Vlad Spears, musician, programmer and maker of the Davel.Plugs audio plugins (previously reviewed on CDM) has a write-up about the forthcoming Max/MSP 5. Andrew Benson of Cycling ‘74 gave a presentation at the Bay Area Computer Music Technology Meetup and Vlad kindly drew up a report. Most of the features he describes will not be new to those who’ve been awaiting Max 5, with the possible exception of:

- Say goodbye to [prepend set] messages! Message boxes have a right inlet specifically for this function.

- Multiple live views on the same patch, at different magnification levels. As someone who often builds patches which spill beyond the bounds of a screen, this is fantastic. Changes update in all views simultaneously.

- Object name auto-completion. To quote Andrew, “Several of our developers bought iPhones during development and fell in love with auto-completion.” Arrow through the drop-down list of auto-complete object choices and the Clue window shows information and arguments for each.

The grapevine says that the public beta of Max 5 will drop within several weeks. /me twiddles thumbs…

Ed.: Word we got from Cycling ‘74 at NAMM was that you’ll have the final version by the end of first quarter. I’m actually wondering if they’ll either forgo public beta — or slim it down in length — but that means you’re still just a few weeks away from the next release of Max.

Though most of what’s new in Max 5 is concentrated in Max and MSP, there will be a few treats for Jitter users. First and foremost is the new Matrix Probe: hover your mouse over a green matrix patchcord and you’ll be presented with a floating preview of the matrix passing through it along with information such as dimensions, planecount and other info. This will be a great timesaver — no longer will you have to drop in four jit.pwindows, four jit.fps’s and jit.unpack to find out whether the video you’re sending is the video you think you’re sending. Gregory Taylor tried to demo the Matrix Probe for me at AES last weekend but it wasn’t working in the build he had on his laptop. Nonetheless, I offer this JPEG as proof:

Other features:

• The ability to drag and drop movies directly into patches will make a big difference for folks developing VJ patches (auto-creating “read foo.mov” messages and such), not to mention the slickness of the new file browser, even though its not yet as integrated as some would like. Ed.: The limitation of the new file browser, as I pointed out on CDMusic, is that you can only use it within a patcher, not in, say, Presentation Mode as a way of browsing files during a performance.
• There will be some performance improvements in Jitter’s matrix operations on the CPU thanks to a recent bug report on jit.rota on the Jitter list.

And, unfortunately, that’s about it — too bad Cycling doesn’t have ten more developers working on Jitter full time. Still, the new (dare I say it?) paradigm in Max 5 will bring much to explore even without, um, totally jitter-free playback of HD and SD footage.

Ed.: It’s possible we’ll see some other enhancements between now and Max 5 ship time, but as has happened in the past, Jitter appears to get a different “rotation” in development than Max — so Jitter got a huge 1.5 update while Max/MSP was largely standing still. We’ll certainly keep tabs on development and let you know more details as they arise. There are quite a lot of general improvements that I’m sure Jitter users will love while we wait on these other needed improvements to Jitter itself; see details in discussion in our general Max coverage from Create Digital Music. -PK

Cycling ‘74 Releases Max 5 Details: Bringing Max Out of the 80s, Into the Future
First Max 5 Preview: Music Patching, the Next Generation?

It’s no secret that a major update to Max/MSP/Jitter is coming from Cycling ‘74, with a major overhaul of the underlying code and an entirely new, friendlier interface. What has been secret is just what that upgrade will look like. We still don’t know what it’ll look like visually, but Cycling ‘74 today released some new details about what it is and isn’t.

In short, it promises to be:

• Easier to use: Multiple undo, debugging tools for patches, and a visual catalog for perusing objects.
• Easier to learn: Integrated, rewritten documentation, even including Web links.
• Easier on the eyes: A new, zoomable patching interface with lots of new goodies — that’s not only skin deep, but makes patches easier to navigate.
• Mo cross-platform: A new code foundation should make Max more modern, reliable, easier to support on C74’s part, and better supported across OSes. It even opens the possibility of someday seeing Max/MSP/Jitter on Linux and not just Mac/Windows.
• Not full of gobs of new objects: Normally this is not a feature, but here, it’s a good thing: by introducing only a few objects, the new Max focuses instead on improving existing objects and building a better environment / platform for the future.

I’m meeting with Cycling ‘74 this week at AES, so hope to have more details then, including more on what’s changed for Jitter users. Audio users should note a big caveat — Pluggo support won’t be present in Max 5 at launch, which is critical to using patches as audio effects and instruments in other hosts, though it sounds as though that may be added at an undetermined point in the future. But on the visual side, it looks like it could be a pretty smooth upgrade: most patches and externals should be compatible, with some potential updates needed for tools that have special UI features. (I imagine some patches will look a little odd, too, once they hit the new UI — worth keeping that older Max copy around, just in case.) Overall, looks like good news. Naturally, we want to know more. Lots more. Soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Java and JavaScript support will continue to work. And that means Processing is supported, as well (via mxj), so this could be a great Processing prototyping environment, or a way of coupling Processing with other features. (See jklabs MaxLink. And yeah, it really does work … very cool. Viva Java.)

Cycling ‘74 Releases Max 5 Details: Bringing Max Out of the 80s, into to the Future [Create Digital Music]

Cycling 74 has updated its Jitter 1.6.3 installer, while there are no new features, they’ve worked hard on optimizing speed for Windows users. I don’t have a Windows machine to benchmark, but if you are a Jitter user on Windows, you might want to give this a once over. Jitter 1.6.3

Ed.: I do have a Windows machine; I’ll try to check it out! Of course, this isn’t necessarily the really big Max news at the moment. It’s interesting, given that Cycling is talking about how different the new codebase is for Max 5 — maybe in fact there are still platform-specific optimizations necessary. That’d make sense for video, in particular, which remains very much platform-specific. (OpenGL is obviously not really an issue — not unless you’re a driver developer.) -PK

Most of the emphasis on working with multi-touch and alternative controllers has been on our sister site, Create Digital Music. But in a way, visuals are even more demanding of new hardware. After all, musicians have all kinds of hardware that work perfectly for performance (keyboards, knobs, drums, violins, sousaphones, kazoos, and whatnot). But new visual performance media demand something different if they’re to evolve.

Oh yeah, that, and most pro visual apps are kind of a b**** to use with a mouse and aren’t all that much better with a tablet. (Unless you’re somehow discovered the secret and find a Wacom as easy to use as a ballpoint. Please, tell me how.)

That makes this tidbit all the more interesting:

Jazzmutant is proud to have been selected by the Siggraph Emerging Technologies Committee in San Diego to demo a new prototype device for digital imaging involving multi-touch control. This solution will go beyond mere finger-drawing and clearly illustrate a new way to interact and improve productivity with drawing and video editing software. Furthermore, the solution presented will be the very first multi-touch enabled Tablet PC shown to the public.

JazzMutant news

What’s that now? Visual editing on a multi-touch surface? JazzMutant is best known for the creation of the Lemur multi-touch hardware. It wasn’t specifically intended for music, but that’s where it got most attention; you can, incidentally, route its native OSC control to Processing, Max/MSP/Jitter, Pd/GEM, Flash, and so on. But it was pricey (US$2500), and while you could design your own interfaces for it, it wasn’t quite the same as having a computer.

Now we get a one-two punch of tantalizing possibilities: a controller specific to visuals, whatever that may mean, and the possibility of using an actual computer with multi-touch input. I’d love to have that with some of what I’m building with Processing these days for performance. I’m a little more skeptical on the visual hardware side, only because so far that has tended to mean a selection of templates for Lemur-like hardware. But either way, this is promising — we’ll be watching the news out of SIGGRAPH very closely indeed.

With the advent of consumer-level HD camcorders, Blu-Ray and HD DVD players, and HD-format disc burning, HD content creation is becoming ubiquitous. However, for realtime visualists looking to mix HD sources live, there hasn’t been a real HD mixing solution. Want to mix that HD footage on your PC with that awesome high-res project in VJ software like Modul8? No can do, buddy!

At least, that had been the case. With two Blackmagic Design Intensity cards and Blackmagic’s On Air software, you can mix two streams of HD as a simple AB mixer. With one Intensity in your machine, you can use a second laptop or source to feed your main VJ / live visual app of choice with true, uncompressed HD input.

We tested live, HD mixing for color performance, quality, and ease-of-use with some powerful, DIY visual software for live visuals. With the ability to mix in live HD inputs, live HD cameras, live computer inputs at full HD resolution, and more, the potential for live visuals is clear.

Cycling ‘74 has made the final version of Jitter 1.6 for Mac (and its corresponding SDK) available, concluding a public beta test. You can download the beefed-up new Jitter for Mac as a free update, provided you own Jitter 1.5. Intel Mac owners, this is the release you’ve been waiting for, with native support for Intel Macs. (See also Max/MSP 4.6.) But there are other features, too: better shader support, audio/video recording, multiple instances of 3D objects, Mac Image Unit support, more Java and JavaScript, plus bugfixes and OpenGL improvements.

We’ve looked previously at what’s new in this release:

What’s New and Cool in Jitter 1.6: OpenGL 3D and Video Goodies, More

Now, we’re just waiting on a Windows release, which is due “soon.” I’m holding out for uyvy video support on Windows. Fingers crossed.

Cycling 74’sMax/MSP and Jitter offer awesome power for developing interactive multimedia, but building everything from scratch can get time-consuming fast. Part of the draw of reusable objects is the ability to incorporate time-saving pre-built tools rather than reinventing the wheel with each new project. That’s the idea behind the insanely-cool bundle of Max goodies, Electrotap’s Tap.Tools. Newly-released version 2.0 has over 150 “externals” (objects for Max) for tasks like:

Here’s more good news: Tap.Tools is cheap enough for artists, with a US$65-99 license. Pay the US$99 and you can even build your own collectives, standalones, and plug-ins, and distribute your creations to whomever you want. (Definitely worth the extra $34!) You even have access to Source Code. Since my C++ skills are nonexistent, I’m planning to print it out and use it in my decorating, but programmers will be glad. As for the non-programmers, we’ll be building new plug-ins with motion tracking! (Check out Electrotap’s other stuff, too, from sensor hardware to its performance-oriented Jade software.)