Bart from Resolume has posted some details of the release of FreeFrame 1.5, including OpenGL-based FreeFrameGL:

FreeFrame 1.5 Release

Here’s why it makes us smiling, happy visualists:

• Open and wide: It’s open, and supported by multiple hosts (the creators of VJamm, Resolume, and Salvation all contributed to the 1.5 team)
• GPU, go! It gives you GPU-powered goodness, meaning more flexibility, power, and speed for 2D and 3D effects alike
• More pixels, more frames: It runs at higher resolutions and frame rates
• Third Dimension: It supports 3D functions and pixel shaders for joyous new eye candy
• Timing: A timing function allows time-dependent visual effects like particle systems and physical simulations (tasty!)
• Developer-friendly: Sample projects (Microsoft Visual Studio, Delphi, Xcode) and source should help get coders up and running — and the coders then turn out goodness for you non-coders
• User-friendly: If you don’t want to code, you can expect lots more awesome plug-ins for your VJ app of choice.

Join us in CDM Labs: If you’re interested in joining a special CDMotion team working on additional documentation and sample projects, give me a holler. Otherwise, stay tuned.

Pictured: one of the Resolume team’s plug-ins in development.

Anyone up for doing the Death Star?

Those of you not on the mailing list for Resolume missed a double bombshell coming this weekend at Paris’ Vision’r VJ festival.

Big story #1: open visual plug-in standard gets hardware savvy. the official release of FreeFrameGL 1.5 will happen, hosted by Resolume’s Edwin and Bart and VJamm’s Russel. FreeFrame is already a big deal; it’s an open plug-in format for visual effects, a bit like VST for visuals, except open-source instead of chained to, ahem, Steinberg. (Music folks know why that’s annoying.) With OpenGL support in FF 1.5, FreeFrame plug-ins get hardware-accelerated visuals.

Big story #2: a new Resolume will be revealed soon. This weekend we finally get to see what’s in the future for Resolume, the cult favorite VJ app on Windows. It’s a preview, but it’s good news, and it’s a year and a half in the making according to Resolume’s makers.

I was trying to explain to someone why Resolume is still important. "But it looks toy-like, like the rest of them," they said. "But there’s all this stuff hidden, this quick access to basic techniques," I said. I do believe that. Of course, I may be even happier with what Resolume 3 brings.

Hey, happiness is mixing visuals with a Mac in one hand and a PC in the other…

We hope to have more details on Resolume 3 and FreeFrameGL 1.5 for you soon.

Anyone in Paris at Vision’r? Take photos, take video, write some quick thoughts — we’d love to hear from you!

Livid’s Union VJ software has been steadily adding features. The latest upgrade may be a “point-five” release, but it’s got some pretty significant additions, mostly along the lines of “stuff Union lovers were asking for.”

Among what’s new:

• Audio-responsive tools: audio filters, audio-aware effects, and an audio waveform generator
• Video captioning
• FreeFrame plug-in support for the popular, open standard for video plug-ins (see also: support in Resolume, vvvv, etc.)
• Video layers for easier compositing
• Performance enhancements
• “Advanced MIDI integration” which works with Livid’s lovely, optionally-wooden Ohm controller, which created quite a stir (lovers and haters alike) over on Create Digital Music

Windows + Mac, US$75 upgrade or US$299 new.

And yeah, you can add this to the 2008 visualist software fever. It’s like all the visual developers are kicking into high gear. I’ll have what they’re having. (Actually, I may need to have what they’re having for breakfast just to be able to read the user interfaces some of them are designing.)

I’ll be hanging out soon with Jay Smith from Livid to take a look at the new Ohm controller, pictured below, and he’ll be joining us for a special party at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin next month — more on that soon, as well.

Lucifer is a plug-in that does real-time audio slicing and repeats — as in for music. So what is this plug-in, running in Ableton Live as a host (hmm, music again), showing up on Create Digital Motion? Because our friend Momo used its MIDI output capabilities to trigger video — and got an unusual interaction between sound and visual as a result. Now, I’m in the camp that says Ableton Live should stay a music app; there are too many well-developed visual tools that Live would never equal. But this is the exception that proves that point: by thinking in a musical way when triggering visuals, you get a relationship between the two you wouldn’t otherwise. Momo shows us how in the latest VJ Kung Fu tutorial. -PK

If you’re not familiar with Lucifer, it’s a VST/AU plugin for realtime beat-based cutup/repeats of audio. What you’re going to do is route the MIDI from Lucifer out to another program that will do Video cutups. This is useful for more than just video - with the MIDI signals coming out of Lucifer, you can control and trigger and MIDI-capable software and hardware.

We figured out a way to control video using the awesome Lucifer plugin while working on our Karate Kid AV Remix. In response to a few inquiries about just how we made this work, I put together a video tutorial showing how to set up Lucifer to output MIDI.

Karate Kid AV Remix from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

While this particular implementation is specific to the Lucifer plug-in, it’s a thought-provoking approach to doing AV Cutups. You could build a similar method by creating MIDI clips that output common/useful triggering patterns, and trigger those instead of mashing buttons to directly start your videos.

Also, this method involves looking at the MIDI Sync information coming from Live and using that to figure out a proper loop-length for your video. This way, you can use a longish video by simply adjusting the ‘play start’ point rather than cutting your videos down to 8 or 16 proper-length versions.

Hit VJ Kung Fu for the full article.