, it has absolutely killer features with a Propellerhead Reason like module/parameter interconnecting concept. It also supports Freeframe effects and it’s full MIDI controllable with MIDI learn. Really - since I started to use it, I abandoned Resolume and Arkaos VJ. Pilgrim looks intersting, I’ll give it a try…

November 2, 2007 @ 7:41 pm

vade

Zsolt (from the Max list?) - interesting, this is Bill Etras recent tool of choice. It seems quite interesting, and he does some very nice things with it.

November 2, 2007 @ 7:58 pm

Nek

vvvv

November 2, 2007 @ 9:35 pm

superdraw

I’m glad to see the XNA framework mentioned, I’m seriously considering porting superdraw to that platform, it’s very very tempting… even downloaded it- now if I could just find the time!

November 2, 2007 @ 10:02 pm

Peter Kirn

It looks like there’s a video library for XNA:
http://codecube.net/?p=7

… not that video is *essential* to such an app, though it sure would be nice to have the option!

The other framework I’ve been working with is jMonkeyEngine, which is quite nice. (Not Windows only, BUT I have one reason to use it in Windows — better hardware input support from both the PC and Java, including easier Java integration of Wacom tablets, and the PC-only drivers for the Novint Falcon haptic controller.)

November 2, 2007 @ 10:23 pm

Andreas

For me it’s processing.

November 3, 2007 @ 9:00 am

Trey

I’ve been really impressed by the work that the Inside-Us-All crew has been doing with the ‘Salvation’ Windows app…. a giant multi-cell grid display at Brixton Academy earlier this summer, and recently a large audio-reactive EQ/Spectrum display for the Synergy Project. Looks like they’re doing another gig at Brixton on Nov 10th to celebrate their “#1 VJ according to DJ Magazine” award, I assume they’ve have an interesting rig running there as well.

November 3, 2007 @ 8:58 pm

Peter Kirn

Salvation is here, for anyone looking for it:
http://www.harrisondigitalmedia.com/

I need to check it out again, actually. :) Wonder what their dev environment is…

Andreas — I’m with you. Processing isn’t Windows-only but I’m actually more pleased with the Windows situation at the moment, in terms of Java performance on an array of machines, hooks into some PC-specific libraries, and DirectShow over QuickTime4Java for capture. O

November 3, 2007 @ 9:32 pm

grigori

Windows Paint!

November 4, 2007 @ 7:05 am

Matt

http://vsxu.com/

VSX Ultra (modular interconnection of boxes ala Gephex)is prety cool, and is maturing quite fast now. It has a really sexy openGL zoomable interface too :D

November 4, 2007 @ 8:29 am

Jaymis

So Peter, with Processing is that the Windows Vista solution, or XP?

November 4, 2007 @ 8:34 am

grigori

Jaymis you are funny! :)

November 4, 2007 @ 10:31 am

epiphanius

I have been using opentzt. The setup takes a while to get one’s head around, but it makes sense after a while, so that you create entire directory structures for each set. Midi works, though this took some time to figure out as well. Freeframe effects supported, and I find it responsive. The price (free) is very reasonable too.

November 4, 2007 @ 1:40 pm

Peter Kirn

@Jaymis: Ha!

For the record: you should see no noticeable difference running Processing, Java, and OpenGL on Vista or XP. What you may see, of course, is Vista problems; some glitches with Aero and full-screen OpenGL, etc., and you probably want to run Java 6 as your default JDK. But I find it’s running just fine on both.

The big problem with Processing in general is its reliance on the QuickTime4Java library, which causes problems on *both* Mac and Windows and refuses to work at all on Linux. My sense is that Processing may need to go to platform-specific video libraries, because there isn’t one library that really crosses platforms. Once you grab data out of video, anyway, everything else is fine. I’m looking now at a DirectShow wrapper on Windows and a QTKit wrapper on Mac (replacing the deprecated QT4J and Quartz gunk that’s so broken).

Theoretically, it should be possible to do a pure-Java or pure-C# video library, but for now wrappers seem to be the way to go.

November 4, 2007 @ 2:06 pm

superdraw

oooh, jMonkeyEngine looks great! thanks for the tip peter!

November 4, 2007 @ 3:36 pm

epiphanius

Thanks for fixing up my post Peter. I have actually used html in the past, but today it was eluding me.

November 4, 2007 @ 8:06 pm

Josi

visualJockey Gold, Hippotizer V3

November 5, 2007 @ 4:41 am

Keith Crosley

Have done some interesting things in vvvv, use Sony Vegas Pro for editing, use BluffTitler (http://www.blufftitler.us) for realtime motion graphics, particles, text effects. [Full disclosure: I like BluffTitler so much, I market this software in the US. Shouldn't stop you from trying it, though!]