Many of you have heard of the *Spark D-Fuser DVI mixer project by Toby Harris. It’s based on a DVI scaler from TV-One with the (sexy) name 1T-C2-750 that allows you to mix video from two computers in HD resolution. Toby has been working on a hardware companion for this unit that adds a crossfader, fade to black knob and with some firmware tweaks gives plug and play support for the DualHead2go and the TripleHead2Go devices among a few other things. Due to a hectic schedule and the sheer amount of time it takes to do hardware development, this project has taken a while.

During this time VJ Forums administrator Sleepytom has been very sceptic against Toby’s project claiming that the only addition you’ll need could be done with software, encouraging people to experiment themselves. And recently VJ Fader a.k.a. James Cu (the maker of A/V Mixer) and VJ Leo a.k.a. Leonardo Fernandes Schenkel, announced that they are about to release iMixHD which is an app for Mac & PC built in Processing that controls the 1t-c2-750. VJ Fader claims that he will provide the Processing source code. This release sparked a thread on VJForums. Vade (Anton Marini, one of the men behind Syphon) also announced a Quartz Composer plugin that he has developed together with Toby that controls the DVI-mixer. The VJ forums thread went ugly for a little while but then settled when the main actors decided to share code and knowledge with each other and the public instead of arguing.

Is there still a reason to get Toby’s hardware add-on? Let me tell you like this: I’ve been using the 1T-C2-750 for a few weeks now and I’ve been configuring the unit with instructions from Toby to add the dh2go/th2go resolutions as well as some other settings. It’s easiest done with a Windows program (and for the record I’m a Mac guy, so it’s a little bit more hassle since I have to switch OS). Between Toby’s D-Fuser controller and some firmware tweaks to the TV-One all the correct settings should be there so the only thing you need to worry about is plugging in to the mixer and start mixing.

I had the opportunity to try a beta of the iMixHD software. It only had the functionality shown the video that was published on VJ Forums in January, which was the abilities to to MIDI map the cut buttons and the faders for video source 1 and 2. The app worked very well when I tried it with a Korg Nano Kontrol but the mapping process was a little bit backwards. The big question is what additional control over the t1-c2-750 this software will get and if it will plug’n’play without any further configuration.

So when will Toby’s D-Fuser mixer be available? The short answer is not yet. The initial D-Fuser prototype was using an Arduino clone with RS232 connector rather than USB. The company behind that Arduino clone then ran out of stock and didn’t reply to the approach about making up more boards or taking on manufacture of the whole controller. Toby then took help from Arduino veteran Shawn Bonkowski to turn the controller into a finished product. The controller based on the open-source Arduino PCB files was shown in Berlin in May. But apparently there were errors in the Arduino PCB files that were causing problems – for instance that prototype never sucessfully updated its firmware via USB as an Ardiuno should – and adding features to that unreliable base was making the development even more delayed. At some point the Mbed, an “Arduino on steriods” , showed up on the market offering new possibilities and promising to have all the tricky stuff on its board already, and so a clean start with this has been made. So to my understanding, as soon as the mBed based PCB arrives back for testing, they will be ready to go in to production.

Toby states further: “It’s pretty obvious I/we/Shawn never imagined the *spark d-fuser project could be this delayed, and I really don’t want to have inadvertently stopped anybody from similar home-brew efforts like the original prototype made for the D-Fuse performances. I figured if anyone wanted such a thing bad enough and were capable of figuring out either how to live with the OSD or do the rs232 themselves, they’d just go ahead and do it; I didn’t exactly keep the model a state secret. The all-along decision of not telling everybody just to run out and buy a TV-One and control it via software / their own Arduino setup was based on not wanting there to be a whole wave of units out there stuck without the custom firmware needed to make them plug’n'play and work with the hardware controller. Part of this is I didn’t want any fallout from early adopters getting screwed, and yep part of it was wanting TV-One to get a big order for their units and realise we were a market worth catering for. The interesting recent development is that we might not need the custom firmware I spec’d way back to get the plug’n’play behaviour, but I’m having to reverse engineer some RS232 communication to figure this out. We’ll see, fingers crossed”.

Previous posts written about the dvi-mixer.

Learn how to get smother graphics and video!

I have noticed that a significant number of people working with video, motion design, visuals, etc. don´t know that their computer has two graphics cards or GPUs – Graphics Processing Unit. One has a lot of horsepower and dedicated video-RAM to handle 3D-graphics, HD-editing, gaming and such, which includes live visuals. But using this one also makes the internal fans to run about 50-150% faster, since the lap top gets pretty hot, and the battery is drained much faster.

The other GPU is not as effective in handling demanding graphics, but it is much more energy efficient which makes the battery last longer and it keeps your laptop cooler. Even the total life span of the computer can increase, since the internal pieces are not exposed to the same amount of heat. (Actually my MBP 17″ tops about 100+ celsius degrees when rendering for a long time.) This GPU is more than enough for office softwares, web browsing, and such. It has no dedicated video-RAM, but uses the standard RAM in your computer. A solution which is called integrated graphics.

This is true for all the early unibody Macbook Pros with 15″ or 17″ screens. Thankfully the later models have an intelligent way of switching between the to GPUs without any effort from the user, but with the earlier ones (early 2009 and on) you need to switch manually. It is easy and fast and the instruction is comprised in the the screen shots above. You will have to log out after clicking “Higher performance”, but just log back in and you are ready to go crazy on a new level!

Details here: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-compare.html

I’ve been very exited about the new possibilities that are opening up with Syphon, the new revolutionary open source technology for Mac OSX by Anton Marini (Vade) and Tom Butterworth (Bangnoise). There has been a lot of talk about it lately but it was not until last week Syphon came out in Public Beta that everyone can download and try out for themselves.

So what does this wonderful thing do? Syphon allows applications to share frames – full frame rate video or stills – with one another in realtime with alpha channel. Syphon also utilizes hardware acceleration on the GPU allowing for HD video in 60 fps.

Syphon is both a framework for developers as well as some plugins. Plugins are provided for Quartz Composer, Max MSP/Jitter, FreeFrame GL and Unity 3D Pro. Through QC you can make Syphon work right now in VDMX plus CoGe and in Resolume through FreeFrame GL. The new upcoming VDMX 5 beta 8 there will be a true support for Syphon allowing for even more functionality.

Modul8 users has so far been out of luck since M8 doesn’t have full support for Quartz Composer nor support for FreeFrame GL. However, Garagecube (the makers of Modul8) has been working on an interesting video mapping software called MadMapper that lets you map video from any Syphon abled software. It would be really strange if GarageCube made a video mapping software that doesn’t work with Modul8. During the VJ Tourna festival in Budapest there was a presentation of the MadMapper where they used a special Syphon enabled version of Modul8 (also confirmed in this CDM article). So what does that mean? It means that we probably will see Syphon in the next Modul8 release but we don’t really know whenever that will happen.

To get an idea of what Syphon can do you should watch this video which demonstrates how to take a composition from VDMX and use it as a texture on a 3D object in Unity Pro, all happening in real time.

There has been quite some debate around Syphon and some people doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of having different softwares collaborating. Here are some things that have been written about Syphon lately:

• Sept 17 Create Digital Motion: Inter app visuals on mac opens up visual collaboration
• Oct 29  Udart:  Realtime visuals – open up the cage with syphon
• Oct 29  Discussion on VJ Forums regarding Udart’s article
• Nov 3  Create Digital Motion: Removing the walls between mac visual apps syphon beta projects mad mapping

As a side note, the MadMapper, while only in it’s alpha version, looks great as a concept but as of now it doesn’t seem to have a very thought out user interface. I hope GarageCube would collaborate with Philippe Chaurand (Anome) from the Iduun collective who did a great job on the MapMapMap module.

Toby Harris a.k.a. Toby *spark did a presentation of his first manufacturable prototype at the Visual Berlin festival. He just finished editing a video from the presentations that contains a few revelations:

1. The unit will have a fade curve control so that you can mix from a flat blend to a flat add.
2. It will be ethernet enabled so that you can use several d-fuser mixers in master / slave mode. It also makes it possible to write a OSC library for the unit.
3. It has a screen and a menu.
4. The unit’s software is open source and will be available on line as soon as the mixer is released. This makes it possible to add more functionality to the mixer.

There are still a few things to do before the mixer goes in to production so there is still no release date yet, but “soon” toby says. Regarding the pricing it seems like he is still on track, to quote Toby: “£750/$1000 is very much the plan. If you budget for that, I think we will be in a good place, you might even get a surprise”. So the pig is out of the sack, now lets anxiously wait and tap our fingers…

Link to Toby’s original post. Video by Pedro, photo by Andreas Apelqvist.

I was chatting with Andreas Apelqvist from Starstladd who just came back from the Mapping Festival in Geneva. We had heard rumors previous to the festival about a new VJ geared Midi controller from Codanova that was supposed to have controls similar to the first iPod. This funny teaser movie premiered during the Mapping festival and was uploaded to Vimeo earlier today. Andreas says he heard further rumors that Codanova are planing to release the controller in a month, “but they’re French, so I don’t trust ‘em”, Andreas added. I’ve contacted Codanova about this and they say that they will release it in September. No word on pricing yet.

It looks like it’s somewhere between a touch interface like the Lemur or iPad and a traditional controller with regular buttons, knobs and faders. The only similar product I can think of is Stanton’s SCS 3 system. The layout of the VMX Activ8 is made specifically for the Modul8 VJ software but I’m pretty sure that it will work with most VJ programs. I’m not sure if this controller is as tactile as I want it to be, but hey it’s beer proof god damn it and I’ll probably buy it, or as Andreas said, “you’d buy anything with a midi logo on it”.

Andreas will write about their Mapping Festival adventures within the next few days, stay tuned!

Engadget just wrote about this new projector from Norwegian company Projectiondesign which is a new take on video projectors. They are separating the lens from the lamp and the fan connecting the two units with a liquid light guide. Read all about it at Engadget!

Futuremusic writes that Denon has just announced DN-X1600, a digital DJ mixer with built in USB sound card, 4 MIDI layers and Roland’s V-link. The V-Link enables you to control some of Roland’s video equipment like the effects of the V-4 and V-8 mixer, linking them to the tempo of the music. Futuremusic claims that the V-link is the hottest feature of Denon’s new mixer. Any VJ who has played around with the effects on the V-4 and the V-8 knows how cheesy they are. So if this is the hottest feature of Denon’s new mixer – I’d say it’s not so hot. If you link poo to the tempo, it will just become rhythmic poo.

Instant Broadcasting System is a software solution for receiving and mixing several video streams from cellphone cameras and broadcasting it live on a screen and/or to the internet. It’s an academic research project from Mobile Life in Stockholm under the lead of Ph.D student Arvid Engström. This project has been going on for about two years and I’ve been helping out on and off during these two years. The software has gone through a few name changes during the project. I’ve written about it here before under the names WeJ and Swarmcam.

The solution has two components – a Symbian application that is running on a Nokia N60 cellphone and a Max/MSP mixer application that is running on Mac Pro. During this demo we’ve been using 3 cellphones but the system can for sure do 8, probably up to 15. Each input takes a lot of CPU to process so you need a powerful computer to do it. The program has been tested on a MacBook Pro but it hits the ceiling pretty fast. And another problem with having many inputs is that it’s hard to overview all the preview windows. The cellphones streams the video over wifi or 3G to the computer. The resolution of the video is 320×240 at a top frame rate of 15fps. This isn’t very exciting but with Turbo 3G already here (in Sweden at least) and 4G at the doorstep we can expect much better image quality. Some new phones have a better codec for video compression which also gives better video quality. The software on the phones will be able to run on other Symbian enabled phones as well as the Androids. The iPhone has had it’s video functionality under lock, but since the recent release of the Bambuser app it seems like it would be possible to cover the iPhone too.

The interface has gone over a huge overhaul and finally got some design to it. A quick run trough:

In the left column you have a preview window and output settings as well as audio settings, you can broadcast audio from one phone a the time.

The middle column is the home of the A and the B unit as well as the preview windows for each camera. You can see four preview windows but we were only using tree for this demo. Below are the image settings for the A and the B bus as well as a the “Backchannel” which is a system for communicating with each camera person. The A unit of the mixer hosts the cellphone camera streams. You switch stream with the number keys or by clicking the preview windows. The B side hosts the more artistic side; pre made clips from the video bank and loops (recorded from the live streams). You can crossfade between the A & B as well as mix them through blend modes.

The right column has the video bank on top and the loop module underneath. You can feature either the loop module or the video bank as well as mix them together with blend modes. A nice thing with the loop module is that it has a recording buffer. This means that when you hit rec, it actually starts the recording back in time making sure you don’t miss the action. The in and the out point of the loop can be adjusted and you can save the loops for later use.

The interface could be controlled by a midi controller. We have had the Novation Nocturn mapped for this demo.

So would I use this software for VJ-ing? No, not at the moment. It sure is an interesting technology but over wifi and 3G, the image quality just isn’t quite there yet. I am however very curious to see if Arvid will add more VJ features like beat matching and on-the-fly midi mapping.

This installation at Heineken’s Green Room Sessions party at Malmen, Stockholm, is a was a group effort. Jakob Grandin, head of Grandins Flying Circus asked the Vidiots to set up a triple screen video installation displaying film and photography from a number of artists. One wall displayed a slideshow and the other two video. Every 8th second a strobe went off the movies and the slideshow changed.

The gear used in this project was 3 projectors, a Triplehead2go and a Macbook Pro running Modul8 (VJ software). A Modul8 module, that was programmed specially for the occasion by The Midi Thief, sent a midi signal to a DMX light board causing the strobe to flash and the video plus slideshow to forward to the next piece.

Contributing artists:
Curator – Tony Cederteg
Left wall – Ruben Broman
Middle wall – Mathias Sterner
Right wall – Nakkna

All work and no play makes Mikey a dull boy. I’ve been busy with work and not been able to post for a while. Got some half finished articles just waiting to make their way on to the blog. But some news just magically produce themselves. Like this one: The *Spark Defuser mixer by Toby Harris is one step closer to getting into production. And you can help by showing your interest so that Toby can esitmate the price better and get to the next step. Read all about it here!

To be a little bit more objective about it than in my last post: This is not an entirely new subject and it has been talked about before. That’s why some VJs wern’t too excited when they heared of Toby’s project. Read more about it in this recent thread and this old thread on VJ Forums.

But still, considering the decent price and all the features I say I’d probably buy the mixer.