Would you like to take a survey?

Hey everyone!

We've been working on VDMX for several years now and we'd love to get to know some more about the people who are performing with it and how it is being used in the real world.

There are currently two very short surveys that you can take.

The first is for general VDMX related topics: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/vdmx_survey1

The second is for specifically for the Hap video codecs: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/hapcodecs_survey1

While these surveys won't tell you which character from your favorite TV series you are (Willow) or what your favorite color is (probably blue?) but it will give us some useful information that'll help us decide what to focus our efforts on in the coming months.

Thanks very much for your time!

VIDVOX Workshops at Mapping Festival 2016

Next week we'll be heading to Geneva to join Mapping Festival to teach a few special workshops and presentations.

If you'll be in town for the festival we'd love to get a chance to say hi! Leave a comment below or send us a message to let us know who to look out for, or just show up at one of the events listed below.

On Wednesday, 4th May:

VJing: WTF is it? – a brief history and introduction to the world of VJing and its related fields.

On Thursday, 5th May:

VDMX Master Class – a two part class that will cover the basics of performing, producing and manipulating visual media with VDMX and advanced tips for pro users.

Writing ISF Shaders For Live Visuals – for this class we will look at the possibilities offered by the GLSL coding language to create live visuals (some examples can be seen on sites like interactiveshaderformat.com and shadertoy.com).

VIDVOX at VJ London April 2016 Meetup and Showcase

If you happen to be in London next weekend we'll be joining VJ London for a special meetup to talk about VDMX. They've also lined up some excellent AV sets of local talent to keep us entertained!

The event will be on 10th April 2016 starting at 7:30 PM at the Westbank Gallery (3-5 THORPE CLOSE London W10 5XL GB) – see flyer below, VJ London website and facebook for more details.

Hope to see lots of you there!

Open Source At VIDVOX

In addition to VDMX and several related free utility applications, one of our major focuses at VIDVOX is open source software. We have found that open source code and open standards are especially important for creative communities such as ours where interoperability between tools is often crucial for artists to achieve their visions. We encourage other developers of creative technology and artists themselves to share their low-level knowledge and support the adoption of open standards in their work.

Below you can find links to some of the significant projects that we are particularly proud to maintain and sponsor.

---

Much of the low level code for VDMX can be found in the VVOpenSource project which is maintained by our own Ray Cutler. In particular you can find the code for our MIDI, OSC and OpenGL backends to use in your own Mac and iOS apps. This project also contains several example applications such as the OSCTestApp and MIDIviaOSC tools that are also useful for non-developers.

The Hap video codecs are an open standard for high performance movie playback originally created in collaboration with Tom Butterworth. Today Hap is supported cross-platform by over 20 different applications and creative coding environments.

Related to this, our free AVFBatchExporter Mac app utility for converting movies into Hap and other standard formats is also open source.

Interactive Shader Format (aka ISF) is an open format for GLSL based video generators and image filters that we created for use in VDMX. ISF based shaders now can be used in a handful of VJ softwares, as well as with OpenFrameworks and on the web. Developers looking to add ISF support to their Mac and iOS can applications can find example code in the ISFKit portion of VVOpenSource. Artists can get started with ISF using the online editor or Mac desktop editor.

In collaboration with several other developers, OSCQuery is an extension to the already popular OSC specification, the OSCQuery Protocol makes it possible for client applications to remotely browse a remote OSC address space. The intent of this goal is to provide baseline functionality that other developers may take advantage of to construct impromptu or improvisational interfaces for dynamic environments. Our open source implementation of OSCQuery is available for developers looking to support the protocol in their own software. This repository also contains several useful sample projects and helper tools such as ‘MIDI OSCQuery Helper’ and ‘OSCQuery Helper’ which can be used to enable OSCQuery capabilities in apps that already support MIDI or OSC.

The code for our FreeFrame plugin loader can be found in the VVFFGL project. This framework was commissioned by VIDVOX and written by vade and bangnoise.

We are proud sponsors of the Syphon framework for video sharing between applications on OS X. The introduction of Syphon into our community has reshaped what is possible for visual artists working on the Mac and we are looking forward to continued support of its future development.

---

Lastly, there are several open source libraries that we are unaffiliated with but do make use of in our own work. We'd like to additionally thank developers like Mike Ash, Dave DeLong, John Engelhart, the libartnet team and the countless others who have shared their code online for us to benefit from.

New Years Sale – Get VDMX for only $249 until January 16th, 2016

Happy New Year Everyone!

To celebrate 2016 we're running a special sale on VDMX through January 16th for a special price of only $249!

And as an added bonus, during the sale, students and starving artists can apply to get VDMX for as little as $99! Visit the buy page for more details, or send us an email with a scan of your school photo ID or a proposal for the starving artist rate.

This is also a great time to review some of your favorite tutorials or get started with learning the general fundamentals of VJing.

VDMX 64-bit now available, plus the El Capitan upgrade guide

Hi everyone!

Some exciting news over at VIDVOX today – as you might know the last several months Ray and I have been immersed in changes for the 64-bit conversion of VDMX – and now it is ready for some testing!

View fullsize

How many changes can you spot in this screenshot?

A more detailed change log is linked below, but here are a few highlights and notes before you try it out:

1. The new 64-bit update requires 10.10 or later!

2. If you'd like to keep this and the older 32-bit versions installed at the same time, simply rename the existing VDMX on your computer to something else (eg VDMX b8232 or VDMX 32bit) before running the new installer.

3. Various old movie codecs are no longer supported by AVFoundation. PhotoJPEG, Hap, and h.264 are now generally recommended for use in VDMX. ProRes is also supported.

(For other codecs such as Apple Intermediate you may need to install the latest pro video formats from Apple)

4. That's right, you can use h.264 movies! To get the best performance while scrubbing / adjusting playback rate make sure to set every frame as a keyframe when encoding.

5. Movie Recorder can capture to h.264 with hardware acceleration on supported GPUs. Recorder can also capture to PhotoJPEG / Hap / ProRes.

6. Vuo support! See the release notes for full details, but essentially Vuo compositions can be used as sources, FX, text sources and plugins.

7. Lots of bug fixes, performance improvements and time saving workflow tweaks.

Full release notes and additional discussion on the 64-bit update can be found on the forums here:

http://www.vidvox.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=89089

Additionally, today is also the date that Apple released its new OS update, version 10.11 also known as El Capitan. For VDMX users looking to upgrade their Macs we've written up an upgrade guide to cover frequently asked questions:

http://www.vidvox.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=89092

Spirals and Loops: New Free Video Clip Pack!

Download Spirals And Loops in Hap Alpha

Today we've got a new free clip pack courtesy of Herry, one of our recent visual performance students from Dubspot who was using his motion graphics skills to make his own video loops to use at live gigs.

One of the useful techniques discussed in class is creating several variations on a theme or style to have in your clip library during a live show. This can be in the form of having different color palettes, or exporting individual parts of your compositions with included alpha channels. Often this is normally part of the process when creating clips, but often instead of trying to create several clips, people focus on making one 'perfect' version which can actually be less useful in a live setting.

By having multiple similar versions of a clip you can quickly select the best one to match the needed energy level. It can also allow for creating more interesting performances where mixes begin simple and have new elements layered on along with the music.

This set of clips is designed for just that purpose. Each clip is in Hap Alpha so you can layer them on top of each other and there are several variations that can be switched between. They also serve as a good example of how simple changes in style can influence the feeling of a loop. The intention for a live mix was to start with the simple black and white outlines and then introduce the ones with color, but you can use them any way you'd like.

Here's a few examples from the collection:

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

PS These clips are totally free to use!