Engineering

GrandVJ users rejoice! Version 2 is coming and here is the Public Beta already.. It comes with some major changes, some of them obvious and some out of sight, but nonetheless visible. Let’s go for a quick overview.. Interface improvements First of all, we’ve improved the user-interface. We tried to make it even more user-friendly, especially for those using the bit more complex “Mixer mode”. We’ve introduced a simple color coding to differentiate parameters and controls related to layers (orange) from those related to cells (blue). This will help you to know what you are editing at a first glance.

As most of you know, we have been working on GrandVJ 2 these last few months and we are approaching the release. So here’s a little recap so that you know where we’re going to. Two versions of GrandVJ: Next to GrandVJ, we will introduce GrandVJ XT that will have the Video Mapper support:

A few months ago we have been asking our users to participate to a survey and rate the features they would like to see implemented in the next GrandVJ updates. Since then we have taken some time to analyze the results, define how the requested features could be implemented and prioritized depending on the users rating (as much as possible). In the mean time we have been working on the MediaMaster 2.2 update that has just been released, with some new effects and the geometry module, and now it’s time for some GrandVJ development again.. From now on, as we are working on a major update to GrandVJ we will provide several intermediate development versions that will include a few new features, before we release the final update with all the new stuff packed in.

Let us know what features you would like to see implemented in the next major version of GrandVJ so we can focus our resources on what’s important for you first! We have set up a little survey that will only take you a few minutes of your time, if you’re a GrandVJ user it’s your chance to prioritize the features we will add in the next versions of your software. This survey will be closed on September 15th. >> Survey Closed <<

3D is spectacular, eye catching and can amaze your audience.. But unfortunately it was not really accessible to live VJing.. until now! Recently we’ve been in contact with Alioscopy, a French company that develops auto-stereoscopic 3D displays that can produce a sensation of depth without needing cumbersome eyewear and they asked us if we could bring live VJing to their 3D screens. The problem is, even if you are only mixing footage that is compatible with 3D projection you are still missing live visualizers which are, most of the time, a very important part of the mix and which obviously can’t be pre-encoded for 3D projection..

Here’s the last step on the road to the final version, this is the first (and hopefully the only) Release Candidate of GrandVJ 1.2 (RC1). It comes with the final audio engine, several bug fixes and includes every features that will appear in the final version. Read more for changes and download links.. Changes in this version: Quicktime audio playback has been re-implemented as fallback solution for movie files with soundtrack not supported by FFMpeg. GrandVJ 1.2 should be able to play sound from 99.9% of the movies files you throw at it :) We’ve added an Audio setup panel in Preferences, giving the ability to choose both input and output devices as well as their buffer size:

We’ve been a bit quiet lately but we’ve been working hard trying to move sound support from the old system (based on QuickTime) to an implementation using FFMPeg. This is because the QT support is getting worse and worse and we think it’s important we move to a more controllable medium. The Beta 3 released last week on our forums contained the first result of this implementation but wasn’t very smooth or even stable especially with backward/forward playback. The Beta 4 fixes the backward playback bug and relies on a new FFMPeg build that supports AC3. This means you can now drop VOB’s & MKV and get proper audio running… If the vob is 5.1, we also do stereo mixdown. Surf to the forum post for more details about this Beta and the download links..

When it comes to media playback, at ArKaos we always fight to get the best out of current computer configuration. When you are in the show industry and try to find out the best way to compress your content it’s still a little bit of black magic. While some codec are able to compress video very well they are heavy to handle for the machines, even more, the codec that does the best job at compressing while keeping a good quality such as H264 are very bad when you need to scratch your media. The best codec for users that need to interact a lot with the content should allow to play forward and backward easily and should allow to jump into the content quickly.

Fraktus used the opportunity of having the compatibility lab at WWDC to put his synced visual network player at test with Snow Leopard and 6 computers (1 server, 5 clients). The clients are some low end Macs, Mac Mini, iMacs and a MacBook Pro. Here is the result: Ok there is a black frame when switching queues but hey, it’s a prototype :) It’s fully multithreaded so development is moving forward carefully. There are threads for the network synchronization, video decompression, OpenGL rendering and status update to the server

Here’s the latest idea from Fraktus (our Code Guru); a way to distribute visual content over a network of players. Note that it’s just a prototype and will not necessarily become a software feature or product.