Open debate on the future of Mac vjing applications

[jaqx]

What is the next great vjing application for the Mac?

Will the release of Tiger with its CoreVideo technologies improve video performance on every Mac system?

How long will it take until developers start taking advantage of it?

Will CoreVideo help improve the performance of Max based applications?

I read on the Pixelshox forums that Apple will release a modular application based on Pixelshox that will be called Quartz Composer. Apparently it will let you create video instruments using all of the new CoreVideo advantages...

Does that mean the end of all current vjing softs on the Mac? It is not uncommon that a new OS release incorporates features otherwise sold separately before.

Will Macs become a standard for the vjing industry in the long run as has happened in the music and film industries?

Also...

Will Isadora users ever share their patches with fellow vj's?

Is it ethical being a software developer and promoting the software you sell on this non-commercial forums?

[DrEskaton]

Originally posted by jaqx
What is the next great vjing application for the Mac?


The one based on Motion that Apple will release next year, but it will have a broader market than just VJs.


Will the release of Tiger with its CoreVideo technologies improve video performance on every Mac system?
How long will it take until developers start taking advantage of it?


They already are, yes CoreVideo will put the sort of performance that motion has on video filters into every VJ developers hands.


Will CoreVideo help improve the performance of Max based applications?


not unless they write a corevideo host for it, I imagine they will in time.



I read on the Pixelshox forums that Apple will release a modular application based on Pixelshox that will be called Quartz Composer. Apparently it will let you create video instruments using all of the new CoreVideo advantages...


it's not exactly as you say but it is very cool.


Does that mean the end of all current vjing softs on the Mac? It is not uncommon that a new OS release incorporates features otherwise sold separately before.


I expect a rash of new mac VJ apps written from scratch and full accelerated using corevideo to appear throughout 2005. Hopefully some existing VJ apps can be retrofitted to allow corevideo filters as well.

[VJFranzK]

Doing electronic music, I saw a vast improvement in sound functionality after Core Audio arrived.

If this Core Video proves to be as signifigant, then it could be a OSX video reveloution!

(This makes my decision to stay a mac user in spite of cheaper pc gear easier.)

You mention a new app, related to Motion, with aplications for live VJ's, but broader?
could it be some kind of "multimedia creation" app like Flash has become?

[vjrei]

Well... based on my experience everything is bla bla in technology at the end.

I mean, I have been in to electronic music for 16 years now, I remember when the Roland D50 came out and the revolution of the Korg M1. The evolution of the VJ technology has the same time line, it is just the same thing. We are just jumping from the Yamaha DX7 to the Rolands D50.

But believe it or not technology has a hard time catching up with people any way, you see core video as the future but it will still slow at the end, it will require more time, at list 2 more years.

I just got a copy of Motion Dive Tokio and still slow with 720x240 video and still pixelated. Arkaos just got a bit more reliable but forget about full resolution and real time output still, burn some dvds I would say.

I hope there is a good jump but we are not going to see any material results any time soon any way.

[DrEskaton]

vjrei,

I can do realtime effects right now on 800x600 clips using motion. The same tech will be available to all VJ apps when 10.4 comes out.

this will make a difference because it is a big jump in ability, it's not like the difference between different generations of audio products it's like a jump from 320x240 pixelated effects to full pal res everything perfectly smooth all in one go.

It may be two years until many VJs have machines that can do it but that doesn't stop some of us from using it sooner.

[xiayu]

what's wrong with max?

[sleepytom]

max is a high level interpreted programing lagauage - it is designed to be very simple to build applications so that artists and musicans can use it without having to learn how to program.

this makes it slow as it has to interprate the high level instructions into real code to control the computer hardware.

this is why most mac VJ software sucks - max is simply draining the resources of your computer leaving you with little cpu time to actually process video.

the core video objects are revolutionary as they offer extreamly good performance through the use of lowlevel instructions and hardware accelleration built right into the core of the OS - quarts composer promises to offer a simple max style interface to these objects so that the power of core video will be available to everyone.

beyond all of this tech there is the simple issue of resources - if apple choose to make a VJ app then it will be the most well funded development in the VJ software world - simply by employing a small team on proper rates will give them a serious edge above the current crop of homegrown apps.

[VJFranzK]

Yeah, all tech gets old in the end...

I guess it's about making the most of any gear before it gets obsolete in 2 years. ha ha!

:trashcomp

yet something good will come of Core Video i think...
Apple has a lot of positive momentum at the moment,
(due to the prevalence of iPods, Final Cut, etc.) and that's likely to enhance all things OSX


The only problem - would an Apple VJ app make it
"too easy" to make visuals, like Garage Band does with music? ;-)

[freakowen]

Originally posted by VJFranzK

The only problem - would an Apple VJ app make it
"too easy" to make visuals, like Garage Band does with music? ;-) [/B]

Garage Band is easy to use - I can operate it quite easily, doesn't mean any of it is any good though...;)

[DrEskaton]

Originally posted by VJFranzK
Yeah, all tech gets old in the end...

The only problem - would an Apple VJ app make it
"too easy" to make visuals, like Garage Band does with music? ;-)

It remains to be seen if Apple chooses to directly address this market with a full blown custom app, chuck a couple of features on motion to make it usuable for live performance or just releases quartz composer.

Quartz Composer is NOT garage band, it's a developer tool, to design video intruments and interfaces using it would require the equivalent knowledge of a very good MAX/MSP programmer.

[jaqx]

does anyone know if quartz composer allows output on more than 2 screens?

[visualove]

I'm a PC user, but have used macs in the past. In fact, I'm eyeing the DVD-RW minimac for the iLife suite.

Apple could acquire a great VJ application to set the mac apart from the PC just as they did with DVD Studio Pro, Shake and FCP. They have the $$ to mac-ify it, make a great user interface and sustain improved versions.

They will if they think they can create a sustainable differentiator for the Mac from the PC for this type of application (they probably can) and it supports their "insanely cool" marketing image (yes) and the market is large enough for these apps (not yet).

Note they haven't acquired a laptop DJ app yet, like Traktor, and that is a much bigger market. But they have responded defensively to Avid and Protools moving strongly towards PC platforms. I'm sure they are watching Adobe closely, especially since Adobe is discontinuing Premere on Apple. If Apple looses Photoshop, AE, etc. they will be in a world of hurt (uSoft could just buy Adobe for cash though having a small proof of concept OS competitor like Apple is necessary for antitrust reasons)

Apple would be helped by using off the shelf high performance GPU's like NVidia and ATI to accelerate the visual processing while allowing unaccelerated processing on the base hardware. Does CoreVideo do this? The GPU could also be used to accelerate Motion, Shake, FCP and DVD Studio codecs. But the display adaptor has to be something that can also be used in a PC AGP or PCI-E/X so the volumes are large enough to be worth it and the design cycles allow yearly performance upgrades. I think they have this capability already on the towers and non upgradable on the 15 and 17 inch Powerbooks. Will we see a day when the marketing of computer performance is based in GPU performance and not CPU clock speed?

The Apple loyalists in the 1-3 person VJsofts companies will code to CoreVideo in any case, and the VJ's who aready have Apple will use the apps.

Of course Apple could be visionary, get the application and then announce that VJing is the "next big thing" and "Apple is here first", bla bla, but that would sort of wreck it, don't you think?

[famouswhendead]

What I heard: Adobe is not going to support CoreVideo and CoreGraphics as it would need a complete rewrite of the apps to make it workable.

.pixelshox (http://www.pixelshox.com/)
part of the OS now.

[VJFranzK]

related topic: It'd be good it Core Image supported some of the "rerouting" options that core audio has allowed... (I'd like to run, for example, some homebrew "fullscreen" graphics programs into more advanced fx/mixing software)

(If adobe ignores core image, their software is going to be replaced even faster by Final Cut and motion...)

Originally posted by DrEskaton
It remains to be seen if Apple chooses to directly address this market with a full blown custom app, chuck a couple of features on motion to make it usuable for live performance or just releases quartz composer.

iKaos, anyone? ;) They could give it the Logic treatment...
What I really meant was, if Apple actually made a specified "VJ app", it's likely the world would soon be flooded with would-be VJ's

Seriously, Motion looks very nice on g5, very real time. Probably there is some VJ using it as we speak, putting the preview window on the second monitor ...


Quartz Composer is NOT garage band, it's a developer tool, to design video intruments and interfaces using it would require the equivalent knowledge of a very good MAX/MSP programmer.

So more of an Isadora type situation? Or even more complicated... (Mere connecting leads, or advanced scripting required?)

(Speaking of Garage band, it's become even stronger as of the demos I saw at MacWorld.)

[vjrei]

Originally posted by famouswhendead
What I heard: Adobe is not going to support CoreVideo and CoreGraphics as it would need a complete rewrite of the apps to make it workable.


Well... they better...

I was about to get another 12" PB but... I am not doing any serious VJing right now and I am waiting for a G5 PB that may be out there some time this year.

In the mean time I am returning to my electronic music (my roots).

Is is amazing how much musical instruments cost and how little you can do with them compared with video.

[VJFranzK]

Is is amazing how much musical instruments cost and how little you can do with them compared with video.
"Dedicated" devices as they are, they can't serve the excelent variety of purposes that a computer can. ( To make some cash in the daytime, for example? ;) ya gotta eat. )

yet they get us on the prices of dedicated video gear -
compare the price of VJ mixer to DJ ... ouch! or a speaker vs. a beamer

(I guess a beamer makes day money also though, if used in sales presentations? :rolleyes: )

[visualove]

Is is amazing how much musical instruments cost and how little you can do with them compared with video.

Consider this alternate view

It is amazing how expressive a musical instrument can be compared to VJ applications.

Think about it: a piano with 88 velocity sensitive keys and 3 pedals. A sax. How about violins, violas or cellos? A sitar, a guitar? How emotional can the performance be with a great musician?

The original Moog electronic music synths has a million knobs and couldn't be played in performance - now they are decent.

We have a ways to go with the user interface on video performance. If anyone, Apple could devote the research to improving the video performance interface.

(to all the developers here, this is not an attack on your apps, it is just that it is a hard problem)

And costs: the DJ mixer is almost entirely analog, same with speakers. Both are manufactured on a much larger scale than video mixers or beamers.

[VJFranzK]

Originally posted by visualove

The original Moog electronic music synths has a million knobs and couldn't be played in performance - now they are decent.

We have a ways to go with the user interface on video performance. If anyone, Apple could devote the research to improving the video performance interface.

Such as the midi+analog Moog Voyager?
I'd like to see Bob Moog create a video synth ;)

Probably video synthesis will appear more often in a few years when processor power is more abundant? I look forward to it

[tybalt]

Myth and facts about core video are plenty... everyone who knows the truth is under NDA ;)

forget pixelshocks... apperently what apple has in mind with this application will not benefit the VJ world a lot. get an ADC account and see yourself. The programm will be used for something that is completely unrelated and more targeted to the amateur programmer. and no it seems you can not wire up a simple core video vj application in no time with it and release a binary - as much as I would like apple doing a max killer app. more i can not say.

will there be max/jitter bridges to corevideo? I can only guess - no. Max still uses Quickdraw to an extremly huge extent to render everything that is not pure video (interfaces). Apple has somewhere officially stated that Quickdraw and CoreVideo is non compliant no mix of both in one program. So either Max finally strips off its OS9 code (which everyone who ever developed a video patch in max prays for) or this will be a very bad hack that takes out lots of performance gains with CoreVideo.

Is CoreVideo easy to code? Yes if you know Cocoa or C++ to some extend you probably up and running in less then a day with a simple mixer application. If you don?t know a modern programming language then this is a hard task. To hard for me at least...

Are CoreVideo Plugins easy to write? YES! Even someone with limited programming skills can look at the code examples that already come with the developer boxes and only change the actual mathematical part which - from what I saw - is quite easy to understand. I would say this is the true freeframe killer on the mac platform. Why code something for freeframe with all the speed hits and something that is only used in about 4 VJ apps on the platform if you take the same amount of development efford and can reach out to ALL CORE VIDEO APPS on the mac. Be sure that your plugs will work with motion, final cut (pro and express), iPhoto, iMovie and about any other modern Mac image/video altering application that debuts after Developer Converence. Also every Plugin written in Core Video will be dead shit fast. The only thing you can start to learn already are the OpenGL function sets - a quite limited smal programming language that is needed for some of the plug ins.

Core video from all I saw and experienced is very well thought out and will not only target new apps but also attacks old programs like after effects etc at the same time. If you start to write a VJ application for the Mac CoreVideo is the way to go.

Does Apple wants to get into the VJ market? We are all not sure about this but seeing the direction pixelshocks takes with the new release I would heavily point to a NO - but they do support us with their advanced video editing applications and the system foundation that they lay down in front of us to invite us.

[dlublin]

My buddy & co-worker Ray forgot his login / password, and he asked me to post this on his behalf. One thing that I would like to add to his message is that, while the standard Max/MSP interface objects do use QuickDraw to an extent, the new jsui object, you can use javascript to control OpenGL, which is very handy for drawing interface.

- David

"just like to correct a couple misconceptions that i hear an awful lot:

max is a high level interpreted programming language, but that doesn't mean that it's slow because of it. first of all, there's 2 basic video packages available for max/msp: jitter and softVNS. both have their roots in quickdraw, and both also support opengl. the big difference is that jitter operates in an RGB colorspace, while softVNS operates in a YUV colorspace, which means it's roughly twice as fast (YUV has half as much data as RGB). we've talked to the guy who wrote softVNS, and he said that he's compiled his libraries as standalone binaries, and they're every bit as fast as max patches that perform analogous operations. i've written max externals in C that performed every bit as fast as the same source compiled as an application, so i can verify that the speed of max is hardly an issue of note. "patches" are just collections of libraries linked together in memory- and the libraries are compiled c binaries. the only part of max that can get spotty is the scheduler, which has been getting better over the years, and is now at the point where if it chokes, it does so because you've overloaded your machine anyway.

jitter's RGB operations aside, it's also got a great set of opengl objects that are hardware accelerated- and the new version coming out is supposed to support pixel shaders. pixel shaders are for all intents and purposes relatively similar to coreimage/corevideo in that they allow graphics-related processes (a la photoshop filters) to be executed on the graphics card (makes sense, no?), which these days are massively parallel speed-demons. the results are dependent on the quality of your card, but are almost always really impressive. i've heard rumors that the next version of VNS will feature some mind-blowing opengl stuff with hardware support as well, so people who use max will be covered in any eventuality.

i think corevideo will be fantastic, and it probably won't be terribly difficult to integrate into VNS once it's available, so we're obviously overjoyed about this. jitter, on the other hand, is cycling74's cross-platform video solution, and as such i suspect supporting a mac-only feature would be a slightly lower priority to them- i'm not saying this is the case, i'm just speculating. regardless, hardware support for opengl is cross-platform, and a good VJ tool that everyone can use, regardless of platform, is a wonderful thing. a cross-platform effects format would be nice, too- which almost seems like a reason to go with opengl and not wait for corevideo. i'd say that freeframe is awesome, but...it's RGB, which means speed-wise it's right alongside jitter until somebody figures out hardware acceleration for it. i've heard rumors that some freeframe effects can be compiled to run in YUV spaces, but it seems to me that in order to be truly compatible, you'd have to deal with the scenario of YUV data hitting an RGB matrix and vice/versa, which would require the equivalent of a transcode, which is hard on the CPU....and unless you write two distinct methods, one for operating on RGB frames and one for YUV frames, then it's not much of a flexible plugin. it's best (== fastest) to keep YUV as YUV and RGB as RGB. this is only difficult because handling colors in YUV is a royal pain in the tuchus.

regardless....the future of any application will be highly dependant on the hardware available to run the application on. if grafx cards keep getting more jacked-up, then it would seem foolish not to take advantage of them, no? corevideo will be an option, as will plain-ol' opengl. as the integration becomes better, the question will become less "which shiny new technology should i support?", and more "how should i implement a front-end for my application?"......which is as it should be. on that note, a certain mac video company that rhymes with "kids' socks" will have something new out soon....i'd say more, but this is not a plug.
peace
: : mr.ray"