Just as VDMX and Resolume have been treated to ground-up rewrites, so, too, has a name in VJ apps that has endured since the early days of computer VJing: ArKaos. GrandVJ is a completely new program, though it does maintain ArKaos’ signature feature - a music keyboard along the bottom of the screen.
Now, I’ve wanted to root for GrandVJ’s new release since the beginning, partly because of its MIDI keyboard-savvy design but especially because the new release is fast — blazingly fast. Thanks to a rebuilt, ffmpeg-based video backend, it can really rock its way through high-framerate playback without a second thought, which goes nicely with all the jamming you might like to do on a MIDI keyboard with clips.
That said, the initial release of GrandVJ just felt a little too minimal. Now, nothing against minimal - not every set has to be an audiovisual mash-up a la Resolume 3 or some elaborate modular setup of effects as you can build in VDMX. But just getting basic alpha support or setting up a simple crossfader for clips proved to be challenging.
That’s why I’m really pleased by the direction taken by GrandVJ 1.1. ArKaos are aggressively attacking a lot of the main things I wanted address:
Since its official announcement in July, Resolume 3 has been causing excitement with its cross-platform, beatmatched, AV, VST-compatible next-level-ishness. Peter and I have had a great time playing with the private beta, but we know that the real capabilities of new software don’t appear until the public starts messing with it.
Resolume 3 is now also available for purchase: €299/€499/€649 for a 1/2/3 machine license (Mac and/or PC), with Resolume’s friendly update model which gives you all point release updates for free.
From the developers:
This is a beta because it has some rough edges and not all features have been implemented yet. We hope you can all have a look and let us know what bugs you find, we expect there will be some.
The main features that have not been implemented yet are Flash playback, audio FFT analysis and DMX support. But we are working on these features right now and they will be available as free updates.
Another lovely shot by VDMX user przemion. Look over someone’s shoulder at VDMX and prepare to be confused — the modular interface means you can put loads on the screen. But spend a few minutes with the tool and its tutorials, and you’re likely to find it surprisingly intuitive.
It’s a big leap from generations of visual software developed for non-real-time rendering to tools that can make visuals as expressive as musical instruments. As is always the case with development, the devil’s in the details. We’ve heard that overwhelmingly from all the developers to whom we’ve spoken.
But just as a musician might obsess over the nuances of a pickup on a guitar, there’s plenty to love as visual tools evolve. VDMX’s beta 7 isn’t the kind of thing you’d put on a glossy magazine cover, but then something like improved rendering engine or (bizarrely) loading live webpages into layers might just make you salivate. And having just seen CDMo contributor vade working with outpt with VDMX (and Processing and Max/MSP/Jitter and Quartz Composer and a network connection and who knows what else), I can’t wait to see what some of you will do with this.
2008 has indeed proven to be a year of new live visualist software, but development is going slowly in virtually all camps. I think it’s proof that visual apps in general, by stretching the computing capabilities of modern platforms and creating entirely new workflows from scratch, expose some of the challenges really rich media pose even on the latest OSes and developer tools. VDMX is the “perpetually in beta” favorite Mac-only visualist app. Despite the beta label, it’s really quite capable, increasingly-stable software. The Vidvox developers continue hacking away at it, and dedicated users follow each update the way some people follow sports.
Vidvox’s David Lublin gives CDM an exclusive look at the under-the-hood improvements happening in VDMX, as seen through the developers’ eyes. It’s a good glimpse into the mechanics of what’s going on.
Here’s David on some of what’s new, in the first part of our look at VDMX’s latest build:
The biggest changes to VDMX in beta 7 are under the hood, and should be immediately noticeable as soon as you start playing with it. The entire rendering engine has been re-written from scratch, making everything a lot faster and more stable. In particular, layers may be rendered directly to OpenGL- while OpenGL blend modes only offer a fraction of the flexibility of CoreImage, alpha channels work quite nicely and this is a good way to render a number of layers in one pass. We also wrote a dedicated still image handler and moved away from letting QuickTime handle still image playback. Since the images are going directly to the GPU, triggering stills is a lot faster and more stable. The interfaces for a number of plugins- particularly the preview windows- have been significantly optimized, and are much more efficient. Overall, we’re now sitting on a much faster and more robust foundation, which means it’ll be easier to improve and extend VDMX as the beta progresses (we’re about 70% complete- hence b7.0.0).
Mrmr is a wonderful tool for turning your Apple mobile device into a multi-touch controller for performance and controlling visuals and music. It allows custom control layouts, it’s beautifully geared to things you can do with your fingertips, and it’s fully open source. As is often the case on this site, we have two messages. One is about a specific technology to play with, the other about the broader possibilities of digital work.
The specific: Our friend Eric Redlinger has ported his Mrmr open-source OpenSoundControl multi-touch controller app to the 2.x firmware for iPhone and iPod touch. We’ve got screenshots, as seen above or via our Flickr stream, and Eric is looking for beta testers from the CDM community. (More on that in a second.)
The deeper issue: Beyond just Apple’s device, there’s a new opportunity to make controllers standard, open, and self-configuring. Why would you want to do that? Eric explains the vision:
Controlling your multimedia performance or installation with a handheld touchscreen device is cool, but what do you do when your friends want to spontaneously participate using their devices? Typically a long tutorial follows in which you explain what OSC and MIDI are and how they need to find and install a special app, then configure the server and port settings, etc. And, oh yeah, you’ll need their device’s IP number…etc.
Now imagine that conversation being like this: Go to the appstore on your phone right now and download this app. Launch the app. Play.
That’s Mrmr (pronounced murmur), and it exists already for the Mac and for the iPhone/iPod, with clients for other devices to come. Although it is not yet on the appstore, you can beta test it today. Ed.: Damn. I still want to pronounce it “mister mister.” -PK
Mrmr consists of a couple of protocols to specify the type and screen location of interface control ‘widgets’, and specifies a way to send the resulting key presses, slider values etc. back to the VJ/DJ app of your choice. It uses standard OSC for its messaging protocol so it works with any existing app that supports Open Sound Control support.
What this means for you is that you can design a custom interface for your Max/MSP/Jitter / Pure Data / Quartz Composer / etc. environment and push that interface onto your phone, and onto others’ phones, providing a great new way to add multi-user, collaborative elements to your set!
And, of course, this ultimately has implications not just for the multitouch Apple mobiles but future multitouch technology, too.
How to get involved in the beta: Eric is definitely looking for testers.now has the testers he needs! Stay tuned!
You’ll need to email your device ID of your tester iPod touch or iPhone running the 2.x firmware. There are two ways to go about that. Here’s a set of instructions for how to find the ID:
Download it, run it, and it automatically sends off an email with the ID with the subject line already filled in.
Either way, address your emails to eric (at) share [dot] dj with the ID — and let us know how it goes. We hope to have more support materials up on using mrmr very soon, so stay tuned.
Updated: Eric’s testing list is full! But while the beta testers and Eric work on making the app stable in preparation for release, do stay tuned — we’ll have quite a lot more on OSC and how to use it soon, and will keep you posted on official mrmr for firmware 2.0 availability!
If you still want mrmr right now, it’s available on jailbroken 2.0 firmware via Cydia.
MixEmergency is a new attempt to expand the DJ techniques into the visual realm in a single, integrated environment. And once again, Serato is the backdrop.
We saw Serato’s own Scratch-Live, which provides digital vinyl control in Serato, when dj rndm gave us a detailed hands-on earlier this year. The VIDEO-SL focused on vinyl control of video and integration with the TTM-57SL Rane mixer required for the product. MixEmergency is a bit different: here, visualizations and MIDI are the centerpiece in place of video and scratching. (They’re there, but they’re not the main draw, according to the developers.)
Features:
QuickTime video mixing and scratching
Quartz Composer visual compositions, taking advantage of QC’s 3D and image-processing / generative capabilities
Visuals react to play position and velocity of media, and audio and video signals
Custom layer and transition effects, frame bending, image and text layers
Drag and drop preview and playback, drag and drop of folders
Assignable MIDI control (including MIDI in QC compositions), and support for Scratch LIVE control
The software is currently in public beta, Mac-only. The full version will cost US$179 (the demo is watermarked and doesn’t support fullscreen output). As with a number of recent Mac apps, you need a MacBook Pro or other Mac hardware with dedicated graphics. Happily, 10.4.10 works — 10.5 isn’t required.
So who is this for? A lot of the push has been for giving DJs visuals easily — with the danger being potentially eliminating VJs or dumbing down visuals, which isn’t really good for anyone. (See Jaymis’ rant about that direction.) But I don’t get that sense here. In fact, the ability to create custom visualizations means DJs could commission visuals from a VJ and tour with them. The developers actually tout collaborative performance controls and VJs working to design and perform with reactive visuals alongside the DJ. Integrating the two could encourage that kind of collaboration, as dj rndm and Robotkid discovered in our VIDEO-SL review. On the other hand, many VJs will remain happy in their existing environment. But it’s nice to have more choices.
If you try the demo, let us know what you think. I expect we’ll see this are continue to grow and mature.
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