GrandVJ Users Survey
By ArKaos Team
on 26 Aug 2010 12:00 AM

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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 <<
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Visual Interactivity by VJ Stello
By ArKaos Team
on 11 Aug 2010 12:00 AM

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Here’s an “Apple Success Story” video interview (in French) of Stan Walbert aka VJ Stello about how he’s using GrandVJ and other tools to setup interactive visual shows like the VS concert at Forum Vauréal in France. Apple Success Story : Visual Interactivity by... door StelloProd
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Karlax: the ultimate controller for Digital Arts
By ArKaos Team
on 28 Apr 2010 12:00 AM
  • artist
  • audio
  • controller
  • grandvj
  • midi

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If NAMM 2010 had nothing new for the control and integration of music and video it looks like innovation was in Frankfurt, at the MusikMesse. Yes, the old continent brings a new and very innovative controller to the market: the Karlax. And one of you lucky guys will be one of the first to perform with it! (More info at the end of this post).
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GrandVJ and Alioscopy 3D screen integration
By ArKaos Team
on 22 Mar 2010 12:00 AM
  • development
  • grandvj
  • mac
  • prototype
  • quartz
  • visuals

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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..
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How To: Create audio-reactive effects for GrandVJ with Quartz Composer
By ArKaos Team
on 25 Feb 2010 12:00 AM
  • grandvj
  • mediamaster
  • quartz
  • tutorial
  • visuals

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In GrandVJ 1.2 we have introduced the support for Quartz Compositions, either as visual or as effect. Note that MediaMaster 1.2 will also support Quartz Compositions, so you can use this with MediaMaster 1.2 too (the beta can be found on our forums) Quartz Composer is a free graphics and imaging tool on the Mac platform which is available as an optional install that can be found on your Mac OS X DVD since version 10.4. It allows very easy creation of complex audio-reactive animations or effects which can now be played in GrandVJ (read the previous article about GrandVJ and Quartz Composer). As I’m writing these lines, the last version of Quartz-Composer is 4.0 on Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). In this article we will demonstrate how to quickly create a bass-reactive Zoom/Blur effect like the one you can see below:
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GrandVJ and Livid’s Ohm64.. Even better
By ArKaos Team
on 25 Jan 2010 12:00 AM
  • grandvj
  • mapping
  • midi
  • template

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Back in October we blogged about the guys from Livid blogging about GrandVJ 1.2 beta natively supporting their Ohm64 controller out of the box through Generic MIDI Feedback. Since then, we have been exchanging ideas with them by e-mail and we even met them at the NAMM a few days ago, and indeed we share the same view about how our products should be: open and expandable. Meanwhile we have released GrandVJ 1.2 and we took the time to include a special template for the Ohm64 in this release. As we did for the Akai APC40, this new dedicated template allows even more bidirectional communication between both products and takes advantage of all the control and feedback possibilities offered by the device. It’s just like if your GrandVJ was made for your Ohm64.. and vice-versa :) And thus, below is a new video from Livid showing their controller in action with GrandVJ:
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GrandVJ 1.2 RC1 with a final audio engine
By ArKaos Team
on 08 Jan 2010 12:00 AM
  • grandvj

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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:
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Most popular articles in 2009
By ArKaos Team
on 07 Jan 2010 12:00 AM

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First let me start by wishing you all a happy new year and a lot of success for 2010, on behalf of the whole ArKaos team! Now why not start this brand new year by looking at what were the most popular articles from this blog in 2009 (second half of 2009 that is, since we started this Blog in May..). This way we can better understand what kind of posts our dear readers like the most… 1 >> How To: Create audio-reactive Flash for GrandVJ (1,221 unique visitors) Here’s the first in a series of tutorials showing how to take advantage of the Flash capabilities within ArKaos GrandVJ. Note that it will also work for NuVJ and MediaMaster since the variables are the same. In this tutorial Ben Guerrette explains how to tap into the EQ data to create some simple audio-reactive animations..  
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Using the right decoder for your video content
By ArKaos Team
on 11 Dec 2009 12:00 AM
  • codec
  • ffmpeg
  • grandvj
  • mediamaster
  • quicktime
  • troubleshooting
  • video

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One thing that appears obvious to us after more than 10 years of working with the various solutions that can be used on Mac and Windows to decompress video is that not all solutions are equal. We believe that our users should be able to play almost any kind of media with the ArKaos software and at the same time we do everything a team of developer can to get the best performance on the platforms supported.
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Quartz Composer integration in GrandVJ 1.2
By ArKaos Team
on 16 Nov 2009 12:00 AM
  • development
  • grandvj
  • mac
  • quartz
  • quicktime
  • visuals

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GrandVJ 1.2 now allows to use Quartz Composer .qtz files directly, both as sources and effects. In older versions it was necessary to save them as QuickTime movies with the big drawbacks that it was slow and it did not allow to change compositions variables. We have optimized the Quartz Composer integration in GrandVJ 1.2 so that the compostions are rendered natively through the fastest available interface. Finally, when using a composition as an effect the application will scan the published inputs and map them as effect parameters, if the format is compatible with the engine. GrandVJ can automatically map parameters that are float values, indexes, colors and booleans and there’s one visual input of the composition that receive the cell visual.
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