max_msp

dpwolf has finished his thesis - you can download it from his site - it's called Vidgets: The Development and Use of Interactive, Network Based Video Works by David Wolf (dpwolf)

I've downloaded it but haven't finished reading it yet. he makes cool live video performances using isadora and quartz composer and the music is made with controllers and max / msp. I'd been to a workshop of his the previous year and that's how I started trying out isadora. (obviously he's more advanced than me ;)

I noticed page 138 has a photo which looks like a capture from a video I took of his & Somaya's performance at electrofringe 2006. I thought I had a photo but can't find it but I have a video. and the other photographer in the room was on the other side of the room as I recall. small world.

one of the workshops we did at electrofringe 2006 was on max / msp with Bruce Mowson

our group made a simple max patch which rotated through a few video clips we recorded of people who were in the workshop. we had limited time which is why we chose something simple - so we had a chance of completing it! we'd asked them to say something about the electrofringe / this is not art festival. the patch was basically a random video player. we only had an hour to make it. we had to show Bruce the following day. our patch worked and we were one of two groups (well our group + 1 person from another group) who turned up the next day to demonstrate the finished patch

here's a photo of the attached patch - version 2

Vade's blog has max patches and tutorials for creating glitch videos and other cool stuff.

This is a reply to a post on Stealth board listing the software I'm using most often these days.

http://www.stealthmag.com/board/viewthread.php?tid=6461

yeah gimp is good. the interface isn't as nice as photoshop but it's free / open source and has many of the same features for image editing & conversion. if u were a graphic designer u'd probably go with photoshop cs or similar but for simple resizing/cropping and converting gimp does the same job.
http://www.gimp.org

here's a list of my fav s/w atm (at least what I'm using most these days). I've been playing with a bit of videoblogging so a lot of this is video related. (not in any order)

isadora : http://www.troikatronix.com/isadora.html
it's really cool for realtime video processing. so u could spend hours using it. even if u don't have a camera yourself, just download some quicktime movies from one of the videoblogging sites and do a cutup remix or something. the demo version (which I'm still using) only lets u save 5sec, so to make anything longer, u can just save 5sec at a time then past e them altogether in quicktime or another editing tool. some of the effects are similar to jitter (the video add on to max/msp) but they're all prebuilt so u don't have to write the code. just connect the patch cords.
http://www.troikatronix.com/isadora.html

max/msp http://www.cycling74.com
- it's great for writing realtime music. generally used in art / sound art installations or universities and experimental performances. jitter is the video processing as mentioned above. easy to spend hours using it. though the learning curve is a bit steep until u get the hang of it. I did a course which was helpful. has a 30 day demo. I bought the student price which is $59 for 9months licence so handy if you're doing a project.
http://www.cycling74.com

quicktime pro - www.apple.com/quicktime
if u pay the $30 to upgrade to quicktime pro u can then do video editing in quicktime. it does interactive video as well. and you can add text tracks, html links, link the whole video movie.
www.apple.com/quicktime

freemind mind mapping software
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
- this is great for writing all those ideas down and collecting your thoughts & brainstorming
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

drupal - www.drupal.org
- I use this every day. it's a CMS (content management system) and has features such as blog, rss, chat, forums, user access, stories, project management, images, videoblogging & podcasting support, + a heap more. basically it creates your website then you can start posting information up and sorting/catergorising it
www.drupal.org

if u don't have a website, setup a blogger.com account (free) and start posting info and your creations and let us know the links.

avid free DV - http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp
- it's a cutdown version of avid's non-linear editing software. perfect for home use. has the same interface as the versions used in professional video editing houses so good to learn if u hope to work in that field one day.
http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp

skype - www.skype.com
- for chatting to your friends for free. good for collaborative projects also.
www.skype.com

eZediaQTI - http://www.ezedia.com/products/eZediaQTI/
- for creating quicktime videos / videoblog movies. easy to do text and tracks and interactivity if you don't want to do it manually in quicktime. demo version limited to 5 objects but that's usually ok for small projects
http://www.ezedia.com/products/eZediaQTI/

itunes - www.apple.com/itunes
- for listening to music and podcasts. ipodder/lemon also good
www.apple.com/itunes

audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- for audio recording and basic processing. u could do a track for the stealth remix thread in this!
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

hiphopstarz - www.hiphopstarz.com
- free, basic sequencer for creating beats. it's a very simple interface. looks a bit dodgy but works ok for beginner level stuff. doesn't have all the features of cuebase etc, but it's free. if anyone has another good free /opensource replacement, let us know!
www.hiphopstarz.com

fireant - http://fireant.tv/download
- great videoblog aggregator / viewer. you can also use itunes or just view in the web pages, but this is a separate app which does it also. they usually recommend some good videos to watch / subscribe to.
http://fireant.tv/download

if I had a mac I'd be using quartz composer for video also. but I don't so I can't :(

ourmedia - ourmedia.org + Internet Archive - www.archive.org
- I use this to upload video and audio to IA. it's also a blogging site similar to blogger but looks different. if u need hosting space, this could be an option for original works ie don't upload your mp3 collection or u'll be banned. but if u make a track or a video they'd love u to upload it (free)
www.ourmedia.org

some of the producers here could possibly recommend better audio software. but have a play with video - it's fun. combines everything!

microsoft visual c# - www.microsoft.com
- if you want to try programming, c# is probably good to start with. it's a bit like c and java, but you can use the IDE and create windows/web apps pretty easily.
www.microsoft.com

flickr - www.flickr.com
- upload all your photos. it's social software, so you can add friends and tags, and see when your friends upload new pics, and they see when u do. also good for hosting your images. u can get a free account or upgrade to a paid account if u have lots of pics
www.flickr.com

I've been spending the Christmas break learning more about interactive quicktime, max/msp and isadora for creating music and video and publishing them on the net. Below is the first piece I've created. I went a bit overboard on the effects in Isadora but it's an original piece and I learnt from it so I'm happy with it overall from a learning experience point of view.

How I created it:
- first I took videos with my dvd camera
- then I used DVDx to convert the .vob files to mpeg2 files which quicktime could open. when I installed winamp a couple of weeks ago, I noticed it can display video now also, though strangely, sometimes the winamp videos were upside down whilst they played correctly orientated in quicktime. (perhaps I used strange setting whilst encoding?)
- then I imported the video into isadora, and patched up a storm whilst trying out some of the effects
- I can only save 5sec clips from isadora as I'm using the trial version whilst I work out if I'll use it regularly in future. I'm hoping to learn how to do similar tasks in jitter (max component) as I'll have more control of what I'm doing, even though it's very quick and easy to get things done in isadora without having to know the code. still yet to decide on this.
- once I had the processed video clips, I opened them in quicktime again and joined them together - hence the rough edits
- then I made a couple of text tracks in quicktime and added these in. I tried out the eZediaQTI app whilst learning about the text tracks but decided on doing them manually in quicktime and editing the controls with notepad.
- next, I opened the gps data music patch I made in max/msp and ran it with the soundwalk recordings I made the other week whilst at Mission Beach in Auckland. unfortunately, the mic was picking up a lot of noise from the wind blowing past the mic pickup so there's a lot of distortion. I filtered some of this out in audacity and flattened the audio into one track.
- then I added the audio track to the video with text quicktime movie
- then uploaded the finished piece to archive.org using ourmedia and viewed source on the movie's ourmedia page & copied the quicktime player code here

well, I'm sure there's a quicker way of doing it! which requires less processing and time, but this was an exercise in creating an original piece from start to finish. as you can tell, I'm not a designer or very good programmer either, but I'm happy to finish number one. here's hoping the subsequent efforts will improve and be done more efficiently. I could have used the original unprocessed videos but they seemed a little plain. need to find the right balance I guess..

here's a screen shot of the isadora patch:

earlier this year I did a max/msp course at goldsmiths college. the class was taken by the very clever and talented sebastian lexer who puts on the interlace events in london and performs at various events and festivals. if you're looking for a max/msp course, I highly recommend this one - whether you've used max/msp before or not. the projects by the other class members were really cool also!

I went to 2005 electrofringe a few weeks ago in Newcastle, Australia. I haven't finished going over my notes or posting some of the links to the artist's projects, but one of the workshops I went to was on Quartz Composer hosted by dpwolf. The software runs on a MAC, which unfortunately I don't have. :( perhaps if we get a project bonus this year I might be able to save up for one so I can try the software (and also max / msp }. anyway, I also came across the name dpwolf on the videoblogging mail list and low and behold it's the same person. he seems to do some work with Adrian Miles, who does some great projects with video and interactive quicktime and media in general. small world. I'd love to do the course Adrian teaches but can't afford to give up work to do it fulltime. due to excessive work commitments, I had to drop the Internet Communication course I was doing at CQU. now that I've finally upgraded my (this) site and moving most of my projects online (so as not to be so dependant on my laptop in case of travelling without it), I'd like to experiment more with blogging, videoblogging, podcasting and digital art and music projects (in addition to listing other people's projects on the site), hence, why the blog posts here have now become more personal. I've been reading about and been across these media for a while but haven't had much time to play myself, so that's the goal for the next year (& hopefully continuing onwards).