is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

CliffSchwarz's picture

I am working on an art drawing program and I would like to include a video recorder in my QC program so I wont have to use another program to make recordings. does anyone know of any plug ins to do this

akaioni's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

new Quartz has an export as quicktime movie option in File

cybero's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

old Quartz [Composer] also has [had] export as Quick Time movie. Doesn't help. Export as movie just exports the .qtz wrapped in a .mov extension, more or less. Much functionality lost. Value Historian might make for something of a workable solution. Doesn't really do what you want though. Otherwise this is a plugin that's needed, but not currently coded IMHO :-).

itsthejayj's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Incidentally and may be the answer to your question Cliffschwarz, what happened to apples official movie exporter plugin that must have been an example in the leo dev? Does any one have a copy of it i could grab off them?

This cliff would help you out, but you will have to render everything into a 'render in image' macro.

Also Mirek Rusin built one `http://quartzcomposer.com/plugins/1-export-to-movie' google is your friend.

Moreover Quartz Crystal made by kineme is the dogs for off line rendering!

gtoledo3's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Here you go... this is compatible w/ 10.5 or 10.6, 32/64...

PreviewAttachmentSize
MovieExporter.zip22.57 KB

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Is that the Leopard exporter turned into a plugin? Awesome.... just now looking into ways to record to file (probably jpeg .mov) then grab recorded video immediately for playback. Think this will work?

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

I'm really happy about this plugin, GT. Thanks for posting it. So simple and nice. Almost seems too good to be true. I saw the thread on how it was a Leopard dev example. Where did this come from? Any known issues? Limits? Working well with 640x480 built-in MBP isight, recording then immediate playback on scan of Directory Scanner. Cool.

monobrau's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

I use this plugin a lot!

Milage will vary depending on your system, frame drops can occur when the composition is demanding. It can be quite useful, I use it a lot for recording video loops. And resize my images to 640x480. Codec on jpeg, quality medium seems to be best and jpeg is less demanding on my system than any of the other compressed formats.

The animation codec produces uncompressed high quality with transparency (really useful), but with a larger file size.

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Good to know. I missed it along the way, I guess. Really useful for me. And PNG would usually be my choice for .mov with alpha.

gtoledo3's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

It's a Leopard developer example plugin, with no changes, save for the default build settings I guess.

The main issues with it are that it's pretty intense to capture a movie the way it's doing it (or really, the way pretty much all this type of stuff works, including Quicktime X screenshot/vid stuff), and some codecs have never really worked well for me in real world, because of how expensive they are.

The other thing, is that you really need to make sure to conceptualize "ending" the movie as disabling the plugin, vs. just ending the composition. I think I've probably had a lot of times where I've used it, turned my composition off without turning off the plugin first, and didn't "wrap up" my movie properly, resulting in an invalid file. Doing the disable adds the correct stuff at the end for it to be read as a valid file. (It doesn't sound like this is a problem in your case).

Quartz Crystal is undoubtedly the best way to make a movie file... I really don't think any other technique comes close. This, for me, is because it handles all plugins, lets me choose arbitrary fps, AA, motion blur, etc. It's as close to turning QC into an animation environment as possible, but it's also not "part of" QC, or realtime. It kind of violates real time...which is awesome and handy to me. I'd rather be able to get the best quality possible when creating a video offline. That said, you can always do no AA, and render at about whatever FPS you see in your viewer, and wind up with what it looks like in realtime.

With mirek's plugin, I've had mushy visual results even using the same(?) setting as the MovieExporter posted above, and I've also had stuff just blow up... I don't think it can truly reconcile what's going on in the composition all the time when it goes through that "replay" mode. It's fairly snazzy from a use standpoint. It's an awesome hack...impressive.

The MovieExporter is very straightforward, and works like a lot of other stuff that writes to file... it's irritating that you have to wrap stuff up in a Render In Image though, because that kills MSAA if you have it enabled.

@cwright - I don't remember the answer on this... I may have asked it. Is it possible to put a setting in Quartz Crystal that enables MSAA? When you upsample, sometimes it seems to hurt gradients some (very subtly).... so the MSAA would be preferable in certain scenarios.

vade's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

This movie exporter example does some things very very sub-optimially. If you want fast, realtime recording, use Syphon and our Syphon Recorder app, you will see, I think, close to best of class performance from it.

Using Syphon for QC, you don't even need to use an RII patch.

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

I'm just now getting up and running with Syphon and its amazing possibilities. Great news, thanks.

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

I'll be looking closer at Syphon. I love the idea of getting best real time quality. My inquiry here is all about real time possibilities. More than high quality video, I want to be able to play the last video recorded as soon as possible, with possibility of compositing last with current record.

The nice thing immediately about the Movie Exporter is quick integration inside a QC patch with Directory Scanner.

How can I get QC and Syphon recorder talking? I'm also looking at VDMX. VDMX + Syphon + QC. I'm just digging in.

vade's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Use a directory scanner, so you can see when a new movie arrived, and load / play it.

We have some plans for OSC and possibly Midi integration, so you can remotely trigger records while it sits in the background. for now, its manual (or, key triggerable - I think bangnoise added that.)

bangnoise's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

jersmi wrote:
How can I get QC and Syphon recorder talking? I'm also looking at VDMX. VDMX + Syphon + QC. I'm just digging in.

The QC plugin is at http://syphon.v002.info/#downloads

then Recorder beta is at http://bit.ly/h1cLS5

And in answer to vade's point down there (or is it up there, the comments here always confuse me...) yea there are global keyboard shortcuts (ie from any app as long as Recorder is open).

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Really exciting possibilities. Thanks so much.

franz's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

quote:"The MovieExporter is very straightforward, and works like a lot of other stuff that writes to file... it's irritating that you have to wrap stuff up in a Render In Image though, because that kills MSAA if you have it enabled."

you can use a GLReadPixels patch instead of RII.

monobrau's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Hey, that's smart, thanks for the tip!

gtoledo3's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

@ franz - good point. Ever since the GL Read Pixel color texture got a little weird in SL (eg., you can't draw on top of the scene), I stopped using it much, but it makes no difference here I would guess.

@vade - that syphon recorder is awesome; just tried it. I've only tried the OpenGL setting, but I was pretty darn happy with some initial results on something that's usually horrible with other screen captures. That IO turned out to be Cool-O.

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Yeah, the Syphon Recorder is really promising. GT, what IO do you refer to?

jersmi's picture
Re: is there a way to insert a record video recorder in QC

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.