Via Aaron Meyers, who’s getting ready for some fun projects at Eyebeam here in New York this week, anyone using a camera for capture, live video, or tracking needs to check out this copious thread on the OpenFrameworks forum:

beginners ~ Sony PS3 Eye

We already knew Sony’s US$40 PS3 Eye camera was a wonder; that’s why we strongly recommended its use in the tangible interface hackday hosted earlier this month. But while we’ve heard some good luck squeezing performance out of the thing on Windows and Linux, the Mac - while reliable - could use more options and performance. Theo Watson, one of the OpenFrameworks team, comes to the rescue with a patched version of the macam open source video driver - halfway down the page. (I hope his changes get rolled into macam?)

You’ll find lots of other tips, not only for the Mac but other stuff, as well.

We’ll keep collecting tips on this camera. Macam experiences, anyone? I’m still trying to successfully build the Linux driver; once I sort that out, I’ll share.

NAB, the “broadcasting” industry show, remains the event of the year for visual gear lust fantasies. We kicked off this week with new gear from Edirol, but that was just the beginning. Contributor Anton Marini (”vade”) weeds through the rest of the announcements for us, and finds some very tasty-looking equipment if you’re interested in getting HD video into your computer in real-time, or recording HD-resolution computer performances. The combination of this hardware with our faster-than-ever computers means that HD VJing and visualism is now more accessible than ever. -Ed.

NAB ‘09 is winding down, and there have been a slew of announcements of new products and upgrades that run the gamut of super high-end real-time 4K playback systems to.. well, not so high-end. I’ve tried to pick through the details and find the announcements that may help change the game for visualists in 2009/2010, for both high-end professional VJs and hobbyists alike.

The key word this year is HDMI.

AJA Ki-Pro

The Aja Ki-Pro is a field recorder. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s a stand-alone device that records audio and video to a hard drive. While Ki Pro is aimed more at higher-end production and post-production markets, it does allow visualists with the budget to do one thing we’ve all been wanting: Record your performances in HD, without compromise.

I’ve recently had another shipment arrive from previously mentioned purveyors of cheap gadgetry, DealExtreme (disclosure: Affiliate links used, if you buy stuff I get a (tiny) cut). Last time I write about the site, I noted that super-useful VJ things such as preview monitors weren’t available.

They are now.

As you can definitely tell from a larger shot, this 3″ (seems to be around 390×260 pixels) monitor isn’t going to win any awards for image quality or resolution. The manufacturers have also managed to label the AV and Line In ports around the wrong way. However, if there was an award for “super cheap, light, and tiny” monitors, this one would win hands down.

It supports both NTSC and PAL, but it doesn’t come with a 12V power adapter, so you’re going to have to find a separate source of electrons. Fortunately DealExtreme comes to the rescue here too, with an array of power adapters joining their lineup (I’ve found the smaller, cheaper ones are able to power this monitor just fine).

Since I last talked about VJ-specific monitoring solutions (back in 2007), things don’t seem to have changed much. Numark’s triple-screen VM03 has been discontinued Numark are still selling the VM03 MKII, and the cheaper, knockoff version is still costing several hundred dollars per screen. As the volume of cameras mounts up, I think it’s quite likely that several more of these are going to make it into my rig.

Alongside this monitor (and it’s slightly smaller, cheaper, 2.5″ sister), some new visualist-friendly stuff has hit the catalogue since I last wasted an evening trawling through it. Here’s an updated list of things which may be useful to pixelmongers:

Using video in Processing is, sadly, really painful. You can do absolutely wonderful things once it’s working — pixel-by-pixel manipulations that are hard to do elsewhere, and easily-coded OpenGL manipulations that should help generate powerful eye candy. But the list of issues runs something like this:

• Windows doesn’t support capture without the addition of the buggy WinVDIG, which often doesn’t work properly.
• Linux doesn’t support anything.
• Capture is slow on Mac, and sometimes doesn’t work.
• QuickTime updates regularly hose the whole setup.
• Important QuickTime features aren’t supported.
• Playback is slow.
• Playback often crashes.
• Things just don’t work, and you don’t know why.

Now, granted, for simple sketches and experimentation, the library often will work. Or at least, it works except when it doesn’t — and you can read about how often it doesn’t in the reference.

Fortunately, I think the situation could be — and soon will be — very, very different.

CDMotion contributor vade has posted the first release of his v002 Screen Capture tool, which allows video from the screen (including video, 3D — anything output to OpenGL) to be routed between applications. It all happens on the GPU, which means it’s very, very fast. In vade’s words:

v002 Screen Capture allows you to capture your desktop, or a portion of it to a texture and further process it. This can be used to bring in other applications output or windows as a source input to VDMX or other Quartz Composer compatible patch hosts.

Screen Capture is fully GPU accelerated, and therefore is very fast.

Sample Processing, 3L, Modul8, Jitter, GEM, or any application, and mix them in VDMX, or your Quartz Composer patch host of choice.

Right now, the release is Quartz Composer and Mac-only. (Quartz Composer plug-in support means it’ll also drop nicely into software like VDMX.) But there’s an open call to port this to other environments (Pd, Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing, and such). It may even be possible to replicate the basic technique on another operating system, though the implementation would have to be reconsidered.

We’d love some feedback, so have at it! Especially interested in Processing support; see the thread on the Processing forums.

v002 Screen Capture Quartz Composer plug-in download