3rd Party QC Plugins

I just realized this, when looking at a thread about rounded rectangles -- you should all know that there are quite a few free patches available as part of the free download of FxFactory from Noise Industries.

They provide a platform for developing video plug-ins from QC comps, and when you install their soft it installs a bunch of custom patches they've written.

Their software expires after 15 days, but not the QC add-ons, I believe.

http://www.noiseindustries.com/support/fxfactory213/

I've just discovered that upon installation, ManyCam also installs some QC tools: ManyCam Webcam.qtz appears in Library/Compositions and in the QC Patch Library. Additionally, a seperate ManyCamPlugin patch appears in the Patch Library. I hadn't noticed them before and I'm suspecting they may have required an initial usage circumstance to occur before appearing. After I first messed with the .qtz in Library/Compositions is when I started seeing them. The .qtz also then appeared as an effect in CamTwist, interestingly.

Usefulness will vary by individual, but the broadest description is that the plugin seems to be able to both bring ManyCam into Quartz Composer as well as to bring QC into ManyCam. Sounds peculiar I know, but that's what I'm seeing.

What's it good for? hmmmm. ManyCam has a simple drawing tool, for one. It can also do screen captures with options for capture sizes and for cursor-following. It has an abundance of effects, although many of them are somewhat common, imho. ManyCam also has a fairly decent face tracking tool (discussed earlier and briefly elsewhere in these forums) which is image-graphics assignable, the caveat being that those graphics need to be specifically hosted in ManyCam's face accessories function in order to be accessed.

Anyway, I'm going to explore it. Both the plugin and the .qtz appear to be set up as image filters so I'll insert them around in my compositions and report further if anything visually interesting develops.