The Live Optical Flow Processing continues. Anton Marini, aka vade, is working on his own Quartz Composer patch, which will in turn be integrated with the visualist software he’s assembling, v002. More details once we get them, but you can see how nice parameterizing this in real-time can be. And once that software is out, you’ll hear about it.
A big thanks to Andrew Benson for inspiring all of this. More to come…
Yesterday, we saw some splashy video distortion techniques applied to real-time video. You know what that means: it’s time to use these in live performance.
Here’s one start.Peter Nyboer, Max whiz and Livid developer, has run with the idea of squishing around video using optical flow analysis, and shows you how to add the effect to Livid’s Cell DNA VJ app. For Jitter users, this means you can rely on Cell for quick access to video taps and files, while adding unusual effects built in Jitter to get your custom processing on, not only with this example but any other patches you’ve created. One little detail of Cell DNA I missed – it requires Max 4 patches, not Max 5 patches. Peter has also posted a tutorial for working with that, after the jump.
And yes, if none of this is really making sense to you, you can go download the files and just try it out – no need to fully grasp all of the internals straight away.
Don’t want to use Jitter and/or Cell? The guts of Andrew Benson’s video datasplooshing technique is an OpenGL (GLSL) shader, so it doesn’t even rely on Jitter – Jitter can just be a convenient environment for playing around with such things. There’s word we may see a Quartz Composer wrapper around this shader, which would make it easy to use with software like VDMX.
Oh, by the way, I’m officially rescinding my editorial ban on the term “datamoshing.” Why? Because it means absolutely nothing, and therefore can be declared reasonably harmless. Also, unlike the term “glitch,” it comes without any baggage. We therefore have a nice, nonsense term for making video all mushy and unpredictable – a good thing.
Resolume 3 in action, in a lovely little rig by dingLUKAI.
The folks at Resolume have been hard at work on a big update to the final 3.0 build just released. Bart says he just uploaded this to the server. Now, so far we’ve found the final build to be quite stable, so if you tried the crash-happy beta builds like the early adopter we know you are, now’s the time to revisit this. Audiovisual recording is also working properly in 3.01, which looks to be a whole lot of fun. Saturday night I watched Devin aka mzo do an elaborate set mashing up the likes of Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie, in front of a room packed with the world’s top game developers. Resolume was rock-solid and performed beautifully throughout.
This micro update fixes bugs, improves stability and handles corrupt video files better. Recording is fixed once and for all and it now records both audio and video! In the preferences you can enable and disable audio and video recording. We’ve had a lot of fun creating AV samples with the new recording and we hope you’ll enjoy it too.
Fixed Bugs #540 [fixed] Record 0 bytes #537 [fixed] Some audio files are distorted when playing backwards #560 [fixed] Decks in wrong order #551 [fixed] PC: Keystone and AddSubtract missing #578 [fixed] HardLight mixer does not work #543 [fixed] Wipe Down does not wipe all the way #580 [fixed] OSX: Live input does not always work #559 [fixed] Compositions list does not show the last item #561 [fixed] Continue playback is not working with Audio clips #557 [fixed] White txt on layer blend mode buttons #562 [fixed] Audio Input channels are not saved correctly #534 [fixed] BPM 120.50 not possible #550 [fixed] Some Application Key Map "Deck" Keystrokes not working #542 [fixed] Beatloopr doesn’t work until swithed to bpm or beats mode (aarrghh) #545 [fixed] Speed of videoclip isn’t saved #581 [fixed] Can’t change directory for ffgl & vst directories
Music lovers now have Max for Live coming later this year. But how about running custom visual patches inside your VJ app? That’s now possible using your own Jitter patches inside Cell DNA, Livid’s new, lightweight live visual tool.
Livid has released a “DevKit” with some example patches and documentation to get you rolling if you’re a Jitter user. Of course, if you’re a hardcore Jitter user, you may be happier just to build your own app anyway, but if you want to access some effects conveniently, this could be quite nice.
And once an app is opened in this way, all kinds of new things are possible:
Your patch could be a processor of video. It can use shaders. It could be an audio player - just latch the DNA knob to the volume! It could be a video synthesizer that completely ignores any of DNA’s video sources. It could even be an automator that just sends messages to various components of DNA (check the Network.pat in the Extras folder for an example of how to use messages to control DNA). The possibilities are endless, really.
This is quite a week for visualist software - the release of Resolume 3, the 1.1 update to GrandVJ, and now an announcement regard Livid’s lightweight VJ app, Cell DNA. At US$149, it’s a neat little no-nonsense app — there’s even a lighter Cell Standard. What strikes me about the interface is that it’s reminiscent of Vidvox’s now-defunct VJ app Grid. You get clip triggering, and not too much else. What’s nice here is the addition of multi-screen controls (available in other tools, but not necessarily in an entry-level app), and networked capability for running multiple machines. Feature list from Livid:
Assignable effects to knobs or sliders
64 slots per clip bank
Up to 32 clip bank, and effect bank presets
Crossfader for mixing multiple videos
3D effects
FreeFrame support
Captions
Easy MIDI learn
Control speed, direction, and loop modes
Use QuickTime movies, images, audio, and Flash files
Open GL accelerated
Networking for multiple computer control
Multi-screen controls
The other news is that Cell DNA is a free pack-in with the new Livid Ohm64 controller, which looks very delicious, indeed. And I imagine the Ohm64 could turn a few heads among users of Resolume, VDMX, GrandVJ, Modul8, and the like, too. With programmable MIDI talkback, there’s no reason the Ohm64 can’t fit into whatever app you use (or create).
More on Cell DNA and (especially) Ohm64 soon, once Livid and I can sit down with each other!
Mac + Windows support. (Okay, someone want to cover Linux? I’d pay money for a solid app on the Penguin. There could even be a free-open source / commercial breakdown, as with WINE and Crossover.)
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