Working at ArKaos
Feb/100
As you may know or not, we currently have an open position for a Graphics Software Engineer at ArKaos. It’s always exciting when our situation and coming projects allow us to grow our team and make some room for new employees in the company.
But as Chief Software Architect behind the ArKaos real time video mixing engine and also CEO and founder of the company, I feel the need to explain today a little more about how we develop software here and more wider, about the company’s philosophy, as this is something that can’t really be expressed in the Job Description.
ArKaos MediaMaster 1.2 beta1 with audio
Jan/101
Here’s the first beta version of MediaMaster 1.2.
It comes with support for audio and a few other new features.. more will come in further betas.
Please test it and report any problems you might encounter.
The download links are at the end of this post.
Update: The beta went fine, thanks for your feedback: we have made available the RC1 on the forums
GrandVJ 1.2 RC1 with a final audio engine
Jan/103
Here’s the last step on the road to the final version, this is the first (and hopefully the only) Release Candidate of GrandVJ 1.2 (RC1). It comes with the final audio engine, several bug fixes and includes every features that will appear in the final version.
Read more for changes and download links..
GrandVJ 1.2b4 with support for audio
Dec/090
We’ve been a bit quiet lately but we’ve been working hard trying to move sound support from the old system (based on QuickTime) to an implementation using FFMPeg. This is because the QT support is getting worse and worse and we think it’s important we move to a more controllable medium.
The Beta 3 released last week on our forums contained the first result of this implementation but wasn’t very smooth or even stable especially with backward/forward playback.
The Beta 4 fixes the backward playback bug and relies on a new FFMPeg build that supports AC3. This means you can now drop VOB’s & MKV and get proper audio running… If the vob is 5.1, we also do stereo mixdown.
Surf to the forum post for more details about this Beta and the download links..
Quartz Composer integration in GrandVJ 1.2
Nov/095
GrandVJ 1.2 now allows to use Quartz Composer .qtz files directly, both as sources and effects. In older versions it was necessary to save them as QuickTime movies with the big drawbacks that it was slow and it did not allow to change compositions variables.
We have optimized the Quartz Composer integration in GrandVJ 1.2 so that the compostions are rendered natively through the fastest available interface.
Finally, when using a composition as an effect the application will scan the published inputs and map them as effect parameters, if the format is compatible with the engine. GrandVJ can automatically map parameters that are float values, indexes, colors and booleans and there’s one visual input of the composition that receive the cell visual.
Now let’s have a quick look at how you can use Quartz compositions with GrandVJ..
Using Flash ActionScript 3 in GrandVJ 1.2b1
Oct/093
As you might have seen from the list of new features in GrandVJ 1.2, we now have support for Flash ActionScript 3.
(Update: MediaMaster also supports AS3 as of version 1.2, so this is valid for MediaMaster also).
The issue that prevented previous version to support ActionScript 3 was that Adobe has upgraded their security mechanism preventing global variable declarations to be exposed to external parties (as explained in this great tutorial by Ben Guerrette).
However, in ActionScript 3, you can declare functions to act as external interface, allowing to communicate with the Flash movie through a specified channel.
GrandVJ 1.2b1 supports Flash AS3, Quartz Composer, APC40 and more
Oct/0915
We just released a new beta version of GrandVJ, you can download it from our forums:
http://www.arkaos.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6828
This version has many new cool things which are detailed in the forum post, here is a recap:
- New ultra smooth engine
- Support for Akai APC40 & Generic midi feedback
(also for Behringer BCR2000/BCF2000, Livid OHM, ..) - Quartz composer player (Mac OS X)
- Support for Flash Actionscript 3
- Cell layer assignment
- Mixer state saving
- Added master blackout button
- New enhanced soft-edging algorithm
- Added vertical/horizontal position presets for TripleHead2Go
- Several Bug fixes.
- New fullscreen option (PC)
We plan to ship the final version at the end of this month so we encourage you to check if this new version is working fine and to report any problems or suggestions by creating a topic in the GrandVJ forum.
Happy testing, we hope you will have as much fun using this version as we had to code it!
Why software genlock at 60 FPS does matter!
Sep/091
MediaMaster 1.1 brings important modifications to our video engine and particularly how the video synchronization and multi threading decoding is processed. It has been optimized to perform what can be called “software genlock” in order to ensure the best possible fluidity on computers equipped with multi core processors.
The genlocking we refer to is the action of locking the frequency of a media to a reference signal or clock (check out the related wikipedia article for a complete explanation).
Let’s examine quickly the process of displaying frames. Roughly, 3 steps must be acheived:
- get video frames from the disk
- upload them to the graphic card
- do the composition / blending of the layers and present them to the display
Now let’s describe how these steps are achieved without genlock and with genlock:
Showing the extreme…
Aug/091
There’s a certain point where it becomes very hard to demonstrate to a large audience what you do. As we strive towards the limits of the extreme, it becomes more and more difficult to demonstrate in a simple way the results of our work.
Last couple of month, we’ve been working very intensively on the new release of MediaMaster (version 1.1 – which should be out very soon). One of our goals for this release was to improve radically our engine to be able to run a couple of movies at monitor rate with no frame drops.
60 fps that is.
And we did it.
This means that you will be able – of course depending on the computer and the movies you are displaying – to run movies perfectly locked to the monitor sync.
The result is brilliant – even for movies at 30 fps – because your eye directly catches the smoothness of the playback.
But let’s go back to the beginning of our article. How do you show that ? If we want to show you a smooth 60fps stream, every step of the chain needs to be perfect.
Find us on
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Check this out!
