Okay, having gotten my rant about Apple’s extreme level of secrecy out of the way (I’m standing by that), we can at least talk about what Apple is saying about QuickTime X, cutting through the marketing as best as possible.

We’ve known for some time that QuickTime X would be a ground-up rewrite – one badly needed. That could have some implications for compatibility, though, which is something to watch. The details are sketchy at this point, but here’s what’s possible to say:

• X is more integrated with Core technologies. Apple promises that QuickTime X will build on Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation. Some of that is to say that the long-in-the-tooth player application itself will work with those technologies more than the underlying QuickTime framework.
• There’s a new player. It’s about time: QuickTime Player gets an update. The nicest feature here is the slick trimming interface Apple has added. A lot of us use QT Player for quick edits and other tasks, so this is definitely welcome.
• There’s no more “Pro.” Finally, you don’t have to spend thirty bucks just to make QuickTime Player a useful tool. In fact, you’ll get all of Snow Leopard for that price (if you already have Leopard).
• Playback is more efficient. Here’s the part that could be most useful to live visual apps. Playback is now more “optimized” and makes use of the GPU for scaling, display, and hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding. Decoding, interestingly, uses the NVIDIA 9400M integrated chip. Most live visual apps already use the GPU for scaling and display, but under-the-hood performance tweaks and decoding features should be good news.
• HTTP video streaming. You can now stream video live over HTTP, which means you can use a standard Web server like Apache instead of a specialized video server, and you don’t have to open special ports on your firewall.
• ColorSync for maintaining color profiles on the computer and on mobile devices (well, provided those devices are also made by Apple).
• Built-in screen recording: You can now create quick screencasts using QuickTime player – groovy. (The Mac is, unquestionably, the easiest platform out there when it comes to making screencasts. Ask any tech journalist or educator.)
• Quick capture: Capture is improved in QT Player for quick recording – always a handy thing to have.
• Performance improvements. QuickTime X promises to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch, the new Apple threading technology, and 64-bit computing for better performance.

Ohm64 Backlight Control from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

It’s been a long time since I touched Livid’s VJ software. But when it comes to hardware, they’ve been doing unbelievable work that could have Resolume and VDMX and Processing and vvvv and Max users turning their heads.

The Ohm64 looks simply fantastic. It’s got an ideal configuration for a lot of live visual applications, with 8×8 triggers and plenty of faders and knobs to go along with them. It’s also finally a controller that’s well-made but doesn’t cost a fortune – you get a well-crafted device made by the people who designed it in Texas, but at $599, it’s still affordable.

Visualists are doing all kinds of new things to expand their performance, so I believe having a truly open controller is essential. The Ohm64 delivers, with a chip and editor software that have extensive open support. That means that, as with the brilliant monome controller, you should see a community that experiments with creative ideas for how to use it. (Nor do I think this is necessarily monome competition – the monome is still beautiful for its minimalism, whereas this should appeal to people who ignored the monome because they needed knobs and faders for additional parameter control.)

For visual software increasingly using OSC, a future firmware update should provide native OSC support (and possibly even DMX in the near future). For everything else, there’s MIDI support now. And unlike the Akai APC40, that means real MIDI support, with actual MIDI in and out ports and endlessly customizable controller assignments and LED feedback, instead of the Akai’s single USB port and permanently-fixed layout. And this is fully bus-powered, so you’re not screwed if you forget your power brick.

I did a full preview for CDMusic. But next week I should get to try one in person, which is the real test.

Livid Ohm64

http://www.lividindustry.com/culture/ blog with more videos

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.

Adobe is back with another Creative Suite update, and touting (accurately) “bigness”:

Adobe’s biggest software release to date includes Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design editions, Creative Suite 4 Web editions, Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, as well as 13 point products, 14 integrated technologies and seven services.

So, what’s in there? The big pluses for me, certainly for the kinds of people who read this site, are real motion tools and inverse kinematics in Flash, badly-needed editing tweaks and format support in Premiere, 3D and 2.5D improvements in After Effects, and smarter Photoshop editing. Unfortunately, while companies like Apple and Sony have slashed their prices, Adobe still seems to be betting on a now-burst bubble economy for digital artists, with suite upgrade prices around $600, and confusing, over-complicated bundling (Premium? Web? Production?), despite editorial calls for them to slim down their offerings. (Hey, if it’s making them money, I can’t really argue.)

Here’s a look at some of the feature highlights, which I couldn’t resist following with a word on the Joy of Simplicity — a bit like wanting to stare at a green wall after looking at absurdly bright sunlight:

It’s a big leap from generations of visual software developed for non-real-time rendering to tools that can make visuals as expressive as musical instruments. As is always the case with development, the devil’s in the details. We’ve heard that overwhelmingly from all the developers to whom we’ve spoken.

But just as a musician might obsess over the nuances of a pickup on a guitar, there’s plenty to love as visual tools evolve. VDMX’s beta 7 isn’t the kind of thing you’d put on a glossy magazine cover, but then something like improved rendering engine or (bizarrely) loading live webpages into layers might just make you salivate. And having just seen CDMo contributor vade working with outpt with VDMX (and Processing and Max/MSP/Jitter and Quartz Composer and a network connection and who knows what else), I can’t wait to see what some of you will do with this.

2008 has indeed proven to be a year of new live visualist software, but development is going slowly in virtually all camps. I think it’s proof that visual apps in general, by stretching the computing capabilities of modern platforms and creating entirely new workflows from scratch, expose some of the challenges really rich media pose even on the latest OSes and developer tools. VDMX is the “perpetually in beta” favorite Mac-only visualist app. Despite the beta label, it’s really quite capable, increasingly-stable software. The Vidvox developers continue hacking away at it, and dedicated users follow each update the way some people follow sports.

Vidvox’s David Lublin gives CDM an exclusive look at the under-the-hood improvements happening in VDMX, as seen through the developers’ eyes. It’s a good glimpse into the mechanics of what’s going on.

Here’s David on some of what’s new, in the first part of our look at VDMX’s latest build:

The biggest changes to VDMX in beta 7 are under the hood, and should be immediately noticeable as soon as you start playing with it. The entire rendering engine has been re-written from scratch, making everything a lot faster and more stable. In particular, layers may be rendered directly to OpenGL- while OpenGL blend modes only offer a fraction of the flexibility of CoreImage, alpha channels work quite nicely and this is a good way to render a number of layers in one pass. We also wrote a dedicated still image handler and moved away from letting QuickTime handle still image playback. Since the images are going directly to the GPU, triggering stills is a lot faster and more stable. The interfaces for a number of plugins- particularly the preview windows- have been significantly optimized, and are much more efficient. Overall, we’re now sitting on a much faster and more robust foundation, which means it’ll be easier to improve and extend VDMX as the beta progresses (we’re about 70% complete- hence b7.0.0).