Processing Journal: OpenGL Headaches, JMyron Motion Tracking and Video Capture Experiences
As someone relatively new to Processing, I’ve experienced equal parts excitement and frustration. 0115 is a reasonably mature build, and I’m glad I didn’t try this earlier, but more advanced work is likely to get easier as the software develops, improves, and squashes bugs.
Before I dive into the full, technical explanation for those of you using Processing, here’s the Cliff Notes version:
- Processing is great, but think of it as a sketchpad — and “beta” is accurate; prepare to hit up against some limitations that could become a time suck if your project is dependent on them.
- OpenGL rendering works, but has major limitations when mixing pixel processing. Then again, you’ll want to use Processing’s other built-in rendering engines so you can share your work on the Web, so try those, and consider waiting on your OpenGL sketches until the bugs are fixed.
- Video capture on Windows (and Mac, to a lesser extent) can be a pain because of QuickTime for Java. JMyron works around this on Windows with DirectX, but there is an important caveat; again, you may find things feel like a work in progress.
- JMyron is fantastic for doing simple motion tracking without a lot of coding. (Here’s where Processing wins; Jitter and cv.jit, for instance, are much harder to use in this area.) Example image below from JMyron’s site.

Interesting example of using JMyron/Processing: Shadow Monsters [Pixelsumo entry]







