Exporting Sound in Quartz Builder/xCode

whoisjonblack's picture

Hey everyone. I find this site incredibly helpful so thanks for existing on it. I have a couple of questions re: building standalone applications from Quartz Composer.

I've built a small music player for my band and would like to put it on a usb drive that we sell at our shows. Nothing too involved and the usb drive would have the MP3/WAV files on it too. Just something extra. The music player is working great in quartz composer but I'm stuck with how to export the audio so it's in the application. Can anyone give me some pointers or send me in the direction of some documentation regarding this?

Second, I know you can import quartz compositions into Dashcode for a safari web app. Does this mean we can use some quartz compositions on the web? Is this true and is it just for safari or does Dashcode make it HTML friendly?

Thanks again for this site. It's great.

cybero's picture
Re: Exporting Sound in Quartz Builder/xCode

The level of support for using Quartz Composer on the web appeared with Leopard and disappeared pretty much entirely with Lion. In regards of using audio with your QC application in a browser, you'd be stuck without end users having 3rd Party plugins installed. Then there'd be the safe / unsafe plugins problem. Quartz Composer animations using stock patches can be supportable via Dashcode and a Mac capable of running the Quartz Composer framework.

from Stack Overflow

Quote:

Plug-in Support in Safari 5.1

In Safari 5.1 on Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.6, all browser plug-ins run in their own process, improving browser stability and security. Netscape plug-ins continue to work in Safari with no modification. However, Safari 5.1 does not support WebKit plug-ins. The WebKit plug-in API is not compatible with the new process architecture and is being deprecated. Plug-in developers currently using the WebKit plug-in API should adopt the Netscape plug-in API in order to be compatible with Safari 5.1 on Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.6. You can find the documentation at WebKit Plug-In Programming Topics.

The vexed question of 3rd party plugins is one of the reasons Quartz Builder was created.

Think project centric folders.

You need to add the audio resources into your Quartz Builder help copy of the QC comp you are using to create the application within.

File paths need to be totally local | portable ./name of file.ext or "name of file.ext"

Plugins used should be automatically detected and loaded but to be sure , punch listing wise, check the Resource Inspector, then sort out the Advanced Settings should you need to. Ensure you've entered all information you need to in the Quartz Builder window then ... Export.

By the way, may well have asked this before now, but what is the little rectangle to the right of the Composition and App name entry fields? Hovered over the item and the answer is it is nifty 16:9 Composition Preview Window.

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gtoledo3's picture
Re: Exporting Sound in Quartz Builder/xCode

Also, try looking at the most recent Audio Tools download on the front page (you may have to check off that you want to be a beta tester in your profile).

There's an "embedded audio" patch that will take audio files, and embed them into your qtz file. This helps in making it portable if you're passing around the raw qtz, and streamlines dealing with resource management some even when dealing with making the qtz into a legit app. It also provides a layer of indirectness around the audio file, making it not immediately apparent where it resides.

Other than that, placing your audio files inside some folder inside of your app, and using a "relative" file path with other audio patches will help load them from folder.

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Exporting Sound in Quartz Builder/xCode

Yeah, that's a well to drop the composition in. It originally would preview the qtz by default, but I think somewhere along the way that was disabled to stop load stall. However, I kinda think that was a bad move, as loading the comp that way can help ensure that all plugins get transferred in a few borderline cases.... I think. :-)

cybero's picture
Re: Exporting Sound in Quartz Builder/xCode

What would be a nice additional feature to the embedded audio file is that it displayed the info of the file embedded.

Currently loading a file is a back panel location function without any updating of the patches' name as one achieves when dragging and dropping a sound file onto the stage in a Kineme Audio File Player patch enabled environment.

Also, though the Embedded Audio File Player patch is great for portability it doesn't allow for switching sound files around by feeding a new path to the patch as the Kineme Audio File Player does.

It affords a certain degree of stability though, for a file centric composition.

The duration output is very handy too.