OpenFX Visual Effects plug in standard?

[DrEskaton]

Recently some high end visual effects program developers have joined forces to create a cross application platform for visual effects plugins called OpenFX.

The visual effects industry has many more resources and dollars behind it than the VJ market so if developers would support OpenFX in VJ programs you would all of a sudden have a heap of additional resources behind you.

The people behind GPUCHAIN may also be intereted in combining forces with these guys. Currently they are developing a new version of the API with OpenGL support so it would be a good time for VJ developers to chuck in a word and push for realtime support.

They also don't seem to be aware of the existence of FreeFrame so maybe some education needs to be done?

Here is an article explaining it in detail:

http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=25459

[syzygy]

Don't get too carried away by thgis - OpenFX is designed for non-realtime applications, not for live video processing (as freeframe is)

A quote from the OpenFX API docs illustrates this:

OFX is aimed to be unambiguous and complete, efficiency is deliberately a secondary consideration.

Now, for VJ apps, performance is definitely an important concern.

Another big difference is that OpenFIX plugins expect to have access to frames before and after the frame being processed - this is simply not possible for realtime effects because they can't look forward in time...

OpenFX looks like a laudable attempt to standardise non-live vided effects (shame that Adobe and Sony are not on the list of project supporters though..) but it does not compete with Freeframe, as the two standards offer different things. Trying to do both realtime and non-realtime in the same standard would lead to it being perfect for neither.

We have a good standard for realtime effects, which has been embraced by almost all of the VJ app developers. Switching to supporting an API designed for non-realtime would be somewhat counterproductive.


Dan.

[DrEskaton]

please don't write it off that quickly.

The simple reality is that the high end VFX market has a lot more money to spend on R&D than the VJ market. There is a lot of cool effects in motion that I can do realtime that I wish were available as plugins to a VJ app.

There is no reason why a VJ app couldn't support both Freeframe and OpenFX. And if a bunch of VJ developers contact the OpenFX developers and ask for easier realtime support then they may include them. I would thnk it would be easy to add a flag saying "this is a plugin that accepts live video input and it doesn't know the frame ahead".

[syzygy]

I wasn't writing it off - just pointing out that a new standard is no reason to write off freeframe.

I've had a look at the OpenFX API documentation in some detail and I don't think that it will be implemented by any VJ Apps any time soon - it is just too much more complex than the simple approach that VJ apps all use.

That's just my opinion though...

here is no reason why a VJ app couldn't support both Freeframe and OpenFX.

Assuming that VJ App developers have infinite time and resources, there is no limit to what they can support.

Unfortunately, all of the VJ app developers are small teams or individuals with a big workload and without huge pots of cash to hire in additional developers. Every feature that is added to their app means more development time, more debugging, more testing, more documentation and more support.

There might not be any reasons why they couldn't, but there are good reasons why they wouldn't.

Of course, if OpenFX does work okay for realtime use, then someone could write a freeframe wrapper for the API so that all freeframe-supporting apps could use some OpenFX plugins...

Dan.

[jaw]

the way a VJ extends the musical experience is to provide graphical content to the music, right? that could mean more than just basing everything on the assumption that it has to be a video stream (i.e. pre-rendered wich is kinda dull).. So if there's stuff in this api that can be use to do that in realtime it's worth implementing. If it's feasible to do it in realtime is another issue altogether if they require frames before and stuff. But still, this thread seems to have become more of a discussion what is VJ:ing I think :)
I think it should be both mixing videos and graphical effects as long as it stays true to the thing that makes this artform unique: realtime display of visual effects (including video streams) interactively controlled by a human

[syzygy]

Originally posted by jaw
But still, this thread seems to have become more of a discussion what is VJ:ing I think :)


Note quite sure what you mean by that...

Generating and processing video streams is what VJ applications do. Whether the content is prerendered or generated live, the end result is always a video stream.

Freeframe supports both plugins that process video streams and plugins that generate a video stream.

Supporting this new standard would not enable any new kinds of interactivity.

It would potentially enable use of a range of additional plugins (the ones that do simple single frame processing or generating), which is s recent argument in its favour.

However, I think the complex requirements for implementing it, along with the fact that most OpenFX plugins will cost much more than the VJ apps themselves, will make it hard to convince VJ app developers to implement it.

Dan.

[DrEskaton]

Originally posted by syzygy
OpenFX plugins will cost much more than the VJ apps themselves, will make it hard to convince VJ app developers to implement it.

Dan.

yeah true, most visual effects plugins are expensive, but I'm sure I'm not the only visual effects artist who is also a VJ. There is such a crossover. I will buy OpenFX plugins for production work on commercials and films. In an ideal world I would be able to run those same plugins in VJ programs.

Maybe an impossible dream but with the levels of CPU/GPU power we are now getting maybe not too impossible.

[many2]

Even in the film industry the move toward GPU based effects is under way. You don't have to work in real-time to use the GPU - you don't even need to use it to produce graphics in fact, you can use it for physics, for music, etc. With shader model 3 you can build shaders of infinite complexity and you can still run them faster than with any other technology sold for under 100,000$. Visit the Nvidia website if you want to learn more about GPU and the film/broadcast industry.