Quartz Composer/VDMX tutorial no 1: The bouncing ball from goto10 on Vimeo.

Trying to learn Apple’s free visual patching tool Quartz Composer, useful for making your own filters and simple generative effects?

Or perhaps you’re learning VDMX, the brilliant, semi-modular Mac-friendly visual tool – which also happens to host Quartz Composer compositions as effects or generative sources?

Well, good news for you: readers have a ton of tutorials for both, thanks to some intrepid readers in comments on that fantastic-looking CONTAKT/Richie Hawtin show.

First up, Joris de Jong aka Hybrid Visuals has started a series of tutorials on VDMX and Quartz Composer – two delicious tastes put together. And he points us at some other useful tutorials, too. Some of my favorites:

The typical user likely has no idea that Flash is even supported in QuickTime. But VJ apps like ArKaos VJ and other applications (like Max/MSP/Jitter patches that use this support) rely on QuickTime to support Flash. Unfortunately, as of Leopard — or any Mac updated to QuickTime 7.3.1 — that support is gone, and will most likely never return.

What’s the reason? Security:

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in QuickTime’s Flash media handler, the most serious of which may lead to arbitrary code execution. With this update, the Flash media handler in QuickTime is disabled except for a limited number of existing QuickTime movies that are known to be safe. Credit to Tom Ferris of Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team (ASSET), Mike Price of McAfee Avert Labs, and security researchers Lionel d’Hauenens & Brian Mariani of Syseclabs for reporting this issue.

About the security content of QuickTime 7.3.1 (thanks to n0s10pm for the tip!)

In case this isn’t clear, this impacts only embedded Flash files within QuickTime, not Flash itself. But because some apps use QuickTime as a way of hooking in support for Flash animations, that’s a big deal — at least for someone. Windows users are impacted, too; this covers both platforms, though at least Windows users have the option of using Flash integration features available only on that OS.

Now, admittedly, the small niche pushing the limits of QuickTime and digital visuals is dwarfed by the potentially-enormous crowd who could be impacted by this vulnerability. But there’s clearly a philosophical problem here we’ve seen before: instead of fixing the vulnerability and providing a replacement, the entire idea is axed. Necessary? Perhaps, but I would love to see Adobe address ways of more easily integrating Flash technology with other applications. As the Flash/Flex platform grows, the potential here could be wide enough to justify the effort, especially as applications (not just VJ apps) add rich client features.

And in the meantime, if you use a tool that uses this support, you may want to hunt down an old installer or hold off upgrading. (Reverting to older versions is, unfortunately, really hard — you have to completely uninstall QuickTime, and you’ll only have luck if you’re on Tiger or earlier as far as I know.)

If you’ve been intrigued by all this talk of Quartz Composer, the free visual creation software that ships with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, here’s your chance to actually learn how to do cool stuff with it. Our friend Momo walks us through a basic tutorial on simple 3D and audio processing, which you could easily apply to more complex ideas. With QC support in the upcoming VDMX5, you could drop this into a VJ set with traditional clips, as well. We’ve got step-by-step instructions, plus a video. Let us know if you create anything wild with this as its basis.

Quartz Composer: Lighting 3D Cubes and Moving them with Audio Input from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

In this Quartz Composer tutorial, We’re going to make a 3D cube that responds to our voice.

First we start up Quartz Composer. The icon will be different depending on whether you’re running OS X 10.5 or 10.4.

From the File menu, choose New Blank (or simply ‘New’ in Tiger).

Quartz Composer, first introduced in OS X 10.4 and rooted in the underground visual app PixelShox, is a hidden gem in Mac OS X. This free visual tool makes some sophisticated video and 3D magic possible without coding. While promising, the version in 10.4 had some significant shortcomings. We turn to Keith Lang of developer plasq, creators of Skitch and ComicLife, to give us an inside look. Keith is not a programmer — so he’s all the more eager to go the visual patching route — but he has had his hands on QC for some time in Leopard dev builds. And now, he’s free to tell us all he knows. -PK

Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” is here, and the initial hoopla about the reflective dock has died down. Now that we’ve all passed through the Seven Stages of Acceptance, we have an opportunity to take this brief slither of quiet to delve into the subtler changes within the big new cat. Those changes include improvements made to Quartz Composer, the quaint and oft-misunderstood visual processing environment bundled with the Developer Tools.

What You See: The Interface

For the uninitiated, Quartz Composer is an ‘environment’ tool which lets you patch together various elements in order to build screensavers, performance environments, and animated windows for use within an application. If you’ve ever looked at an Apple screensaver, played with the new iChat Effects or watched photos float and twirl on an Apple TV, then you’re familiar with what Quartz Composer can do. Its peers are tools like Pd (Pure Data), Processing, and Max/MSP/Jitter, with Quartz Composer heavily geared towards motion animation of processed video and images. Input can be everything ranging from your iSight to XML to audio to a Wiimote, with output being a window on 3d space containing all the sprites, effects and movement you care for. Because Quartz Composer is a real-time system, you can plug stuff together whilst watching and tweaking. The underlying engine is very efficient - and with a little work you can create teh cool, without ever needing to type teh code.

Via comments, Eelke (whose system is shown above) alerts us that previous video output problems running Windows in Boot Camp appear to be solved in Leopard — at least using the MacBook Pro. (Phew — get all that?)

See the ongoing thread on VJforums. Eelke says:

My configuration:
- MacBookPro 2,16, 2GB ram, with ATI X1600
- Upgraded to Leopard (OS X 10.5)
- Used the same Leopard DVD to update all drivers in bootcamp / XP
- Rebooted with DVI>s video dongle plugged-in, s-video out attached to small reference monitor

After the initial booting XP logo which we had all the time, I suddely saw my desktop cloned on the small screen. All I had to do is go to desktop>preferences to extend windows to the secondary monitor, and it worked.
After that I used ATI Catalyst control center to set the screen (now recognized as a TV!) to run in overscan, no problem at all, even during live rendering (with visualjockey).

Houray! Houray!

A sad side-note however is that regular macbooks with Intel videochips and mini-dvi adapters still don’t seem to work properly under XP. Maybe under Vista, who knows?

Okay, anyone tested MacBooks (non-Pro) on Leopard? Is there a way to make this work?

Certainly, booting the Mac side for Quartz Composer, Final Cut, Motion, VDMX, then switching to Windows for Resolume, vvvv, games, etc. has some serious appeal as a visualist dream setup. (Overkill? Sure. But a lot better than juggling machines or being forced into the OS by the hardware.)

Yesterday Apple released iTunes 7.3.1 and Quicktime 7.2. With updated h.264 transcoding, numerous bug fixes and free fullscreen support for those without Quicktime Pro. It also provides iPhone exporting options and seems to enable 640×480 captures from certain iSights which were limited to 320×240.

Oh, and it breaks Rosetta.

Ok, not to be overly sensational, it does not break Rosetta for everyone, but a large number of users are reporting issues opening PowerPC applications on Intel Macs post Quicktime 7.2 update. It seems as though installing the OS X 10.4.10 Combo updater after installing Quicktime 7.2 has fixed the issue for some.

You might want to sit this one out for a while folks until the dust settles. You can read about this issue over at Mac Fixit: The QuickTime 7.2 disaster: Breaks all CFM apps on Intel-based Macs (Office, Photoshop CS2) for some; Problems playing Flash.