Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

cybero's picture

QC Music Visualizers depending upon GL Tools do not render GL Tools objects in iTunes anymore, anyone else afflicted similarly?

Was running 1.1 as it didn't stop me from editing and purposing using GL Tools objects in QC.

Have just updated to 1.3 beta to see if that improves matters and will get back after log out / log in .

The rampant failure of GL Tools seems to no end. Or rather, to be precise , it has just begun.

What I found to be the case elsewhere now no is the case at home.

As of approximately 16:30 today, only just begun tracking this so details limited, itunes QC visualizers do not render Kineme dependent assets.

Had found this elsewhere than my machine.

Now it has begun on mine.

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

Panic over , well, almost.

Installed the 1.3 beta, logged back in and voila - the objects are rendered again :-)

Just checked the editing / saving / crash scenario out, no crash, so fingers well and truly crossed, back to composing.

It's such fun making them visualizers and compositions.

Off to make something slightly ethereal yet dissonant - (just the silly mood I'm in now I've got the workbench setup again).

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

We are back here to sporadic crashing whilst editing compositions.

cwright's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

You're still on PPC, right? I think there's an unaddressed bug with PPC + blending stuff that might be causing you some problems (visually -- not stability).

Some of your recent crash reports are actually in ParticleTools -- are you using ParticleTools patches as well? That might be another culprit to investigate.

Additionally, your QC application is in an unusual path -- that means that it might be drifting out of sync with software updates etc. I doubt it'd cause problems, but if it did, they'd be difficult to track down (because framework/application versions would be paired in unusual combinations that don't occur naturally.

On the next few crashes, could you personally email the crash logs to me? I'd like to track this down to see what's going on. A brief description of what was taking place at the time/a copy of the composition(s) in question would also be handy (said compositions would of course be kept confidential).

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

I moved my QC app path a few times. Where should it be?

Presently in Developer/Applications hopefully back where it belongs. Also on PPC ;)

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

Current working setup

1 - iMac Intel 24 " 2 - Dual G5 PPC - now with two matching Studio Displays - picked one up second hand for a tenth of its original price - mint condition - bargain

Networked via an Airport Extreme - to replace the now out of date and off the list netgear router.

QC application, I'd been running a couple of projects, XCode wise, which is why there was a copy of the application against which the projects ran, that is no longer the case.

I am slowly in the process of backing up all to the G5 prior to doing a complete fresh reinstallation and building things up without migrating possible non-Intel friendly problems from my PPC machine, which is what I think I might have done.

Should be clear of this reinstallation process later today.

I shall mail you any such further reports occurring thereafter. Thanks for the invitation to do so

Thinking of making a plain vanilla partition, just to check up on how compositions work non-beta wise as I've found that can be a problem.

The only actual 'tip' I can give about this right now is that I've found if I log in and log out after updating or downgrading the plugin setup, I get fewer crashes occurring.

It also refreshes the plugin base that iTunes works from.

Compositions can be updated and Itunes apprehend these by restarting iTunes.

Plugins requires , for iTunes to get the new version, a log in / log out.

Of course, this might simply be a symptom, but it seems to make a whole lot of sense, frameworks loading wise.

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

Developer/Applications - the default installation location.

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

THX.

I want another matching display (2" thick whitish frame) but they are ADB and my second output is DVI. Did you have a dual DVI output PPC (Later model perhaps)?

psonice's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

Maybe you can get an adaptor? I had a powermac a while back with ADB (if I remember right - it looks like DVI but with rounded corners?) and managed to get an adaptor so it worked with my DVI LCD screen.

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

yeah, not a dual DVI. but an ADC / DVI nVidia setup, so needed a powered DVI to ADC adapter.

You would need an ADB to DVI adapter, if there is such a thing to be found.

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

Over here (aust) the adapters were almost the cost of a 2nd had display last time I checked. Might get lucky if I hunt around some 2nd had dealers suppose.

psonice's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

Yeah, thinking about it I remember it being either pretty cheap (mine was <$20) or insanely expensive, depending on the exact thing you needed. Guess if you need the expensive one it's not worth it at all unless it's some kind of giant super cool display.

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown. - Update :-)

Well, I did back up everything, reinstalled everything and I have finished the day uploading QC Crystal audio video works and such without a hitch, using 1.3, or 1.2.

So thus far public or beta works AOK and the visualizers busted scenario just doesn't happen any more.

I think I may well have to refresh the previously uploaded visualizers, but I'm pleased as punch to be getting output like that from Quartz Crystal :-) .

I wonder if Quartz Crystal can incorporate .m4v, I bet it would do a miles better job than the ugly artefacted .m4v that QuickTime spews out as supposedly high quality web media.

Desktop .m4v, boy it has to be remembered that not everyone has seen just how fine a quality .m4v can be - totally - almost - off topic , but just a pet rant - hate to see primo quality output chewed up by something that is supposed to be doing me a service.

It so thoroughly suffers visually with any complex graphics.

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown.

No, I am same set up as you then. Was powered DIV to ADB expensive?

cwright's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown. - Update :-)

Which mpeg-4 encoder would you recommend? There are customizable settings for m4v in quicktime that we just leave at defaults (I think the QT component settings panel is an ugly relic, but sadly it's also the only interface to component settings). QuartzCrystal also doesn't do temporal encoding (in MPEG parlance, every frame is an I frame. This is Horrible for bitrate, decode rate, and basically everything that depends/adjusts to bitrate stuff.) due to some pathetic limitations of QTKit (you can only do temporal encoding if you have all the output frames available at the time of encode -- so in essence you end up paying for the encode twice; once for the all-I-frame movie, and then again to recompress it with P/B frames (which are smaller/faster to decode)). I've been looking a bit at this, but I don't want to touch QT till snow leopard comes out just in case they've made things suck less...

Glad things are working otherwise -- interesting that a reinstallation made it happy again. Perhaps it was a rogue plugin after all..

cybero's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown. - Update :-)

Thanks for the feedback.

Admissions first :-

Ah, silly me, my rant was about the .m4v - QTPro outputs , IMHO, poor quality .m4v of complex graphics for the web, iPhone, iPod, of otherwise perfectly good renders from Quartz Crystal.

Should really be posted with a growing list of nags with OS X from user interface to some retarded dialog boxes to Apple.

I'd also managed to confuse .m4v with .mkv - a totally different codec altogether - good HD output.

What .mpeg-4 would I recommend? - probably Apple's own, I think I'd just adjust the default output settings for .m4v or even give some better options for creating & configuring - [wrong extension too :-)] .m4v. Basically the QTPro .m4v defaults seem based upon assumptions that we need lower quality due to bandwidth requirements and it over compresses at the expense of graphical fidelity. Audio is AOK, whatever codec is employed.

My work around was to output from GarageBand the audio-video mixdown as H.264 [MPEG4-10] - which you have already covered the base of. [Cheers for that] & with AAC for audio.

cwright's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown. - Update :-)

cybero wrote:
I'd also managed to confuse .m4v with .mkv - a totally different codec altogether - good HD output.

mkv (matroska) is a container, not a codec -- you can put h.264 in an mkv, or any other codec you'd like. (sorta like how .mov can have lots of different codecs -- it's a container, not a codec itself.)

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Music Visualizer GL Tools breakdown. - Update :-)

I have a lot of good luck with MPEG Streamclip for certain re-compression scenarios. I think it was either free or ridiculously cheap.

In times where I've wanted a mix of really good quality, plus small size... I will render in maximum PNG settings, and then compress with something like MPEG Streamclip (or even iMovie, being very careful of settings) to H264. I have Quicktime pro, but I usually just use that for quick trim stuff or quick audio dub scenarios.