Content

tagged: video-out

black mens’ minds

having moved from brixton, found myself back there wrangling screens and projectors in the name of art and black men’s mental heath. i helped guide artist / pyschologist stephen rudder approach an immersive installation through his film-making practice.

diary | 14 nov 2019 | tagged: video-out · sync player

small global frequencies festival

to frequencies festival, lincoln, to rig small global. or not, as events turned out, but a) it was a good one, and b) using more video-outs than we used to, a new playback approach was needed. and so *spark sync player, a native macOS app to play out a video per screen.

diary | 23 oct 2019 | tagged: dfuse · small global · sync player · video-out

dream work

to chartres to help katharine vega turn dreams into immersive video. what, years before, had started as sharing some drawings, had got stuck as powerpoint-and-pull-down-screen. kate wanted to ‘vj’ it live to a narration, and she was right. cue me getting onto eurostar with a resolume deck and luggage full of scrim and projector…

the work kate and her peers are doing is actually right up my street. putting the context aside, the basic idea of a feedback loop with those in the room is the crux of the more interesting work i’ve done: interpreting talk, reifying into media, re-presenting back.

diary | 07 jul 2018 | tagged: vj · video-out · resolume · engaging audiences

d-fuser and 4x1024x768

back in 2009, the d-fuser was conceived to mix ‘triplehead’ dvi. it was a direct need for d-fuse’s live shows, along with HD. that story is long told.

then in 2011, the datapath X4 was released. it’s a triplehead2go on steroids, coming from the pro-av market rather than gamers. still, surprisingly affordable for what you get, which is a 1-in, 4-out dual-link dvi box where each output is completely configurable. before even getting to running quad-head, you could take triplehead input, split that to three outputs, and then use the forth to scale that non-standard 12x3 input back to something you could display on a monitor on your desk. i like, a lot[1].

it was a while until we got our hands on one at d-fuse HQ, but we did, and now the d-fuser can work with one too. of course, this has all happened since the firmware was commissioned and plans went to the factory, so the retail units don’t ship with this support. having just stepped through the process for the guildhall school of music and drama’s purchase of two d-fusers and an X4 for their scenography work[2], i’ve packaged up and made good the resources necessary. it’s not quite ready for http://sparklive.net/dfuser/support yet — it involves a windows pc, amongst other things — but the process works, and i’ve even got a nice align grid and 4x1 to 2x2 pixel map and test movie rolled in there.

so - attached is a zip of files with the resources you need to configure 2048x1536@30Hz through your d-fuser and 2048x1536@30Hz to 4x 1024x768@60Hz through the X4.

SparkDFuser-DatapathX4Support-v1.zip
  Align Grids
    SPK Align 2048x1536.png
    SPK Align 4096x768.png
  D-Fuser Controller Setup
    _See support site for firmware v30 and above_
  D-Fuser Processor Setup
    Windows CorioTools SPK-DF-750 v423 with X4.zip
  Datapath X4 Setup
    spark dfuser - datapath X4 configure script
  Pixel Map
    Spark D-Fuser X4 4x1 to 2x2 Pixel Map.qtz
    SPK Align 4096x768 30fps Bar.mov 

i didn’t see many config scripts for the X4 when i wrote my first, so here’s the configure script from the zip in plain, google-searchable, text.

#!/bin/sh

echo '### Datapath X4 Configuration for *spark d-fuser'
echo '###'
echo '### http://sparklive.net/dfuser/support'
echo 

if [ ! -x '/usr/local/bin/vqscmd' ]
then
  echo 'Error: Missing Mac OSX software for X4'
  echo '       Download and install from www.datapath.co.uk'
  exit
fi

echo 'Setting input format to 2048x1536 30Hz'
/usr/local/bin/vqscmd -DeviceNumber=0 -InputEdid=1,2048,1536,30000

echo 'Setting output format to 2x2 grid of 1024x768 60Hz'
/usr/local/bin/vqscmd -DeviceNumber=0 -OutputMode=1,1024,768,60000,1
/usr/local/bin/vqscmd -DeviceNumber=0 -OutputSource=1
/usr/local/bin/vqscmd -DeviceNumber=0 -CaptureRegionDefault=0

echo 'Saving settings in X4'
/usr/local/bin/vqscmd -DeviceNumber=0 -Commit

  1. its noisy fan and bulky power supply, less so. ↩︎

  2. first use of which was this: a bright spring day spent in a dark concrete cellar… ↩︎

diary | 23 mar 2014 | tagged: dvi-mixer · quartz composer · video-out | downloads: SparkDFuser-DatapathX4Support-v1.zip

igloo creative coding night

james sheridan saw SPK-RectPack, and invited me to see the dome setup he develops the tech for: igloo, the company, could do with something like screenrunner running in the dome, and more generally james is a creative-coding guy keen to meet like-minds. well, i was impressed; it wasn’t long before screenrunner was running on the dome’s mac pro[1], and not long after that james was organising a creative coding night in their mini demo dome.

as part of that he invited the london quartz composer group along, and invited me to show what quartz composer was doing in screenrunner. i was happy to talk about it[2], i really like the mix of cocoa for the app, OpenGL + QCRenderer for the rendering engine and Quartz Composer.app to visually patch each client’s bespoke design and animation together. it’s not often i can show what lies underneath!


  1. happily rendering 9600x1080 and handing this over to james’s openframeworks edge-blending dome warper via syphon. the ease and painless 60fps of this blew my mind. ↩︎

  2. doubly so as tom butterworth would also be there, and in thanks for ^1 i could buy him a real — not over the internet — syphon pint in thanks and respect. https://twitter.com/tobyspark/status/433157752073224192 ↩︎

diary | 10 feb 2014 | tagged: quartz composer · titler · video-out · dome · talk

small global: extreme energy

watch, it’s really quite good. an online video is not the same as an installation, but put it full-screen, keep with it and you’ll get a real sense of the mounting intensity and serious subject.

diary | 19 oct 2013 | tagged: dfuse · quartz composer · video-out

*spark d-fuser » osc and a/v tutorial

prompted by the vidvox feature, a guest tutorial video showing vj use of the d-fuser, complete with a demonstration of how you can link the d-fuser controller with your laptops for better audio-visual integration when performing as a group.

http://vdmx.vidvox.net/tutorials/using-the-spark-d-fuser-with-vdmx-with-toby-harris

diary | 05 apr 2013 | tagged: video-out · dvi-mixer · *spark · vj

dvi mixer - preproduction demo done

“The *spark d-fuser lets you cross-fade between laptops. It’s compact, affordable and — after quite some time(!) — I’m now ready to make the manufacturing run. So this is the final prototype, and with this I’m making this video to demonstrate the features and functionality so you can decide whether you want to have one yourself. If you do, you need to order now so that it can go and be made as part of that manufacture run.”

https://vimeo.com/tobyspark/sparkdfuserdemo

the video doesn’t look like the above, but thats how i remember it: a huge amount of faff to get the point of being able to knock out not far off a one-take wonder. you can probably see the time in keynote presenters display, i’m not sure i want to: the afternoon turned to evening and then night, and i ended up returning home when the tube had started up again. note to self: start in a studio instead of trying to transform the office most of the bits and bobs were already in. at least the night allowed me to hijack a reception area, even if it meant ripping up half the floor to find the cabling.

diary | 18 aug 2012 | tagged: video-out · dvi-mixer · vj

change nation » finale film

having worked some magic to visualise the actions back into the venues in realtime, aiming for a positive feedback loop of commitment, my legacy contribution was a film to capture the activity and commitments of the event to show as part of the finale - a review as celebration and reward that developed over the phases of change nation.

here’s the final version capturing the full three days. i’m proud of it, and it shows how these posts have barely scratched the surface. http://vimeo.com/39511237

there’s also a download of the poster image made for this post below, at 5000px wide.

diary | 30 mar 2012 | tagged: video-out · vj · change nation · engaging audiences | downloads: ashoka_changenation_2012__tobyspark_poster.jpg

dvi mixer - pcbs, parts, plans redux

it’s been two and a half years since the magic week of going from idea to breaking a working dvi mixer package and the ensuing dreams of getting it out there for everybody. problem is, thats still in dream territory: where’s the manufacturable hardware or website buy-button?

by june 2010 there was a v1 and things were looking good. it had taken far longer than seemed necessary… but that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. this was a year ago, and this slightly less. so what has been happening? long story short, the software[1] had been waiting for hardware that was perpetually “almost” there. if you’re time-constrained, don’t work with someone else who is also time-constrained; doubly so if you’re entirely relying on them. if you don’t have the skills to make you the master of your own destiny, get on with getting them.

getting on with getting them, for the past two months i’ve been working away and what you see above is an extract from my first PCB design, a from-scratch reworking of what a d-fuser PCB needs to be. i’ve just sent it out to be manufactured and all-importantly assembled up (data sheets and making up eagle library parts may no longer scare me, but soldering 0.5mm pitch FFCs does). if it doesn’t work its because of the design, and that i can work with – and now have some guru backup.

all of which means it’s as if it’s may 2010 again: we’re in “pcbs, parts, plans” territory, complete with corresponding announcement: i will be presenting the work-in-progress at dorkbot london #78[2]. the difference is, this time i know the whole widget, its entirely down to me, and i’ve even secured a little start-up funding to expedite this prototyping.


  1. including the gift of the tv-one header for any other projects out there, and doing some reverse engineering to get EDID upload functionality that plug’n’play would need. props to vade for the insane undertaking of reworking the original tv-one header to have every rs232 command and resolution under the sun in there, not to mention bootstrapping the QC plug-in itself. ↩︎

  2. if you’re in town, come down! ↩︎

diary | 19 feb 2012 | tagged: video-out · embedded · dvi-mixer · vj · dorkbot

festival of ideas » channeled through *spark screenrunner

at the heart of the brain was the increasingly inappropriately named *spark titler, collating all the media and channelling it to the screen. it runs the screen, and gives just what you need to be responsive to the moment without breaking the visual illusion. so… *spark screenrunner?

whatever its grown-up name is, it monitored a fileshare for photos incoming from the caption-shot camera, illustrations and data-vis from ciaran and caroline’s laptops, listened to twitter accounts and hashtags, and, wonderfully, got updates in real-time from convotate, stef’s conversation annotation web-app. a technical shout-out here to pusher, the HTML5 websocket powered realtime messaging service, and to luke redpath’s objective-c library. and via the venue’s many-input HD vision mixer and a quartz composer patch or so more, we had treated feeds from above ciaran’s illustration pad, photoshop screen and whatnot.

it might be that you have to do this kind of job to grok the need, but i really think there’s something in *spark screenrunner, whether its just titling and transitioning between two presenters’ powerpoints or this kind of high-end craziness.

diary | 09 feb 2012 | tagged: code · mac os · quartz composer · titler · *spark · vj · festival of ideas · video-out · engaging audiences

americas cup » six hours and 200GB

providing visuals from 5pm to 11pm was somewhat daunting given i’d pretty much chucked away all my random-gig vj clips a year or three back, they wanted it all america’s cup themed, and oh: 1080P.

well, nothing like a bit of fear to rise to the challenge: rocked it, aided and abetted by

  • cuts culled from 200GB of america’s cup footage downloaded from their broadcast server
  • a few choice compass rose type animations
  • some custom quartz composer patches
  • a live stills camera
  • the dvi mixer pumping out 1080P into their system, but the laptops only working at the (good chunk lower) actual resolution of the screen.

wish I had got a photo of the big americas-cup cuts glitch mash-up i had going on, but then again, it was all about how it moved with the music.

diary | 14 sep 2011 | tagged: video-out · video-in · vdmx · quartz composer · *spark · vj · americas cup

*spark titler v2

and how did those live graphics make it to the screen? i sat down and took the idea of *spark titler from sheep music and remade it as a fully fledged cocoa+quartz composer application. the idea being it can’t muck up: animation designed to gracefully transfer from state to state, participant names pre-filled in a drop-down menu, no mouse cursors on the output, text fields that commit their edits on pressing take… the little details that make-or-break a live application. oh - and it exports its title animations as quicktimes for integration with playback pro.

diary | 04 sep 2011 | tagged: code · mac os · video-out · quartz composer · titler · *spark · just tell the truth · vj

la » d-fuse workshop

as part of the rhythms and visions event, a day of workshops was organised. los angeles visual artists - lava had the morning, and covered the past and present of ‘visual music’ works. mike, matthias and i had the afternoon, which we nailed the four hours precisely with a tour through the d-fuse oeuvre and a journey through our particle production process. the latter was my main contribution, and its a tricky balance to give: lots of really cool stuff – shooting, taking crops, building abstracting effects – but with what can reduce down to a sea of noodles and buttons. pretty happy though, good feedback that the thread was there and it all tied up: people got it.

diary | 23 apr 2011 | tagged: teaching · talk · video-out · vdmx · quartz composer · dfuse · vj

ctm.11 » cinechamber

in town for the ‘what is live’ symposium, and there’s also a 10 screen surround audio-visual environment round the corner? bring it on.

the rml cinechamber is a fantastic thing. yes they have technically assembled such a thing, but what excites me is their focus on content for such an environment and hosting artist residencies to develop that content in-situ.

signal’s live show – pictured – was compromised to the extent they held a free gig at the close of the festival with the visuals resolved, even so the simple effect of the spectrum analyser stretching far around you was eye-opening. the monolake show justified the ticket and then some. while not my aesthetic taste per se, it had moments of arresting majesty, whereaudio-visual sync combined with some immersive twist and you really weren’t sure where you were any more.

cinechamber is a long term project remade for 2011 and (re-)debuting at club transmediale, and so the hope is to catch it again: the overriding thought i kept having was that there finally is the true environment to actually experience the 11,000x1080px ‘dot from the void’ motion graphic piece d-fuse produced a summer or two back.

diary | 03 feb 2011 | tagged: video-out · vj

cynetart » impeccable production

straight on the heels of the ‘holotronica’ onedotzero d-fuse performance, to dresden for ‘cynetart: international festival of computer based arts’. after the experiment of holotronica - more diversion and distraction in the end - this was the return to the real thing, and the chance to up its game with a refined set of footage.

the festspielhaus turns out to be an immense room, but moreso their technical production turns out to be impeccable. setting the staging for performances like particle is always tricky as the immersive effect we are after for the audience is so dependent of the geometry of the space, and at cynetart it all came together. the projection onto the front screens was able to fill the front screen fully while bathing the whole seating area in the spill-through projection, yet without the audience being blinded by that projection’s source, looking down the lens. rigged for a ‘trip’, rather than as cinema.

check the attachment too, the whole space was quite special, not to mention cycloid-e behind us.

diary | 16 nov 2010 | tagged: particle · dfuse · vj · cynetart · video-out | downloads: dfuse-cynetart-setup.jpg

DFD [d-fuse/dynamic]

there is now a mac pro in china running DFD, something that has been consuming my time for a while now. the roadshow d-fuse have been developing is our first big foray into automated dynamic content, lighting and audience interaction, and so without us being there for every gig holding it down with a hacked-up vj setup we needed something that you could just power on and the show would start. and so d-fuse/dynamic was hatched, a quicktime and quartz composer sequencer which reads in presets and its input/output functionality from a folder we can remotely update, and essentially just presents a “next” button to the on-site crew.

what i think is particularly novel about DFD is it was designed to output a consistent framerate, rendering slightly ahead of time so the fluctuations in QC and QT frame rendering are buffered out. i’m not sure is the effort/reward of this was worth it, but it will be an interesting code base to come back to and re-evaluate.

for the roadshow, it is playing out any number of four sources at 1280x576, including the generative, controlled by iPads in the audience and LED balls on stage, audio-reactive core of the show, sending the central 1024x576 to the main screen, driving 10 LED 72x1px strips from the remaining 576x128px on either side, and sending DMX back out to the stage lighting and LED balls.

big thanks to vade, luma beamerz, and memo for helping me one way or the other grok anti-aliased framebuffer rendering.

having spent much time i didn’t have trying to get 64bit QTX giving me openGL frames at QuickTime 7 efficiencies, life saving thanks also to vade and tom for v002 movie player 2.0, for which there is patch back with them giving it the ability to play the QT audio to a specific output.

lastly, a perennial thanks to kineme, couldn’t have gone this direction without knowing their DMX, Axis Camera, and audio patches were out there.

i’m not sure what to do with the code at the moment. it was made as a generic platform, but its current state is still very much tied to that specific project. or rather, the inevitable last minute hacking as it hit china needs to be straightened out. it has been made and funded as a tool for d-fuse to build on, so that needs to be taken into account too. in short, if anybody has a concrete need for such a thing, get in touch and we’ll see what could be done.

diary | 27 oct 2010 | tagged: quartz composer · vj · video-out · code · mac os · dfuse

100 gigs on a system diagram

the iPad-screens interaction isn’t even half of it, though. the project is to be a roadshow travelling through china, a modular setup of stage and staging reaching out into the club. two ‘hero’ videos with dance choreography and interactive props (hello LED balls/), a video feedback piece, a live drawing piece, the backbone of the evening as the iPad interaction and audio-reactive graphics, all feeding out onto the mains screen, duplicated onto any in-house video system each venue might have, with LED sticks extending the video canvas out from the stage and video controlled stage lighting effects.

…it makes for a nice diagram.

diary | 15 oct 2010 | tagged: vj · video-out · i/o · dfuse

dvi mixer - pcbs, parts, plans

another work-in-progress update for the *spark d-fuser aka dvi mixer project: here we have the v1 pcb design, parts specified, plans drawn, and – with shawn multimeter in hand – the leg-work translating that into something that works. the real announcement here, though, is this: i will be presenting the project in full in berlin on the 12th june, so expect to know a lot more about what, when and how around then.

http://festival.visualberlin.org/day-program/
http://festival.visualberlin.org/news/spark-dvi-mixer-coming-to-berlin/

diary | 28 may 2010 | tagged: vj · video-out · visual berlin · dvi-mixer

l.e.v. » this is how every gig should be

aaah, a proper theatre. well resourced, good tech crew, and a lovely auditorium for the audience.

diary | 30 apr 2010 | tagged: particle · dfuse · vj · lev · video-out · live cinema

dvi mixer - sliders, sliders, sliders

its been quite some time since november and nothing visible has been happening. this is a quick post to say that stuff is happening behind the scenes, albeit with lots of delays caused by my spare time being completely out of sync with people i’ve been trying to get things going with. but now the momentum is back, and here shawn bonkowski and i are choosing sliders from the seemingly limitless selection on offer.
being trained in product design and loving this book, i’d have said i have a fair understanding of how much work it can take to transform a prototype into something suitable for manufacture and the real world. but i have to admit, this has taken far far longer than i expected. though now, i think, i can say that the controller is falling into place: still far from having a final, manufacturable, design, but the road to get there is clear and doable.

diary | 22 mar 2010 | tagged: vj · video-out · dvi-mixer

particle in barcelona

in barcelona on a solo d-fuse mission: particle to audio by asférico, refactored down to a dualhead screen setup. good gig: refactoring prep worked out, no nasty surprises throughout, performance felt smooth.

diary | 18 feb 2010 | tagged: particle · vj · vdmx · video-out · live cinema

dvi mixer q&a

here’s an update on the dvi-mixer project; i’ve been through the replies to the expression of interest, am working on some things that have come up, and here are a load of answers to common questions that came up.

CONTROLLER

Tap buttons: This is something a fair few people have asked for, and yes, I’m planning on adding this in.

Some kind of switch to route A or B to the output: Apart from temporary overrides of the tap buttons, the crossfader will be the only control for this. Its the hardware angle of just knowing that whatever the crossfader is set to, is what is actually happening. That said, I understand the concern of guaranteeing a solid output of A or B, not a flickering mostly A and a bit of B, and there’s already some logic in there to only start crossfading after a certain movement away from the extremes.

DJ-style faders: A single crossfader is all the control an over/normal or multiply blend mode needs. When you have additive mixing, you might want the A and B levels to be more than simply what is on either side of the crossfader’s knob. I’m thinking about this, DJ-style faders is probably overkill (expense, signal noise, break-ability and loss of simplicity of control surface), a fader curve setting at the back alongside the resolution setting is what I’m preferring at the moment.

Still button: I’m in the fence but looking into this. Displaying a preloaded still is possible, but then why not just full-screen an image on your laptop? A button to hammer on each channel while mixing live is probably not doable with the hardware as-is. We’ll see.

Single controller, multiple processors: This would fit what I want to do with a v2 controller.

Ethernet / OSC / Midi interface: This would fit what I want to do with a v2 controller.

Fader response time: Currently, this isn’t as I’d like it. Its been fine for D-Fuse or *spark use, but a scratch mixer it isn’t. Talking to the manufacturer turned up a technique that I hope should sort the communication side, and we should be shipping with a crossfader with much better electro-mechanical qualities. Regardless, there’ll be a demonstration video showing exactly the kind of response the shipping models will have before taking anybody’s money.

PROCESSOR

Higher resolutions: The hardware can only go so high. There is a bandwidth limit and a line length limit, so while it can do 1920x1200, it can’t do 2400x600 which is actually fewer pixels. I’d love it to be otherwise, I have a major project that really needs that Triplehead at 800x600, let alone the requests for 3072 x 768 I’ve had! Still, triple 640x480, dual 1024x768 and straight 1920x1080 are such a leap from 720x576. Addressing this seems the obvious next step for a version two of the processor.

Different resolutions: The twelve timings I settled on (six resolutions at 50 or 60Hz) were what seemed the most useful in my experience of AV work. Now bear with me: the processor has stored many more resolutions, but to get the plug’n’play ability I want the EDID info transmitted on the inputs needs to match. The tweaked firmware should increase the number of EDID memories, but this isn’t finite and we might not even get twelve. So as shipped, I haven’t had feedback that changes what the six common resolutions would be. The good news is that they should be reassignable, the bad news is that it won’t be trivial - lots of fiddling at your end.

Dual-link DVI: See above, the unit cannot process dual-link resolutions. There is a bonus here in that single link DVI cables are nicer, they should bend easier and weigh a good chunk less than dual-link ones. The dual-link cables I have are the single thing I really don’t like about the setup.

DVI-I sockets: You get DVI-D and VGA in the same socket, done right. Mix and match DVI or VGA inputs or output. EDID transmitted on the inputs that can be independent of what the output is doing.

Additive blend mode: The good news is that this should be happening! This is supercool, a great win. Also I’d had a blind-spot in not asking for multiply as well, so thanks to the feedback this is on the list as well: in terms of implementation, they’re pretty much equivalent, so the omens are good.

Photoshop-style blend modes: No chance. From my personal perspective, this is where you want to be doing stuff in software, the mixer is there to guarantee your signal to the projector, to give a hardware controlled fade to black, to allow seamless switching between between laptops outputting an image already fully composited in the modern vj app of your choice.

Audio In/Out: I’m not touching audio for a load of reasons, but would like to make a v2 controller that is controllable externally, so you could link an audio mixer with this via Midi / OSC for instance.

Split/Preview output: Its just two in, one-out. If you want to split anything, you’ll need separate DAs. Typically for me this is downstream of my TripleHead anyway, splitting the three VGA projector feeds to have a monitor preview of each.

TripleHead: Any TripleHead is separate to this. Bring your own if you want to use one in conjunction with the mixer. I’ve tested with a TH2Go Digital Edition only.

Latency: As per the fader response time, there’ll be a demonstration video showing exactly the kind of response the shipping models will have before taking anybody’s money. While we’re at it, the processing is in 24bit 4:4:4, so there should be no quality loss because of the mixing.

Internal power supply: It sucks, but its an external power supply for both the processor and controller I’m afraid. I did work through an all-in-one version, but the cons outweigh the pros.

THE SWEDES WON’T BUY A PIG IN A SACK

What a great saying; hat tip to Mikael. Once I have a processor running the tweaked firmware, and a controller representative of what will ship, I’ll make a video to show it all in action, and have the purchasing terms all laid out. And hopefully, you won’t just have my word to take for it… more to come soon.

diary | 11 nov 2009 | tagged: vj · video-out · dvi-mixer

dvi mixer ripples around the internet

well… the word is officially out, and rippling around the internet. never seen so many twitter mentions or positive adjectives next to my name - which is nice - but the real deal is are there enough people out there who want one to make a limited production run from the prototype: its not about interest, it will be about orders. http://tobyz.net/project/dvi-mixer

is amazed from this example of userGeneratedProduct: 1° #DVI #Mixer supporting Matrox/Hd. @tobyspark http://tinyurl.com/yfnt4vh Support!

Nice! Compact DVI mixer. http://sparkav.co.uk/dvimixer (via @tobyspark + @_vade ) Make sure to read the direct impetus for its creation!

the amazing @tobyspark has put together the first affordable DVI mixer. you know you all want one! sign up for it now!

yes you, person who has repeatedly complained about the lack of “affordable” or “digital” mixers, you’re about to get both. So head on over to the *Spark D-Fuser project page, read all of the juicy details, and then hit Toby’s expression of interest form.

So now it is here. Not quite. Its really up to you now to go over to his page and put your money where it counts and order one of these things, custom built just for you. Your support will drive this device into demand.

diary | 21 oct 2009 | tagged: vj · video-out · dvi-mixer

reinventing the city » setup

the performance was to be the newly transformed great north museum’s event space, a big, white, and empty room. standard two layer ‘proscenium arch’ presentation not so suitable, mike came up with a triangular staging.

diary | 02 oct 2009 | tagged: vj · video-out · dfuse

sony ifa'09 » here's how it looks

and to answer the title of the first post, here is the best i can do, courtesy of the freestate photographer.

of course, you’re missing six of the satellite screens, two facing in just out of sight offset at the far end, and the four to mirror that end behind the camera’s position. buts the nature of the beast: you can’t watch a 11,000px quicktime, you can’t watch a 3200x1080 crop alongside four 768x768 crops, you can’t get everything in with the viewing angle of the unaided eye even in the stand. thats what immersive, or certainly surround, means.

i hope we can pitch again next year, impressive as it all was i really want to break away from these big white walls…

diary | 03 sep 2009 | tagged: vj · video-out · dfuse

sony ifa'09 » renders over, how does it look?

from pitch and the day-long meetings to kick it off, its now three months later and i’m actually in the sony stand at ifa 2009. a non-disclosure agreement, a 11,000x1080px canvas in after effects, 15 full-bore mac pros compositing their slice of the 400GB drive image full of particle layers and product prisms, eight screens pixelmapped in surround across the stand’s towers… its been one of those projects of scary statistics, corporate reputations riding on the line and knowing there is no preview, the not-yet-there architecture is the output monitor.

to take a step back, d-fuse won the commission to create the video environment that forms the centrepiece of the stand. having contributed to what in effect were a series of brand films last year, this year was the real thing: together with andy visser’s sound design, creating an audio-visual environment to give a… well, how to describe: something between an emotional journey and a feeling of space to the stand. i like freestate’s vision for the stand, almost as parkland with scattered mini-booths of products, rather than the products! products! products! you find elsewhere.

so its a nice moment to see have mike, mr d-fuse, and adam, mr freestate, in-situ and discussing the finer points of trade-show land with smiles, looking at a stand that pretty much nailed what was discussed those months ago.

diary | 03 sep 2009 | tagged: vj · video-out · dfuse

keane3D

after much shenanigans, keane3D did happen and d-fuse were part of it. no mapping-on-keane-artwork-triangles-with-antivj, no live layered-in-space reactive projections, either of which should have worked amazingly with the multi-3Dcamera filming setup, instead the program graphics. this meant on the day i was in charge of getting the content into the more-than-impressive and bespoke for the occasion outside broadcast rig - always be prepared to reencode everything squatting round the back of a rack of equipment - so always a nice moment when you actually see it going out live from the gallery.

diary | 02 apr 2009 | tagged: vj · video-out · dfuse

multiplicidade » live!

this is during the ‘straight’ performance of latitude, essentially an edit. as i hoped, there was call for an encore and i had vdmx ready for a much more layered, graphical remix. its so gratifying when an improvisation like that goes really well, especially when the time you’d planned to rehearse and shape it was taken with dealing with after effects consistently crashing half way through the updated led renders.
thanks to multiplicidade for the photo.

diary | 14 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · multiplicidade · dfuse · live cinema

multiplicidade » now that is an audience

weird to see the clarity of this photo against my blurred impression from within the performance. having been told there was upward of a thousand people out there waiting to see us, they are of course in pitch black it being a theatre/cinema and i couldn’t see anything… until the moment came to release the secret weapon, bathing the place in light when we got to the buddha-like moment before knocking it down to highlights of the imagery.
thanks to multiplicidade for the photo.

diary | 14 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · multiplicidade · dfuse

multiplicidade » led panels, check

…with the led panels on the side walls firing with my pixelmapped dfuse test sequence…

diary | 13 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · multiplicidade · dfuse

multiplicidade » cinema screen, check

thats two big projectors, a lot of seats and the beginnings of the live setup…

diary | 13 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · multiplicidade · dfuse

barco nx4

the led wall was made of the latest barco tiles, and i haven’t seen anything as amazingly made in a long time. they are like a vision from the future, amazing machining, materials, structure, interconnect… and as a theme of tonight, i didn’t quite manage to nail the photo that illustrates what i saw. but hey. gives faith in the world, seeing quality like that.

diary | 24 jul 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out

blackberry bold à la light surgeons

just finished a week production making the video content for the blackberry bold launch in the uk. while not the first time i’ve made stuff for led screens, its both amazing and terrifying seeing your seemingly perfect after effects composition playing out so big and so bright… any tiny mistake becomes crystal clear. also a test for live camera + laptop, combining band ‘the feeling’ with the neon backing comps. not as sucessful as i’d like, but still good to see and a good proving ground.
we rocked it tho’, with the goalposts changed at the last minute due to a sudden corporate influx from worldwide headquarters we pulled off a really nice balance of brand and bespoke imagery, to the point where said corporate types were overheard talking about ‘messing with the brand’ as a wonderful and mysterious thing: in short, london did itself proud.

diary | 24 jul 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · vdmx · video-out · video-in · light surgeons

geek desk porn

wiimote with 2 diy ir markers + 2 bullet cameras into uncompressed quicktime stream converters -> laptop running quartz composer with 2 weeks of custom coding -> triplehead2go giving a canvas of 2400x600, 18” wide when projected.

of course, qc won’t accept the two streams simultaneously. vidvox worked it out, apple didn’t for the own tool. tsssck.

diary | 27 feb 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · video-out · kinetxt · video-in

ford vj los angeles » cardboard tubes

the wall here is made of recycled cardboard tubes. looks good, makes the environmental message… and makes me laugh knowing the technology they’ve squeezed in for the section with the screen.

diary | 14 nov 2007 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · ford vj

this may not look like much...

but thats an exact 1:1 pixel mapping on the LED wall, which we got to in minutes rather than days. shame its not the geneva monster-wall, but you can’t have it all. anyway, progress. and hello jilt, fellow vj along with olga for the amsterdam motor show.

diary | 25 mar 2007 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · ford vj

vision’r » you know its a vj machine when...

…there are eight DVI-outs. mmm.

diary | 21 jan 2007 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · video-out · vision'r