MixEmergency is a new attempt to expand the DJ techniques into the visual realm in a single, integrated environment. And once again, Serato is the backdrop.

We saw Serato’s own Scratch-Live, which provides digital vinyl control in Serato, when dj rndm gave us a detailed hands-on earlier this year. The VIDEO-SL focused on vinyl control of video and integration with the TTM-57SL Rane mixer required for the product. MixEmergency is a bit different: here, visualizations and MIDI are the centerpiece in place of video and scratching. (They’re there, but they’re not the main draw, according to the developers.)

Features:

• QuickTime video mixing and scratching


• Quartz Composer visual compositions, taking advantage of QC’s 3D and image-processing / generative capabilities
• Visuals react to play position and velocity of media, and audio and video signals
• Custom layer and transition effects, frame bending, image and text layers
• Drag and drop preview and playback, drag and drop of folders
• Assignable MIDI control (including MIDI in QC compositions), and support for Scratch LIVE control

MixEmergency Product Page

The software is currently in public beta, Mac-only. The full version will cost US$179 (the demo is watermarked and doesn’t support fullscreen output). As with a number of recent Mac apps, you need a MacBook Pro or other Mac hardware with dedicated graphics. Happily, 10.4.10 works — 10.5 isn’t required.

So who is this for? A lot of the push has been for giving DJs visuals easily — with the danger being potentially eliminating VJs or dumbing down visuals, which isn’t really good for anyone. (See Jaymis’ rant about that direction.) But I don’t get that sense here. In fact, the ability to create custom visualizations means DJs could commission visuals from a VJ and tour with them. The developers actually tout collaborative performance controls and VJs working to design and perform with reactive visuals alongside the DJ. Integrating the two could encourage that kind of collaboration, as dj rndm and Robotkid discovered in our VIDEO-SL review. On the other hand, many VJs will remain happy in their existing environment. But it’s nice to have more choices.

If you try the demo, let us know what you think. I expect we’ll see this are continue to grow and mature.

VDMX5 may be “perpetually in beta”, but oh, what a beta it is. The latest version includes some major breakthroughs, a new render engine, lots of new features — and significant signs that VDMX may be nearing its milestone non-beta release. And don’t bother mentioning the “beta” status to the many people for whom this insanely rich, Mac-only VJ app is the center of live visual sets. VDMX has been rock solid, and keeps getting better.

VDMX5 public beta 6.9.0 now available [Vidvox User Forums]

New in this release:

• Faster rendering: A new render engine with vastly improved performance - and OpenGL add/over blend modes (”extremely fast,” say Vidvox)
• Smarter sizing: Smart auto-sizing and syncing size
• Stills: Better still image / texture support
• Interactive Web sources: Live use of Flash files and even Web pages (evidently including applets like Processing), with basic interaction
• Slicker effects: Layer-specific effects preset chains, new delay and RGB delay FX (I always enjoy a little RGB delay), and better effects management

More documentation and improvements are coming, as well.

The render engine is clearly the worthy headline here, but I think people will be very, very excited about including Flash and Processing sketches. I have to give that a try. (CDMotion’s own vade hacked his own solution, routing visuals between apps on Leopard — but, of course, better integration would be great.)

It’s also worth noting that this yet again demonstrates that “native” visual support isn’t always better — that is, OpenGL in this case trumped the Mac-only Core Image for blending modes. Obviously, you use whatever works best, and that is at least in some cases the cross-platform API.

As VDMX plows forward, it’s not alone. Just to mention one rival, previous preview.) Resolume is now on Twitter if you want to stalk — erm, follow — the creators.

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).

So, you’ve got some nifty visualizations patched in Apple’s Quartz Composer, and something clever using video mapping in Processing: now combine them. Our friend Steve Cooley writes to say that he’s figured out a way to do just that, starting with a Processing sketch he originally programmed for live video. Thanks to Quartz Composer’s integration with QuickTime (QC patches run inside QT 7 video clips), and Processing’s support for QuickTime, you embed the QC patch as a video clip. Anything that plays back in QuickTime player should play back within Processing. (Note that that doesn’t give you the full interactivity and I/O of Quartz Composer, but as can be seen in the example below, it can create some very compelling effects, particularly as you use both these tools for quick sketches, prototyping, and visual improvisations.)

(As Steve points out, if you want to save videos of your work like this one, check out our friend Daniel Shiffman’s excellent MovieMaker library for Processing.)

Full details and the original Processing sketch and Quartz Composer composition at Steve’s blog:

Quartz Composer inside of Processing [Steve Cooley Fine Art]

No source code, but you don’t need it: just point at the .mov file exported from your QC composition. Needless to say, this is Mac only, and requires 10.4 and QT 7.

[Updated:] Check out the new QuartzComposer blog; I’ll be reading! -PK

I looked earlier this week at Quartz Composer, an interactive eye candy development tool that not only creates slick RSS newsfeed screensavers, but even allows audio and MIDI input and outputs MIDI control, perfect for live performance and VJing.

Developer Pierre-Olivier Latour has posted an extensive description of Quartz Composer at VJCentral. Quartz Composer is in fact a descendent of the now-defunct PixelShox, a free tool with a cult online following that is now unsupported. But there’s no need to shed tears for PixelShox: Quartz Composer is a completely different product, a major leap forward taking advantage of OS X Tiger’s new Core Image features.

Bottom line: Quartz Composer is free in Tiger and just another reason to upgrade. All you need to do to get it is install the developer tools from the OS X installation DVD — you were going to install it anyway, right? Go check out VJ Central for the full links, and stay tuned for more QC info here in the coming weeks.

Joshua Ellis (zenarchery.com) writes us with an insanely cool discovery on the Mac OS X 10.4 developer DVD. I’m still waiting on my Tiger shipment, but this will definitely be on my install. Josh writes:

So I’m playing with the new Quartz Composer in OS X 10.4, which allows you to do weird sort of graphic installation-y stuff, plus design your own screensavers. It’s basically a drag-and-drop OpenGL composer, sort of like Max/MSP for making eye candy. You can load images or QuickTime movies and do real-time graphics processing on them.

In the list of controller tools? MIDI Clock, MIDI Controllers (aka pitch and mod wheel) and MIDI Notes. I haven’t gotten all my drivers updated yet, but it appears that this eye candy can be controlled via MIDI (in addition to the keyboard, an LFO, RSS feeds, the command line…pretty much anything). And you can write your eye candy out as an actual application. Which other people can download.

You have to install the XCode Tools to get this on Tiger, but they’re included free on the DVD. The app is called “Quartz Composer”. I think Macs may have just gotten a couple of hundred times more interesting.

Josh also tells us you can interactively map audio inputs to assign volume peak and spectrum to other controllers(!) While this is no substitute for Max/MSP and Jitter, for some visual fun and Swiss Army Knife-interactivity, looks like a must-install. Stay tuned.