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ManyCam plugin patches for QC 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.
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Thanks for the head's up... it occurs to me that over time, I've noticed other demos and apps that have QC related plugins, extra patches, or interesting qtz's, but hadn't really thought to post about it. It's a good idea to get that info out there, because it helps the community quite a bit.
It's probably worth noting that, unlike the QC Video Input patch, ManyCam itself doesn't currently have any 32-bit only restrictions about accessing camera sources other than the iSight. With these patches (and with ManyCam running, of course) you can bring any source that ManyCam can access, which includes most common camera and virtual camera sources, into a composition when QC is in 64-bit mode.
so your saying lee that manycam will let me use my ps3eye in quartz composer. that is if it shows up. i have been using camtwist to pre process video from my ps3eye so i have a perfectly cropped image i found it works better to calibrate community core vision with a cropped image. i will check it out might need your help.
I'm guessing that since CamTwist can access your ps3eye, ManyCam should probably be able to do so as well. I don't know if you'll also have a cropping feature with ManyCam, however. If not, you could still process with CamTwist and then access CamTwist with ManyCam and use the ManyCam QC patches to insert the resulting image output just about anywhere in a composition. Lots of CPU involved in chaining virtual cameras like that I would imagine, but do-able. The fact that both virtual cameras can access each other is kind of cool. The circumstance offers a significant capability expansion of the video toolset, imho.
Another interesting Video Input patch replacement scenario appears to be with VDMX. In my own testing, VDMX throws an error prompt if a composition containing a QC Video Input patch is inserted but it appears that VDMX will nonetheless accept and run a composition that is importing camera imagery via the ManyCam patches.
awesome you got vdmx now lee. i downloaded manycam im going to try it when i get my lptop back from repair.
Yeah dust, I got a little cash ahead and bought VDMX because I needed it for testing. I'm in dire need of tutoring however. Vj Nokami generously gave me the basics, but his time is limited. If anybody who knows VDMX well is willing to put in a few hours to do some iChat screen sharing tutorials with me, I'd be most receptive.
Please do post how using ManyCam works for you. The plugin seems to have some unusual bidirectional image-sending capability to it and I'm rather curious about what others think of this tool and about how they use it.
If we can sort out the time difference, I'd be happy to point you around VDMX a bit. You can reach me at joris[at]hybridvisuals[dot]nl
Joris
Much appreciated Joris! I've watched a few of your videos on the subject. Thanks! gmail>leegrosbauer
Yet another interesting thing; the ManyCam plugin shows up as a video effect in iChat! It appeared amongst the User Backdrop group of iChat effects. As near as I can tell, it's functional. As I post this I'm observing one of my own compositions, live and in iChat via a 'ManyCam Webcam' iChat Video Effect. Wow. Useful.
I have a problem with ManyCam, when I installed this program, my computer became very slow. When I uninstall everything was working well again.
Manycam doesn't utilise .qtz's, thus kind of irrelevant . If I'm wrong , do disabuse me of that misapprehension. However, so far as I know, it's only .mce based.
Besides, is it slowing your Windows or your Mac PC ? Manycam is a cross platform application ; it would seem your solution was to simply deinstall the application.
No more .mce magic though :-), but if it slows you, why task it on yourself ?
I would suggest posting an inquiry to ManyCam itself regarding the potential issue that ManyCam may be causing the computer to run more slowly.
Regarding relevancy; ManyCam for Mac does indeed install a functional .qtz configuration into the Library/Compostitions folder as described in the topic posting and elsewhere in this thread. (I just reinstalled ManyCam to make sure that nothing had changed since the original posting appeared). That ManyCam Webcam.qtz will then also appear in the Quartz Composer Patch Library as well as in some third party tools such as VDMX and CamTwist. I would clarify and agree however that ManyCam does not utilize .qtzs as image filters in the same manner that some other applications do.
So it does allow for the employment of .qtz's after some fashion then, interesting. Mind, I've never found it be a system chugger as previously posted, but I guess that could be down to the bit of kit it was installed upon.
Thanks for the clarification and enlightenment on the matter, Lee.
As near as I can discern, the fashion appears to be thusly; it offers the ability to import .qtz imagery from other sources into ManyCam as well as to send ManyCam imagery into quartz compositions. It seems to be able to do both and it's a bit unusual in that regard, imho. What it doesn't do, as you have noted, is directly utilize individual .qtzs internally as image filters for it's own imagery.
I get an error message during installation for the audio capture .kext. De-installed the program as a result.
Audio? ManyCam doesn't do audio, to the best of my knowledge. Pretty sure it's video only (there's no mention of audio on the ManyCam Help pages, that I can see). I'd be interested in any follow-up in this regard, however.