bug

Is there a bug in the Network patches in the latest version of Quartz Composer

mwoods's picture

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum, but this seems like the most active community of Quartz Composer users, and I have a pressing question.

I am having a problem with the Network Broadcaster, Network Receiver, and Network Synchronizer patches in the latest version of Quartz Composer (Version 4.6(151)). Whenever I try to modify either the Port Number, or the first field of the IP address in the settings of these patches, I get a beep and the value isn't modified. I can see no messages in the console. I have tried this on two different machines, both running Mavericks and the latest version of QC. The patches seem to work with their default values, but I can't do anything to change the values.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone have an idea of how to work around it?

Thank you for your help!

-Matt

Apple Network Patch bug

usefuldesign.au's picture
[15:38:53.096]   <QCNetworkBroadcaster = 0x08A4B230 "NetworkBroadcaster_1"> Failed sending string to address 225.0.0.0:50000

If I send more than something in range of about 100-140 chars (it changes the limit on me) the Network Sending patch falls over. See attached two compositions that send and receive until Send patch fails.

Confirmation on SL and Lion would be good then I'll submit to Apple. 100 chars not enough for sending the data I want to send but it's theoretical limit of 250 char would be okay (just).

(Kineme) PDF rendering on Billboard bug.

usefuldesign.au's picture

I've been tracking an bug for months now that I'm going to call a Kineme PDF Renderer bug. There's a chance it is just in the QC pipelines. It seems to be associated with multipage PDFs rather than one page PDFs.

Symptoms & things I've learnt about bug:

  1. the bug commonly appears as a 'white-out' of the image area on the billboard or sprite;
  2. the bug occassionally appears as a 'black-out' of the whole viewer on the billboard/sprite layer that is effected;
  3. the bug can appear as RAM noise/glitch;
  4. once the bug is 'on' comp can be run and stop countless times without the bug clearing;
  5. once the bug is 'on' comp QC can be Quit and Restarted without the bug clearing;
  6. the bug appears with no plugins or patches loaded (from any folder) except Kineme PDF Renderer;
  7. I may in the past have reproduced it in the Image Importer patch with extract all images using a multipage PDF but I can't repeat this and that may have occurred because:
  8. the bug can effect billboards in other compositions not using Kineme PDF Renderer in addition to any billboards/sprites in the compostion where a Kineme PDF render patch is;
  9. making the file via AI eps individual files and converting to multipage PDF in Acrobat still gets the bug
  10. I've tried every PDF standard known to the print world (not quite, but PDF1.3-1.7 with many output option combinations) and no discernible diff
  11. when you have an Editor window* partly over a Viewer window that is displaying the PDF image, even if the bug is not occuring in Viewer a glitching always occurs. Region of glitch/break-up being Editor Viewer rendering a PDF. (Hint?)
    *Editor is non-opaque so KinemeCore must be installed for this test;

Why it matters:

Wikipedia wrote:
Images are maintained in their native form for as long as possible before rasterizing for display. This means that it will keep vector images as vectors when cropping, scaling, rotating, or translating. This allows it to work with very large logical image dimensions without consuming large amounts of memory or processing time. Such functionality is most apparent when working with text-based images, or PDFs.

Despite such praise, PDFs from the image import defaults to a set resolution. When using bit map (TIFF, whatever) they scale up poorly when viewer size is increased (yuk interpolation). Less obvious is the fact that QC also scales down bitmaps poorly resulting in jaggies compared to an optimised image size. I guess mipmapping is a possible answer to this issue — only just thought of it.

Kineme PDF Renderer has dynamic resolution and therefore generally gives a much cleaner edge on line art at any Viewer size, even when just set to a high res output and just left there.

I tried a bunch of workarounds like loading single page PDF files into a queue from the Kineme PDF Renderer output but the bug eventually got me there too.

In the end I just queued the Kineme PDF Renderer output at a compromise resolution for typical display size. Made sure no bug. Then saved the file to a plist with Structure to File. Would love to see this bug ironed out! It's being wasting me ;-)

QuartzCrystal render bug

cradle's picture

When I try and render any composition on my MacBook Pro, Quartz Crystal (Demo Version, latest, 1.4) gives me an error, the error in the GUI is ...

"Failed to create offscreen renderer" (also see pic attached)

I get this error on launching Quartz Crystal in the console (if that helps)

Sep 29 07:27:45 tbook QuartzCrystal[5069]: *** Message from <QCPatch = 0x13BB28A0 "(null)">:\nCannot create connection from ["outputQueue" @ "Queue_1"] to ["_enable" @ "Iterator_1"]
Sep 29 07:27:45 tbook QuartzCrystal[5069]: *** State restoration failed on <QCPatch = 0x13BB28A0 "(null)">

But no other errors in the console on render or on close.

Do you see this as a bug that is fixable? Is there a bug ticketing system or some such I should submit this to?

Sorry if this is in the wrong place to post bug reports. I'd really like to support Kineme.net and Quartz Composer and was trying to see if rendering with Quartz Crystal was able to do what I wanted to do before I bought it.

Are the any steps I can take to get more information on the error? Does the app write any logs anywhere other than the console?

Also, while I'm here, I'm extremely interested in "switching fullscreen" support in applications made with Quartz Builder, has anyone contemplated such a feature? I've implemented it myself in an XCode project, but I haven't integrated it into an process as streamlined as Quartz Builder, and was wondering how I would go about contributing...

  • Glenn

KinemeCore 0.5.1 new installation to system not detected on 10.5.8 MacBook Pro

Problem:

I downloaded the latest KinemeCore installer and ran it. This was my first time installing KinemeCore -- it was not replacing an earlier install.

Installation put the KinemeCore.plugin file in my /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ directory with admin permissions, however the K menu did not appear in QC (or any other sign the plugin had loaded), even after relaunch, reboot, and reinstall attempts.

Solution:

Most of my Kineme patches are actually installed in /Users/MyUserName/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/. As an experiment, I tried manually relocating the plugin there and authenticating. Relaunched QC, and the K menu appeared! So far things all appear to be working correctly.

Cause?

Not sure if the issue could be:

  • Because I have a file in /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins (OpenEmuQC.plugin)
  • Because I have files in both Patches and Plug-Ins in my user library
  • Because my other Kineme plugins are in userspace, but the installer automatically puts core in systemspace
  • ...some other reason.