Archive for: October, 2009

Working with Quartz compositions in Modul8

In Modul8 you’re able to play Quartz compositions (.qtz files) just by dragging them into your media bank like any other movie. However there are a number of problems with this approach: No 1. Performance. I have done tests and often there is a severe drop in framerate for qtz files in Modul8 compared to the framerate in the Quartz Composer editor. No 2. You cannot decide the rendering size of .qtz files in Modul8 (in version 2.5). They are always rendered as 640×480. In Modul8 v2.6 you can set the size in Preferences but there may be many situations where you’d like to set the size for the individual files. No 3. You cannot set the duration of .qtz files in Modul8. Duration will always be 30 sec. I find that these problems can be solved by following the steps below and converting the .qtz file to a .mov […]

Quartz Composer performance in Modul8

I’ve been doing some testing and it’s my impression that you get a much better performance in Modul8 if you convert your .qtz files to .mov before importing them to Modul8. This can be done by following the steps described in this article: Working with Quartz Compositions in Modul8 I don’t know the reason for this so I don’t know if it’s a general problem or something that is limited to my OS/hardware combination. I’m running Snow Leopard on a 2.4 GHz duo core Macbook Pro. So if you’re curious here are the files that I’ve tested with. I get approx. 14 fps with the .qtz but 57 fps with the .mov in Modul8. In Quartz Composer editor I also get around 57 fps. particleleaves 6 (mov) particleleaves 6 (qtz)

First impressions of Arkaos GrandVJ 1.2 beta

Arkaos is out with a new beta for version 1.2 of their GrandVJ application and that prompted me to check out their software. Especially since they promise support for native Quartz Composer files. The new beta is out for both Mac and Windows. grab it here: http://www.arkaos.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6828 So now I have the beta and since I am a seasoned Modul8 user I thought I’d try and do a Modul8 versus GrandVJ feature comparison. Keep in mind that I have a total of 5 hours of experience with GrandVJ versus 3 or 4 years with M8, but I will try to be fair and balanced. General impressions of GrandVJ The basic idea of GrandVJ is not that foreign when coming from Modul8. A lot of the features are pretty much the same in both apps and I don’t cover those here. For instance the midi mapping and key mapping seems to work […]

Organizing your images and movies with Adobe Bridge

This is a short demonstration of how to use Adobe Bridge for quickly browsing through all your images and movies and adding selected items to Modul8 or another VJ application. Now I know that everybody has their own workflow and preferences when organizing their files but you might find this tip useful if you ever find yourself in situations (like I often do) where you want to create a VJ set from items in your library and you lose track of what you have inside your hierarchy of folders and need a visual way to quickly browse through the whole collection. This tip is a demonstration of one way to use the software – Adobe Bridge has other features like filters, search and options for rating and labeling your media (or files of any other type). Now when using Modul8 I realize it’s better to always keep your media in […]