Audio, relying primarily on the CPU, can do fine on the non-pro MacBook: a fast CPU and FireWire 400 can be all you need. But for visualists, the GPU has become more and more vital. The integrated Intel GPU on the MacBooks is surprisingly capable, and certainly gets through basic video mixing. But throw enough shaders at it (even just processing video, without any 3D modeling or gaming), and it can’t keep up. That’s the reason Apple requires the MacBook Pro for Final Cut Studio; with Motion, at least, they’re absolutely right.

You’d be wise to postpone a MacBook Pro purchase over recent months, though, with Intel’s new Santa Rosa architecture coming and NVIDIA working on taking their 8000-series GPUs mobile. Apple today announced they’ve got the new machines with both — and better displays, too.

MacBook Pro [Apple]

For more on the music and CPU side of this, see our sister site, Create Digital Music:
MacBook Pro Revision: Big Santa Rosa Performance Boost, 4GB RAM Option, More

The short version: better displays, finally a 1920px option, the latest-and-greatest NVIDIA GPU for faster performance in Motion and OpenGL goodness for geeks, faster CPUs, more RAM — just generally fewer ways your wallet can avoid buying one of these silver surfers. I got some additional performance details from Apple, and hope to follow up with my own benchmarks.

Shaders, snippets of code for processing pixels and 3D points on your 3D card’s GPU, are cool — that much you may know. You may even know that you can use shaders — designed for 3D applications — to perform powerful video-processing tricks, as well, at high speeds, even on a relatively lowly laptop. How to actually build your own — that may be elusive. So, at long last, Cycling ‘74 has published a great, beginner-friendly (even for non-programmers) tutorial on building your own shaders:

Your First Shader

The author is Andrew Benson, who is my hero as far as coming up with great Jitter examples. (Every time I’m looking for some model for a technique I have in mind, I keep stumbling on his sample patches in the Jitter folder and still more in his By the second page, you’re already building your own custom, glitchy visual filters. Great stuff.

Now, of course, this tutorial isn’t limited to users of Max/MSP/Jitter, but Max is really an ideal environment for testing shaders. (It can even work well as a prototype environment before going elsewhere.) This code will work in Processing, though, and I could see using a combination of those two tools (still working on my own workflow there).

We’ll be practicing our shader chops, because there’s definitely a need for more information like this. This sentence says it all: “If you want to learn more, I highly recommend poking around the “jitter-shaders” folder and grabbing the official GLSL specification(PDF) or the GLSL Orange Book.” Good advice, and the example Jitter shaders included with the program will already do a lot of what you’d like need. But, as fair warning, the Orange Book and other official OpenGL documentation can make your head hurt, fast. (There’s a reason “… for Dummies” isn’t on the end of the title.) I still recommend picking up a copy, but there’s definitely a need for at least intermediate documentation. Being something of a dummy myself, I may be able to help.

Live visualists get one tasty upgrade in the form of Modul8 2.5, with lots of Mac-centric exclusives:

1. Hardware-accelerated rendering: Built on Core Video (requires OS X 10.4 or later), Modul8 has switched entirely to GPU-accelerated rendering. While other software offers bits of acceleration as an option, the new Modul8 will actually require 10.4 and a Core Video-capable machine; others will have to stick with 2.0.3. Unforgiving of older hardware, yes, but could be great for getting the performance you crave. (I’ve seen these features work just fine on the integrated Intel chips on the MacBooks, etc., so generally you don’t even need a high-end machine.)
2. Freeframe, Core Image Filters: Custom image processing is now opened up both to the increasingly-popular, cross-platform Freeframe standard, as well as the Mac’s own Core Image.



Don your mask: 2.5 now has cropping, alpha-channel filters, and a fully-featured masking system.
3. Crop, mask, and key: (Sorry; somehow that came out naughty-sounding.) Here’s where Modul8 starts to set itself apart: the new release includes lots of new alpha-channel filtering options (alpha blur, alpha crop), plus an entirely-integrated masking system. It really moves Modul8 closer to true, live image compositing, which has always been a goal of this package.
4. Multi-projection: Via PCI-Express, you can run up to four graphics cards on a single Mac, for up to eight projectors, a configuration fully supported by Modul8. That’s the good news; the bad news is this means lugging around your G5 or MacPro for those of you on the road.
5. Intel-native: Gentlemen, start your MacBooks.

And there’s more … new, more programmable modules and compositing, color pickers everywhere, a revised media window that lets you delete in-place, move to the Finder, and adjust quality settings, improved recording, and other enhancements. This comes on top of other unique settings in Modul8: per-pixel transparency, a built-in drawing module for text and graphics, BPM sync, and (particularly unique) extensible modules that can be customized at the UI level or built in Python.

garageCUBE Modul8 [Product Page; Upgrade Details]

Modul8 looks to me like it’s become the VJ app to beat on Mac. Hope to have a review soon. And this heats up the cross-platform battle, too, as Windows users wait on more hardware acceleration in an upcoming release of Resolume.

Of course, the other route to go is to build your own app using tools like Jitter (which just got easier thanks to v001). You’re unlikely to recreate something like this — but you could build only what you need, just the way you like it, and nothing more.

Thanks, Anton! Now, can we quit all our other jobs and just do this, please?