problem with creating a set of images out of Quartz ( modulated by audio ).

mrpackethead's picture

Hi, first post, cause i've only just got started with Quartz!

I've created a patch, that uses an audio input to modulate various items.. It creates exactly what i want ( well almost ).. Utlimately what i need is a whole set of images, ( one per frame ) of the patch, as modulated by a peice of music.

so i exported my patch as a quick time, and then exported that as an image series. Turns out of course that those images are not being modulated by my audio. I tryed adding my music track into the quicktime movie, and that did'nt make any difference.

What i'm doing is creating a whole bunch of 'frames' from which i convert to ppm files, then extract pixel information from, which ultimately i use to populate a set of channel data for a grid of RGB LED's.. I've created a number of patches that don't require audio as an input and the process works just fine.

Any sugguestions of how i can acheive a set of modualted images, woudl be greatly appreciated.

cwright's picture
movies

QC's "export to movie" function is fundamentally crippled -- it just makes a .mov with the composition inside (meaning that it reacts to live audio only)

To render with offline audio, you should try our AudioTools patch, which have some offline audio inputs (which will work for this use, where you don't want live audio, but pre-recorded stuff)

Give that a go, and see if it helps.

mrpackethead's picture
movie and audio patches..

Hi i had a bit of a play, but i still can't quite figure it out.

i've just been playing with the 'audio-fileinput' patch that i downloaded with the audio patches. Inside of Quartz, it runs pretty much as i want.

If i export to Quicktime, i dont' get any audio starting up when i play in quicktime.. However from what you say, this is what i should expect/

I also download QuartzCrystal, to render my composition to produce a set of images. When i preview it, my composition runs just as expected. However when i render it, to a set of images, every image is exactly the same.. ( i get a bunch of black squares across them as well ).. Is this just a functoin of having unregistered software? ( or something else? ).

Sorry for the newbie questions, but i feel i'm really close!

cwright's picture
exportation

QuickTime won't render it because it doesn't like 3rd party patches (as you said, expected).

The QuartzCrystal problem is due to some changes Apple made in 10.5.5 to CoreImage -- for some reason, the unregistered version only renders 1 frame over and over again (working on 1.3, which addresses this and some other issues) -- sorry about that :( If you want, I can send you "Universal Safe Mode" (a plugin that we don't distribute, that makes every plugin work in QuickTime/Modul8/other safe-mode environments), you can buy a copy of QuartzCrystal, or you can wait till 1.3 comes out (you'll still have the black squares though ;)

mrpackethead's picture
Thanks- Working solution now..

$14 well spent. The registered version does exactly what i need it to do, and its produced the output i was looking for. Thankyou for your assistance.

I am starting to get a handle on Quartz. The 'movies' i'm producing are the start of a process which i use to produce visualisations for a grid of DMX controlled RGB LED's, (16x10).. i've got some perl scripts that manilupate the images into into XML based data which is used by a 'player' called vixen. The grid is used as a major element of our christmas lights show at our home. each pixel contains red green and blue leds, each dimmable, and we can get a resonable pallet of colour.

I've had a look at the Artnet tools, and maybe just perhaps, I might be able to directly figure out a way of directly driving the grid from quartz! That would be amazing, as i think that a combination of a wii-remote and pre-recorded music, would just be insane! I think it woudl just about be the first interactive christmas lights show ever!

Hope you don't mind, just attached some very bad photos of the grid.

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