Running - Leopard 10.5.1 | 2.5 GB SDRAM | Standard NVidia Quartz
Extreme Capable video card.
Sound Reactive Quartz Composition file origination is Quartz Composer
is a frequent diversion for me.
The only patches around I know of that allow for the input of a
particular sound file are considered strictly to be unsafe.
For instance http://www.sf.net/projects/qcplugins - has an older
version of Tiger period plugins which when installed needs to be moved
to Quartz Composer Patches from the Patches folder it creates in /
Library/Graphics.
This will still leave you with the problem of unsafe patches not being
recognized by other applications. It may, however , work after a
fashion .
If you find that aforementioned patch does work for you then you could
run with that, but obviously enough, as it is already considered to be
an unsafe patch it will be an impediment in the future and likely
enough, the present.
I am currently using Leopard but almost everything I'm writing about
regarding the two examples attached also works in Tiger - apart from
asynchronous audio input from any audio file and that I've used the
Leopard Audio Processing Patch- this does work in Leopard but not in
Tiger.
In Tiger you will have to use the Smooth Spectrum Patch instead.
In Tiger QC I used to use the Audio Input - set that to Built In Audio
and then just run the QC composition concurrently with the audio file
with the data from the audio inputs for volume peak and spectrum being
sent to other controllers within the QC file .
If you took a good look at the package contents for iVisualise that
should give you a pretty good idea about what can work under both
Tiger and Leopard with audio inputs either via Mic or Built In Audio -
or any other Audio inputs you've set up with your machine.
Here are URLs for six files - all of them are archived as .zip files.
Example A
http://www.cybero.co.uk/qcdev/AUDIO_EXAMPLES/AUDIOSTRIPES-A.qtz
Example B
http://www.cybero.co.uk/qcdev/AUDIO_EXAMPLES/AUDIOSTRIPES-B.qtz
Example C
http://www.cybero.co.uk/qcdev/AUDIO_EXAMPLES/MUSICVISUALIZER-A.qtz
Example D
http://www.cybero.co.uk/qcdev/AUDIO_EXAMPLES/MUSICVISUALIZER-B.qtz
Example E
http://www.cybero.co.uk/qcdev/MOV_EXPORT_EXAMPLES/A.mov
Example F
http://www.cybero.co.uk/qcdev/MOV_EXPORT_EXAMPLES/B.MOV
None of them have a specific audio file attached - the Quartz Composer
files and the directly exported QC movie file will [ or should ] take
any Built In Audio or Mic input your Mac has to offer , or in the case
of the directly exported QC movie file, it will or should interact
with your concurrent audio.
All of them use Audio Input to effect graphical output and all of them
can be exported via Quartz Composer - but if you want it to suit a
particular type of music then you should run the QC file concurrently
with the tune playing in - whatever QuickTime Player or iTunes -
Audacity -it doesn't really matter - any of them can play the sounds
and the file will interact with the audio.
Example A is just two sprites, Interpolated Positions and Dimensions,
with Audio Peak and Spectrum data being processed into and affecting
the Interpolation output.
Example B is the same two sprites, but put through the additional
graphic processes of 3D Transformation and Iteration. This is derived
from the Music Visualizer template with all of the protocol
information patches like track position , stripped and removed for the
sake of simplicity .
Example C is another simplistic audio interactive piece - just 3
sprites with some audio input and Interpolations of the audio peak and
spectrum data.
Example D is slightly more complex, but is essentially just a couple
of sprites and a couple of 3D Transformations.
Movie Exporting - as mentioned above - you can export from QC - and
you should do that whilst concurrently playing the audio you want to
display in conjunction with the QC file you are then exporting.
As you have Final Cut Pro you could then directly import the QC
exported movie file into Final Cut and work within that application.
If you do run into any unsafe patches or similar problems porting QC
movie output into other applications you could simply take the QC
file, open it in QuickTime Pro and export as a plain movie file. This
will be likely to diminish the resulting graphical quality, which is
why , in my opinion, directly presenting QC as an accompanying graphic
to any other audio your microphone or built in audio can provide is
the best option for live presentations. The level of diminishment
would be obviously reduced, the higher the level of quality you set
your codec of choice for export.
When outputting from QuickTime Pro you will also have the opportunity
to output as a frame by frame image sequence, which you could also
bring into Final Cut Pro.
Due to the large number of frame files resulting you might want to
limit your movie product to being several short 15 second movies, as
even a minute long image sequence can produce hundreds of files.
You also wrote of bumping up the resolution of the resulting video.
Unfortunately, all QC output is bound by the 72DPI screen parameters .
Any images produced by QC shall therefore be 72dpi
You could re-interpolate and resize that in Adobe Photoshop on
sequences of images and possible even obtain some acceptable quality
results in other image and video editing applications.
Of course that does run rather counter to the normal rule of thumb
regarding graphics - namely that bringing assets in at a high
resolution and then outputting lower than that is a better bet for
quality and fidelity - at least usually.
As and when Quartz Composer begins to really exhibit Resolution
Independent Architecture and Graphic capabilities, then all the above
to do with your video wish list will become far easier.
Example E shows a direct export from Quartz Composer - set to run for
1 minute.
Example F is just a short segment from Movie A but exported as an H264
codec based movie.
Example E is far smaller than Example F - pretty easy to understand
why as the QC export has all that graphical framework - Quartz running
for it and Example F depends upon good old QuickTime to as faithfully
as one permits it to , render the QC composition as a self contained
raster based movie file
I shall be placing further examples online at my site in due course.
My advice is for you and us all to experiment and explore.
Dig around in the files you find in the Developer folder and also dig
around in QC files made freely available by their authors on the web.
I shall be sending another mail about the movie files due to size
limitations on my ISPs SMTP/POP
All of the above files do work in Tiger but are best viewed under
Leopard - QC backwards compatibility is checkable via the File/Test in
runtime menu option in QC under Leopard and will reveal that their are
patches that are not suited to Tiger - apologies aforehand.
Enjoy, Explore, Rework, Reengineer or Dispose of - your choice :-)
Peter Boocock
Cybero Productions
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