Quartz Crystal Question

whoisjonblack's picture

Forgive me for being a novice at this and I'm hoping I can get some direction here.

My terminology may not be exact but let me describe what I'm wanting and what I'm getting with Quartz Crystal.

I have a audio-reactive composition that I'd like to record as one 4:30 movie then take it to final cut, line up the audio and add some additional textures.

I've attached my Quartz Crystal settings. When I hit render and play the song it does render the .qtz as a movie but it's not the length of the song. It's only about 1/3 of the song length.

Is it the duration or the framerate?

Any pointers would be helpful or if I'm doing it all wrong please give me some steps to accomplish what I'm wanting to do.

Thanks so much!

PreviewAttachmentSize
quartzcrystalsettings.jpg
quartzcrystalsettings.jpg107.05 KB

cybero's picture
Re: Quartz Crystal Question

I can't reproduce the problem. The settings are all good BTW, should render to the time frame set. Not specifically related, but worth mentioning - Try H.264 codec. Set Antialiasing to 2 and Motion Blur to 2.

Are you using Audio Tools? If so sample the data but don't play the file, just use File Input or Embedded File Input patches.

See attached example, it is a stripped down version of a composition that was used to offline render the following

The output render from Quartz Crystal exactly matched the time of the music file that was entered into the settings.

PreviewAttachmentSize
AudioFileInputCrystalExemplar.qtz92.69 KB

jersmi's picture
Re: Quartz Crystal Question

You might try Syphon recorder, too.

whoisjonblack's picture
Re: Quartz Crystal Question

I'm still messing with this but the Audio Tools have been very helpful.

I could use Soundflower but I'm running a Pro Tools set up and it's not playing nice.

I'll keep tinkering. Thanks so far for the help!

cybero's picture
Re: Quartz Crystal Question

Soundflower has a bit of a sketchy capability in Lion. Sound as a pound pre Lion. Kineme Audio Tools now lets you embed your audio file. Give that a try and offline render in a 'mute' state, simply sampling the audio data sequentially and resynchronise with the audio later. Screenium is given to saving video either longer or shorter than the time of the audio track, something that could be sorted by re-timing the video track. This problem got worse in Lion. Snapz Pro works very well. Wish I'd installed that instead , to be honest. My method is basically to not rely in Lion on Soundflower, but to rely upon Kineme Audio Tools and to offline render in a mute state in Quartz Crystal and then to resynchronise in take your choice, iMovie, Garageband, etc. You are running a Pro Tools MIDI sequencing setup. Actually, although I can see the performance advantage, I rather think that making an offline renderable, non Pro Tools dependent composition might help avoid any possible breakdowns.