Timelines HELP!

If I want to control the way something behaves in QC I rarely if ever use the timeline.

Instead I tend to prefer to use a combination of conditionals, lfos and stop watches to control when things happen, or not.

That really does work on time, except when offline rendering, when a different set of 'rules' sometimes needs to be written and a different set of workarounds employed.

My problem is this: I have a composition that I want to have the camera change angles at specific times. I go into logic and see the exact second that this happens. Then I take that value and plug it in as a point on timeline. For some reason some are perfectly on beat and others (say the 5 or 6th angle change) is really off beat.

How could I change angles 12 or so times and have it do it at a very specific time.

You could try using a midi track in Logic to send midi triggers to QC (cc's or notes). For example, midi data received by QC could send a signal to a Counter which could count through Multiplexer indices, sending a different value for each midi trigger to a 3D Transform parameter.

Would that work when I render it to a movie in Quartz Crystal?

Unless I'm much mistaken, both workarounds should work in Quartz Crystal, but only after a fashion; for instance, at present using the Audio Tools workaround method, , and given the time QC can take to render files, the audio might well play out, I often run extended versions, as looping the audio file in QC just won't cut.

I'll leave those on MIDI in & out mechanisms to tell us all about how you [we] can get Quartz Crystal to play nicely [if at all] with MIDI based signals.

Crystal is an offline renderer, that poses different considerations than does live rendering with active signals in sync with an actively rendering composition.

One workaround with the difficulty your requirement presents would be to do a general offline render up to the point that you wish to have a transformation, do a distinct render of those crucial couple of seconds and then do another general render up the next crucial point. Then you are into splicing together the resulting video. Not what we really want, but unless someone has a working solution that's better, I'll run with this one for the meantime.

If you are rendering out, why not then set up an interpolation or LFO + conditionals, etc. like cybero mentioned?

Re: midi, maybe i should not be so quick to recommend that right now, as I am these days frequently having problems sending midi to QC via virtual ports (10.6.3) (whereas, for ex., my UC-33 hardware controller works pretty well). i attached files reflecting typical problems i have with midi in QC, a test qtz + ableton live 7 file that maybe should be posted in a fresh thread. It uses Kineme Global CC Receiver to receive what seems should be a simple cc message from live (a ramp envelope). The signal works intermittently for me. Hopefully someone else might try and report back. This is a typical problem area for me.

Thanks for the test case.

When I get some MIDI out capable soft & hardware [soon], I can give that a thorough check through and share in the pain of MIDI cc's in QC :-)

The UC-33 you mentioned looks like a good buy, but I'll be checking out for other external controllers.

I agree with you that this thread, about timelines , relates to the example you have given, and that your example could / should be a separate thread - to do with MIDI & QC.

Welcome to my nightmare!

I also use ableton to send MIDI/OSC signals to Quartz Composer to trigger signals in a composition. This set up is ideal due to ableton's arrangement view, allowing me to align events in an easy to use timeline.

At the moment i just use a screen capturing software (screenflow) to record the output within qc's viewer.

However the ideal situation would be to record the events coming into QC, for later rendering in Quartz Crystal. Now the historian patch was suppose to do this however i never got it to work perfectly ;(.. however you should give it a go.

An idea i intend to commission someone to build, is play back of .midi files, this way you could input your track into Ableton live, then in the arrangement line up midi notes, velocities, cc, etc where you want corresponding events in QC to launch. Export midi file and load into this Midi loader patch in QC. In essences an advanced timeline patch (think we've already discussed this in http://kineme.net/FeatureRequests/SequencerPatchUpdatedTimelinePatch).

What do you mean by nightmare, itsthejayj? Do you experience intermittent unreliablity sending midi from ableton to QC like I do?

And cybero -- any experience / advice you can offer re: midi and QC, please, please. i have been wrestling with this for a while now. the UC-33 is a good buy -- a plastic box of knobs, sliders and buttons, though only 7-bit. if i were you, though, i'd consider something with 14-bit midi and maybe motorized faders.

The value historian has had some issues with quick up/down keystrokes, and catching key up events. This may extend to some of the issues that people are seeing with MIDI as well. It seems like I've done something with smoothing and rounding... putting no increasing interpolation, but a tad of decrease, and that's worked ok. It shouldn't really have to be that way though.

Another thing that has come up, and that would be pretty useful with V.H is to be able to record structures.

I would load the song with the Kineme Audio File Input to get volume peak and waveform data (use structure indexes to get your peaks and waveform data), and also put a kineme file player on the editor surface to monitor the song as I was designing my qtz - have them both setup to read from the same file path.

Then I would take a Patch Uime, hook it to an Image With String, and then to a small Sprite or Billboard. Play through your song, and use that time to make notations of when you want X to occur in your qtz.

Control+left click on the Timeline patch and set your patch time to external. Hook the Patch Time patch to the Timeline patch time input.

From this point, everything should really be locked in. Again, I would tend to program events based on the time you see in your Patch Time, not whatever Logic says.

Is this a real time thing where it has to be done with the time coming directly in from the Logic app via OSC or something? That's not what I'm getting from your message. I think it seems like you've mixed down your song from what you're conveying.

I wonder why sometimes midi works as expected and sometimes it is intermittent? Seems about 50/50 recently using very simple test comps. Any advice on how to troubleshoot this?