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.

Vlad Spears, musician, programmer and maker of the Davel.Plugs audio plugins (previously reviewed on CDM) has a write-up about the forthcoming Max/MSP 5. Andrew Benson of Cycling ‘74 gave a presentation at the Bay Area Computer Music Technology Meetup and Vlad kindly drew up a report. Most of the features he describes will not be new to those who’ve been awaiting Max 5, with the possible exception of:

- Say goodbye to [prepend set] messages! Message boxes have a right inlet specifically for this function.

- Multiple live views on the same patch, at different magnification levels. As someone who often builds patches which spill beyond the bounds of a screen, this is fantastic. Changes update in all views simultaneously.

- Object name auto-completion. To quote Andrew, “Several of our developers bought iPhones during development and fell in love with auto-completion.” Arrow through the drop-down list of auto-complete object choices and the Clue window shows information and arguments for each.

The grapevine says that the public beta of Max 5 will drop within several weeks. /me twiddles thumbs…

Ed.: Word we got from Cycling ‘74 at NAMM was that you’ll have the final version by the end of first quarter. I’m actually wondering if they’ll either forgo public beta — or slim it down in length — but that means you’re still just a few weeks away from the next release of Max.

The typical user likely has no idea that Flash is even supported in QuickTime. But VJ apps like ArKaos VJ and other applications (like Max/MSP/Jitter patches that use this support) rely on QuickTime to support Flash. Unfortunately, as of Leopard — or any Mac updated to QuickTime 7.3.1 — that support is gone, and will most likely never return.

What’s the reason? Security:

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in QuickTime’s Flash media handler, the most serious of which may lead to arbitrary code execution. With this update, the Flash media handler in QuickTime is disabled except for a limited number of existing QuickTime movies that are known to be safe. Credit to Tom Ferris of Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team (ASSET), Mike Price of McAfee Avert Labs, and security researchers Lionel d’Hauenens & Brian Mariani of Syseclabs for reporting this issue.

About the security content of QuickTime 7.3.1 (thanks to n0s10pm for the tip!)

In case this isn’t clear, this impacts only embedded Flash files within QuickTime, not Flash itself. But because some apps use QuickTime as a way of hooking in support for Flash animations, that’s a big deal — at least for someone. Windows users are impacted, too; this covers both platforms, though at least Windows users have the option of using Flash integration features available only on that OS.

Now, admittedly, the small niche pushing the limits of QuickTime and digital visuals is dwarfed by the potentially-enormous crowd who could be impacted by this vulnerability. But there’s clearly a philosophical problem here we’ve seen before: instead of fixing the vulnerability and providing a replacement, the entire idea is axed. Necessary? Perhaps, but I would love to see Adobe address ways of more easily integrating Flash technology with other applications. As the Flash/Flex platform grows, the potential here could be wide enough to justify the effort, especially as applications (not just VJ apps) add rich client features.

And in the meantime, if you use a tool that uses this support, you may want to hunt down an old installer or hold off upgrading. (Reverting to older versions is, unfortunately, really hard — you have to completely uninstall QuickTime, and you’ll only have luck if you’re on Tiger or earlier as far as I know.)

Pd, aka Pure Data, is the free and open-source cousin of Max/MSP/Jitter. It’s powerful — even sometimes having technical advantages over Max — but has suffered from complex installation and dependencies, poor documentation, and an unpolished interface. Enter Pd-extended, a distribution that fills in those gaps. Pd-extended’s maintainer Hans-Christoph writes up what this is all about in an introduction on Create Digital Music, friendly even if you’re new to the Pd world.

Pd, Max’s Free Cousin, Gets Polish and Ease in Extended Build

Visualists should be especially interested in this latest release, because it offers much-improved out-of-the-box support for custom-patched 3D and video — especially if you’re on a Mac, for the PiDiP (though there are Windows and Linux improvements, too, and GEM works even with Windows).

Mac OS improvements:

• Image and video-processing PDP/PiDiP work out-of-box
• Anti-aliasing of boxes and lines in the interface
• New, purty icon

Linux:

• A .deb package for Debian and Ubuntu, with GNOME menu support. (`Bout time! Wonder if this means we’ll see it in the big Ubuntu repositories?)
• New icon

All platforms:

• GEM, the quasi-Jitter-like 3D and pixel library, has working shader support. Ed.: Truly outrageous.
• New libraries: mapping, msd, mrpeach net/OSC, flib
• [comport] is robust on all platforms (can you say Arduino?)
• Font-face and -font-weight command line options
• New font and layout is the exact same size on all platforms to the pixel. (previously you’d see some serious cross-platform glitching)

Pd Extended Release

And lest you have a bad taste in your mouth from the fugly older releases of Pd, Anton (vade) sends along the picture at the top of this story, showing the new UI from the Pd 0.40 dailies running on Mac OS X. Anton is also working on porting some of his brilliant visual patching from Max to Pd — and he’s living proof that even a Max die-hard can find at least some use with Pd, too. (The two environments are really, really close — sometimes confusion switching between them is because they’re so close, the differences can be confusing.)

Via comments, Eelke (whose system is shown above) alerts us that previous video output problems running Windows in Boot Camp appear to be solved in Leopard — at least using the MacBook Pro. (Phew — get all that?)

See the ongoing thread on VJforums. Eelke says:

My configuration:
- MacBookPro 2,16, 2GB ram, with ATI X1600
- Upgraded to Leopard (OS X 10.5)
- Used the same Leopard DVD to update all drivers in bootcamp / XP
- Rebooted with DVI>s video dongle plugged-in, s-video out attached to small reference monitor

After the initial booting XP logo which we had all the time, I suddely saw my desktop cloned on the small screen. All I had to do is go to desktop>preferences to extend windows to the secondary monitor, and it worked.
After that I used ATI Catalyst control center to set the screen (now recognized as a TV!) to run in overscan, no problem at all, even during live rendering (with visualjockey).

Houray! Houray!

A sad side-note however is that regular macbooks with Intel videochips and mini-dvi adapters still don’t seem to work properly under XP. Maybe under Vista, who knows?

Okay, anyone tested MacBooks (non-Pro) on Leopard? Is there a way to make this work?

Certainly, booting the Mac side for Quartz Composer, Final Cut, Motion, VDMX, then switching to Windows for Resolume, vvvv, games, etc. has some serious appeal as a visualist dream setup. (Overkill? Sure. But a lot better than juggling machines or being forced into the OS by the hardware.)

Apple slipped in some almost silent updates last night to its portable line: MacBooks have been updated to come pre-installed with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), and sport Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset. This provides frontside bus speeds up to 800Mhz (up from 667Mhz), and includes a new integrated graphics chipset, the Intel GMA X3100 which should offer a speed boost for end users and increased shader support for developers.

Apple also silently updated the MacBook Pro, which now has an optional 2.6Ghz CPU upgrade (up from 2.4Ghz), for a mere $250.

Leopard improves not only OpenGL performance with some advanced backend llvm compiling, optional Quartz GL rendering, but also enhanced OpenGL extension and shader model support on certain cards. According to the Mac OpenGL dev list (which just today posted some new information regarding 10.5 - ironically the OpenGL cababilities matrix does not yet list the GMA X3100), Apple supports Shader Model 4.0 on newer ATI hardware, and possibly on NVIDIA 8-series cards (yet to be confirmed).

Both of these are good news for visualists - better graphics capabilities in 10.5 and updated integrated graphics chipsets will support more advanced visual effects for those who want the slimmer MacBook, and who doesn’t want dual 2.6Ghz of power in the MacBook Pro?

Ed.: My only disappointment with Apple is that there’s not much in the mid-range price-wise, and the Intel chips still lag behind dedicated graphics chips like the NVIDIA GeForce Go (8600 in the case of the MacBook Pro). But the flipside for the bargain-hungry: each time Apple bumps its MBP, you have a shot at getting clearance or refurb versions of the previous model at the sweet spot.

Note that the MacBook doesn’t support the advanced 3D features with its integrated video chip. The X3100 video on the PM965 chipset supports only Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 1.5, which leaves out some important shader features, etc., of use to visualists. So, if you can shell out the cash for the MacBook Pro, it will give you far more advanced 3D features — and by extension, hardware-based video. (On the Windows side, it also means DirectX 10 over DirectX 9, but the important thing is the integrated shader architecture.)

It’s no secret that a major update to Max/MSP/Jitter is coming from Cycling ‘74, with a major overhaul of the underlying code and an entirely new, friendlier interface. What has been secret is just what that upgrade will look like. We still don’t know what it’ll look like visually, but Cycling ‘74 today released some new details about what it is and isn’t.

In short, it promises to be:

• Easier to use: Multiple undo, debugging tools for patches, and a visual catalog for perusing objects.
• Easier to learn: Integrated, rewritten documentation, even including Web links.
• Easier on the eyes: A new, zoomable patching interface with lots of new goodies — that’s not only skin deep, but makes patches easier to navigate.
• Mo cross-platform: A new code foundation should make Max more modern, reliable, easier to support on C74’s part, and better supported across OSes. It even opens the possibility of someday seeing Max/MSP/Jitter on Linux and not just Mac/Windows.
• Not full of gobs of new objects: Normally this is not a feature, but here, it’s a good thing: by introducing only a few objects, the new Max focuses instead on improving existing objects and building a better environment / platform for the future.

I’m meeting with Cycling ‘74 this week at AES, so hope to have more details then, including more on what’s changed for Jitter users. Audio users should note a big caveat — Pluggo support won’t be present in Max 5 at launch, which is critical to using patches as audio effects and instruments in other hosts, though it sounds as though that may be added at an undetermined point in the future. But on the visual side, it looks like it could be a pretty smooth upgrade: most patches and externals should be compatible, with some potential updates needed for tools that have special UI features. (I imagine some patches will look a little odd, too, once they hit the new UI — worth keeping that older Max copy around, just in case.) Overall, looks like good news. Naturally, we want to know more. Lots more. Soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Java and JavaScript support will continue to work. And that means Processing is supported, as well (via mxj), so this could be a great Processing prototyping environment, or a way of coupling Processing with other features. (See jklabs MaxLink. And yeah, it really does work … very cool. Viva Java.)

Cycling ‘74 Releases Max 5 Details: Bringing Max Out of the 80s, into to the Future [Create Digital Music]

Cycling 74 has updated its Jitter 1.6.3 installer, while there are no new features, they’ve worked hard on optimizing speed for Windows users. I don’t have a Windows machine to benchmark, but if you are a Jitter user on Windows, you might want to give this a once over. Jitter 1.6.3

Ed.: I do have a Windows machine; I’ll try to check it out! Of course, this isn’t necessarily the really big Max news at the moment. It’s interesting, given that Cycling is talking about how different the new codebase is for Max 5 — maybe in fact there are still platform-specific optimizations necessary. That’d make sense for video, in particular, which remains very much platform-specific. (OpenGL is obviously not really an issue — not unless you’re a driver developer.) -PK

In my computing life I’m very much into segregation. Until recently I’ve worked exclusively with PCs and have always had 3-4 machines around, each installed with a certain set of tools to do a specific job:

• Workstation with After Effects, Photoshop, Web Development tools, Content stuff…
• Laptop with Mail, IM and other communication/organization stuff.
• Server with bittorrent downloading, media serving and distributed rendering.
• Gig machine with just Resolume and required codecs.

Since this whole tour thing started I’ve had to consolidate everything onto my MacBook. All of the usual amail, browsing and IM duties remain, but are now encroached by editing in iMovie, flyer and poster design in Photoshop/InDesign, web administration and coding in Coda, Tour and Gig organization with NeoOffice, photo organization in Lightroom… My poor MacBook has been flogged half to death, with constant slowdown and frequent freezes and crashes. Quicksilver especially - my Mac raison d’être - has been having huge problems.

I was very close to just palming my trusty lil BlackBook off to the GirlThing and upgrading to a MacBook Pro. I was talking to Peter about which MBP I should buy when he suggested that perhaps a little RAM upgrade may be in order. Best. Advice. Evar.

Local MacStore price to upgrade to 2GB RAM: AU$400. Price of RAM from local PC bits store: AU$106. The installation was a little nerve-wracking, requiring considerably more force than I’m used to applying to RAM installation, but the machine booted first time and everything seems happy now. Less MacBook slowdowns = more time to play with my new HVR-V1P. 200FPS slow motion. Can I get a hell yeah?