GrandVJ and Alioscopy 3D screen integration
Mar/102
3D is spectacular, eye catching and can amaze your audience.. But unfortunately it was not really accessible to live VJing.. until now!
Recently we’ve been in contact with Alioscopy, a French company that develops auto-stereoscopic 3D displays that can produce a sensation of depth without needing cumbersome eyewear and they asked us if we could bring live VJing to their 3D screens.
The problem is, even if you are only mixing footage that is compatible with 3D projection you are still missing live visualizers which are, most of the time, a very important part of the mix and which obviously can’t be pre-encoded for 3D projection..
How To: Create audio-reactive effects for GrandVJ with Quartz Composer
Feb/104
In GrandVJ 1.2 we have introduced the support for Quartz Compositions, either as visual or as effect. Note that MediaMaster 1.2 will also support Quartz Compositions, so you can use this with MediaMaster 1.2 too (the beta can be found on our forums)
Quartz Composer is a free graphics and imaging tool on the Mac platform which is available as an optional install that can be found on your Mac OS X DVD since version 10.4.
It allows very easy creation of complex audio-reactive animations or effects which can now be played in GrandVJ (read the previous article about GrandVJ and Quartz Composer). As I’m writing these lines, the last version of Quartz-Composer is 4.0 on Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
In this article we will demonstrate how to quickly create a bass-reactive Zoom/Blur effect like the one you can see below:
Important: This tutorial requires that you have some basic knowledge of Quartz Composer: if you have never used it, you really should first go through the “Getting Started”. You will also find some helpful readings at the Apple Developer Connection web site about Quartz Composer.
To create our effect we will simply edit Quartz-Composer’s default template named “Image Filter” to make it audio reactive. Basically, we will connect bass levels of the computer’s audio input signal to the “Amount” parameter of our Zoom/Blur filter. (Read more below..)
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..
How To: Create audio-reactive Flash for GrandVJ
Sep/099
Author: ECIN
About: Ben Guerrette is an interactive motion graphics designer and founder of triggermotion.comWeb: http://www.triggermotion.com
A post by Guest Author VJ Ecin (Ben Guerrette), find more about him at the end of this article..
As promised, here’s the first in a series of tutorials showing how to take advantage of the Flash capabilities within ArKaos GrandVJ. Note that it will also work for NuVJ and MediaMaster since the variables are the same.
In this tutorial I’ll explain how to tap into the EQ data to create some simple audio-reactive animations. We’ll be using some basic ActionScript 2.0 for the inexperienced Flash programmer. I won’t go into much detail on the how the code works but it should be enough of an introduction to allow some experimentation in creating new content for your VJ arsenal.
You can download the final .fla and .swf files here or follow along the video tutorial below.
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:
News from [amoeba] a/v and theestateovcreation
Jul/090
Scott [amoeba], a long time ArKaos user (since 1998!!) has just published hot news on his web site theestateovcreation. If you don’t know [amoeba] yet, it’s really time to check it out and discover his very unique style.
[amoeba]‘s creation/mixing process involves a lot of different tools such as After Effects or Ableton Live and various techniques like typography and animation generally mixed an synced together whit GrandVJ.
In the video below he’s been using Ableton MIDI patterns to control and trigger micro QuickTime movies that he created with After Effects edits and constructivist motion graphics with synched audio through ArKaos software.
Fore more inspiring VJ work by [amoeba] check out the rest of this post..
LaVa – Flash Video Mixing Workshop
Jul/092
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July 21, 2009 |
How to create interactive Flash animations for GrandVJ?
Learn with the pros and raffle a free license!
ArKaos is pleased to sponsor La-Va.org’s Flash Video Mixing Workshop: an afternoon of lectures, live demonstrations, and discussions of programming techniques, platform quirks, and methods of creating interactive Flash visuals in a live setting.
Flash animation has become a weapon of choice in a VJ’s arsenal due to its small file size, flexible scalability, and (most importantly) the potential for interactive programmatic elements.
Ben Guerrette (VJ ECIN – creator of Trigger Motion), will demonstrate developing audio reactive Flash visuals for use with Arkaos GrandVJ. Ben has worked with ArKaos to integrate Flash into GrandVJ and the Numark NuVJ in addition to providing stock Flash visuals included with both releases.
Eric Medine (MkUltra) will be demonstrating the interactive and dynamic text capabilities of Flash as well as MIDI-reactive Flash animation.
Following the lectures and technical demonstrations will be a raffle for a licensed version of Arkaos GrandVJ and Resolume v3, and a live Vj battle between MkUltra and ECIN.
Check out the announcement on the Lav-Va.org Blog for more info!
Using QuickTime or FFMPEG on a PC?
Jul/090
Here’s a quick tip for PC users: if you use a multi-core/multi-processor machine with GrandVJ or MediaMaster, you will benefit a lot to use codecs that are played through our FFMPEG player rather than through QuickTime.
This is due to the fact that on a PC, the internal QuickTime decoding routines are not capable of multi-threading, which makes it impossible to decode frames in parallel. So even if one layer can run properly using QuickTime libraries, the more layer you pile up, the more the decoding bottleneck will show up.
On Mac OSX, QuickTime is now mostly multi-threaded decoding so it’s not such an issue but we recommend to try to use codec supported by our FFMPEG player in any case.
Important: make sure you understand we refer to the internal QuickTime player and NOT to QuickTime files in general. Some QuickTime files (for example, files based on mpeg/mpeg2/mpeg4/PhotoJPEG/Motion JPEG/H.264 codec) are played through the FFMPEG player.
To know what internal player is used for what file, use the information shown in the visual library:
Visuals library
In this case, both movies are QuickTime files. The first one is read through QuickTime because the Cinepak Codec is not handled by FFMPEG.It will play but it is not optimal.
The second is read through FFMPEG because it’s using H.264 codec, it is therefore better for performances.
ANTIVJ’s Grote Kerk: Visuals in a Cathedral
Jul/091
ANTIVJ is a “visual label” which specializes in visual experiments, outdoor installations, architecture design, and most notably projection mapping.
As a part of their creation process they make a very advanced use of ArKaos software’s blend and mask modes to map visuals on onto architecture or objects.
They have once again caught our attention with one of their latest installations, a stunning visual show in Breda’s cathedral. It’s a beautiful mix of painting projection, light sculpture, perfect mapping and great music made by a team of very experienced professionals..
But enough words, have a look at the video; it’s really worth watching to the end!
Ctrl Alt Shift : exploring VJ Culture
Jun/092
Here’s a very interesting found on Vimeo, Ctrl Alt Shift is a documentary exploring VJ Culture created by Dean G Moore & Simon Lane from V.I.A – (Visually Impaired Artists).
It features Interviews and Footage from The Light Surgeons, D-Fuse, Hexstatic, Vj Anyone, Addictive TV, Vector Meldrew and Fatamorgana.
Find us on
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Check this out!
