This is a Modul8 module that plays videos and folders with images frame by frame. When you use a folder of images you are not bound by the limits of the media set – you can use as many images as you like. For timing you have two options:

“Time” which is 1-30 seconds. Use the dial to fine tune.

The second option is “BPM” which relies on the beat from the BPM (global) module  or the (at) BPM (global) module (i prefer the latter, DON’T run both at the same time). If you don’t set a beat or pick up a MIDI Clock from an external source, nothing will happen in the Slide Frames module when running in BPM mode.

“Step Manually” will let you walk forward or backward frame by frame even if the module’s on button is not pressed.

The module relies on Modul8′s ability to treat a folder of images as a movie. Don’t make the images bigger than your output screen resolution. The images should be in 72 dpi resolution except for if you are showing the final output on a Retina screen, in that case you can save them in 150 dpi. I’ve tried using Png and Jpeg images. I use Pngs when I need to have a transparent background and I use Jpeg for photos. You can experiment with the quality settings – you might get away with something less than 100%.

If you have a lot of images to resize, consider using Photoshop’s batch tool or something similar to automate the process. I use Photoshop’s “Save for web” to get the small file sizes. The key is that you want as small files size as possible.

Registered Modul8 users can download the (tmt) Slide Frames module from Modul8′s Online Library.

Areas of use: You might create or download videos on the fly and want them to automagically appear in Modul8′s media set as soon as they are downloaded/saved to a specific folder.

Registered Modul8 users can download the module form the online module library.

When the “Watch Folder” button is pressed the module will check the specified folder (“Folder Path”) for new files every n seconds (“Check Every n Seconds”). If a file is already in your media set, the module will not try to load it.

If you press “Load Now” all the files in the specified folder will be loaded as long as they don’t already exist in the media set.

“Check Every n Seconds” is the setting for how often the module should check your folder for new files. Checking too often would probably take a toll on Modul8′s performance.

“Folder Path” is the OSX file path to your watch folder. It should start and end with a slash (“/”). If you are unsure on how to write the path, just launch the Terminal app and drag your folder into the Terminal window and the folder path will be printed out. This field can not be left empty. The default path is “/VJ_media/ready/” which means that right in the root directory on the hard drive there is a folder called “VJ_media”. Inside that folder there’s another folder called “ready”. You have to create these folders yourself or create folders else where and update the “Folder Path” field to match.

Under “Media Set Import Settings” you can select where in the media set you would like to start and stop importing files. Remember that the first media slot is 0 and the last one is 127. The start position will increase every time you import files so that the existing files won’t be overwritten.

The “Clear Media set” button will clear media from the media set. This function honors the Media Set Import Settings (start at, end at). You will need to press the “Confirm” button in order to complete the clearing process.

If you are having any problems with the module, open Modul8′s script output window (Modules/Script/Show Script Output or alt+cmd+o), press the “Debug” button and send me the output including any error messages marked with the module’s name. It’s always wise to turn of all other modules and test that there is no conflict between modules if you are having problems.

The “Info” button will take you to this page.

Note: If you want to load still images you might consider not using this module and just drop a folder into Modul8′s media set. The folder will be treated like a video where each still image becomes a frame.

Animated GIFs has been the preferred formats by hipsters the last year or so. I thought it would be fun to use these GIFs in VJ sets but unfortunately the format is not supported by the major VJ apps on OSX. So I thought it was about time to investigate how to make it work.

To created GIF Animations I’m using Loopcam, a free app for the iPhone. What’s great about Loopcam is that it has a community and an API which let’s you pull images matching a certain tag. I thought it would be a nice idea if people at a party could contribute to the mix with their own animations. If you have an internet connection and everybody tag their loops with the same tag, let’s say “awesomeparty”, it would be possible to download these GIF files a few moments after they have been created and uploaded.

My first attempt was to make a Python module for Modul8. With the help of a couple command line tools I managed to make it work. The downside is that Modul8 freezes while downloading and converting so I need to find a way to do that in the background (let me know if you have any ideas).

The next thing would be a way to make a Quartz Composer plugin that could do something similar. In that way it might be possible to make Animated GIFs work in VDMX, CoGe, Resolume, etc. But this seems to be a bit harder as QC doesn’t support Animated GIFs either. And it’s not that easy to make the comman line tools work in a QC plugin and you would need a at least one extra QC patch installed to make it happen. And even if I manage to pull this off, these VJ programs doesn’t seem to have an automated way of importing media (please correct me if I’m wrong).

I might end up making a separate app for downloading and converting the GIF animations to Quicktime movies. Preferably controllable by MIDI and / or OSC. I’ll keep you posted on any progress.

I must take the opportunity to plug for my Instructions college, Synthetics, how made the track I’m using in the video. Check out his demo and mixes on Soundcloud.

TouchOSC and Modul8 over Core MIDI

Synchronization of images and video with the beat in Modul8

The Swedish VJ Union has also become a content partner so there will find more content from yours truly on the site in the future. And hopefully from other VJU writers too.

Video equipment is getting smaller and performance software is getting easier to handle. Every once in a while I like to take a step back, drop my fancy modern equipment and complicate things again.

About two months ago I ordered Gies Gieskes‘ Hard Soft Synth (left) from Bleeplabs and it was instant love. This machine makes noise audio and glitchy video patterns and it can sync the rhythm of an audio input. I brought it as a little extra surprise when I was teaching at the Audiovisual Program at the University of Dalarna several of the students got really intrigued. We had it hooked up to Ableton Live and a Peruvian noise synth.

But I wanted more, so I put some other Gieskes gear on my christmas wish list. You would think my wife would be fed up with my geeky projects? No, she got me not one but two little fellas. These are not pre fabricated products that you order from a big web shop. The machines are built on order after emailing Gies Gieskes from his home page and paying to his bank so it takes some effort (especially from a non geeky wife). But with the help of the very friendly video guru it got here in time. You can get the synths as kits too if you like soldering them together yourself but these are a bit too complex for me.

So the second addition to the family is the GVM1 (center) which essentially is a glitchy video mixer which has two composite video and one audio input and one video output. It has really nice lo-fi wipes which can lock to the rhythm of the audio input, and other various types of visual effects. The output is black and white and the image always scrolls since it can’t lock the signal but that’s the beauty of it.

The third baby is the GVS1a (right) which is a 1.5 bit video sampler. Yes, 1.5 bit! I don’t know how it’s possible but if Gies says it is then that’s how it is. It has video and audio input and a video output. It can loop 20 frames of sampled video – to the rhythm of the audio input I guess, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.

I promise to show some video soon but to be honest, it’s not that easy to record this stuff so it might have to film the wall or my monitor. These machines do not send out stable time base corrected video signals so some equipment choke. I’ve spent a lot of time these last few days figuring out the best route to get a stable video signal. Some of the equipment liked going through my V4 mixer but the Hard Soft Synth wanted to be connected straight to the projector with a composite cable but also worked on my LCD monitor when going through a video scaler.

I killed a scan converter in the process, it literary went up in smoke and gave out a funky smell. I was furious at the manufacturer at first but then I realized that I was using the wrong power plug. I’ve been making a good habit of marking all my power plugs with what gear it belongs to but I own a few products by the same brand which confused me this time.

One thing people ask about very often is how to make things move to the beat in Modul8. So I thought it would be a nice Christmas gift to make a tutorial that gives the answer to that question.

I’ve been a bit busy lately and forgot to post the tutorial I did on how to set up TouchOSC to work with Modul8 over Core MIDI. All the info you’ll need is in the video and on the Vimeo page.

I was in Berlin about a week ago for the Create Art & Technology talks and workshops. That happened to coincide with the Shiffihack at the Readmill office so I decided to spend some time there and hang out with my buddies Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud. A lot of interesting people showed up for the hack weekend: Eric Wahlfors and Alexander Ljung from Soundcloud, the Amen guys, Tor Rauden Källstigen from Loopcam, a whole crew from Oktavilla and a bunch of other nice people. Spirits were high and the beers and the Club-Mate was flowing.

I decided to contribute with a little hack as well. To honor my hosts I decided to do a project based on the Readmill API. BookClub is a Quartz Composer file for the VJ software VDMX that displays book covers from Readmill users. You have to enter your Readmill AppID and a User Name or User ID to get started. Attach a data source to the trigger in order to walk through the covers.

In my first attempt I was using a third party plugin in Quartz Composer to pull in JSON data but that ended up crashing VDMX so I had to switch to XML which worked fine.

In the video I’ve added some effects to the covers, all done in VDMX. First it’s a smear and then I’ve used a gausian blur and Bangnoise’s Video Delay with some rotation and size changes. It gets a bit abstract but in the end, that was the only way to keep it fun.

Thanks for a great weekend and thanks to Alex Ljung for the name idea.

Click this link to download the Quartz Composer file for VDMX.
Click here to get your Readmill AppID.

I made my first two time-lapse videos during my summer vacation. Maybe I should have looked up some how-to pages before I got started to avoid some basic errors. The first movie is from the Thai island Koh Tao. We were staying at a resort in Shark’s Bay with a beautiful panorama from our balcony.

The second attempt from bangkok was kind of a failure. I had set up the camera to shoot through the window of our hotel room in Bangkok. I set the timer to start shooting at dawn but by that time it had started raining and all my camera settings were obsolete. It turned out kind of surrealistic.

iTunes2Syphon is a iTunes visualizer made in Quartz Composer that sends mp3 track info as an image to a Syphon server so that it could be picked up and displayed in another application that supports Syphon. This tutorial shows how to install it and make it appear in Modul8 and in VDMX. It also gives you a brief look at the Quartz Composer composition and gives you an idea how you could modify the visualizer to your own personal taste. Download the iTunes2Syphon Quartz Composer source file here: iTunes2Syphon.qtz

If you are interested in learning how to enable Syphon input in Modul8, read this tutorial first.

[Edit:] This visualizer won’t work in iTunes on Lion if you are running iTunes in 64-bit mode. While waiting for the Visualizer bundle for Quartz Composer to get upgraded, the only trick is to swich iTunes to 32-bit mode. This is done by highlighting the iTunes app in the Finder and select Archive/Show info (or press cmd+i) and check “Open in 32-bit mode”. Thanks to Destoke for pointing this out. I won’t upgrade to Lion myself anytime soon.