We’re planning an in-depth test of the new visual vinyl plug-in for Serato’s Scratch LIVE, VIDEO-SL, but in the meantime, one beta tester has already got his hands on it. DJ Steel puts together a pretty clear demonstration of what VIDEO-SL does and what makes it special, particularly in regards to comparing something like Virtual DJ (another DJ product with control vinyl support for video). The demo video isn’t perfect — he calls the product “SLV” instead of its correct name, VIDEO-SL, misses out on effects, and says “H.264 files are less CPU intensive to decode than “ordinary .MP4″ files.” (For the record, that’s basically the same format; MPEG-4 video generally refers to MPEG-4 Part 10, the video compression standard.) But he does give a good overview of some of VIDEO-SL’s capabilities, why the integration with the Rane mixer makes sense, and how this might be used in a “DVJ” (hybrid DJ-VJ) setup.

VIDEO-SL I think is very important, and could yield different VJ styles, for those who like working with vinyl. Stay tuned for our closer look soon. And if you’ve got one on test yourself, let us know your impressions!

Previously:

Serato Video Scratch Software, Now in Beta; Break Out the Turntable!

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Motion, 2007. |
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I was working on tracking down the memory leak in P5Sunflow, so I needed some large input. Well, that and I wanted to dust off the printer from the days of yore. So, what would a ball of squiggles look like when the target is 24 by 24 inches at 300 DPI? Well…

And even the detailed box is scaled down quite a bit. Here’s a neat Google Maps style thing to play with:

Same thing, full page.

2,500 ribbons. The scene file was just under 300M. It took Sunflow about 7 hours to do the whole thing. I have to say, that is a fine piece of software. I was watching its memory very closely. I gave it 2 gigs of RAM to use, it shot up to 908M after a minute or two, and just stayed there. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the tell-tale sawtooth of your average Java program’s memory usage, but this wasn’t it. Sunflow, literally, throughout the 7 hours, didn’t deviate more than a megabyte. There is truly some magic going on in there.

So, I just printed this fella out. After seeing it on paper, looking at it on a computer feels pretty stupid. There’s something neat about huge high-resolution prints. You can so easily juggle the scale and the detail at the same time. It kind of seems impossible on a monitor. That, and anything will look good on watercolor paper. You can quote me on that.

Also, I fiddled with the RSS feed the other day. Sorry if I spammed you.

All of the wii experiments I saw in the past few months were based on the built-in accelerometer: shake, move and create responding visuals. But did you know that it also had infrared camera with hardware blob tracking? Well I didn’t and just discovered it tonight on the website of Johnny Chung Lee where stunning and flawless applications are shown including fingers tracking, multi-points interactive whiteboard and the impressive head tracking desktop VR.
Also be sure to check his thesis work on projection displays !

Via Hack-a-day

Tomas Pettersson wrote a small application, that hit the gaming scene like a rock. SFXR is a sound tool to quickly make sound effects to use in any game. At least Tomas is very surprised about the success of this application, because for him it was just a logic step to write that app.

Tomas “DrPetter” Pettersson is a 25 year-old guy from northern Sweden who has been toying with computer programming since the age of twelve. His first real contact with electronic and computerized entertainment was the NES and from there it has progressed through the classic line of various consoles, C64, the Amiga and finally PC. Since 2001 he studies computer science and technology at the Linköping University in Sweden, but most of his spare time he uses to experiment with all kinds of things from sound synthesis to game/utility development, music composing and drawing. Digital Tools asked him some questions on the SFXR tool, the context it appears and on future plans and inspiration.

Hi Tomas. Why did you made this tool?

The main motivation for this specific application was that for several years I had noted a distinct lack of sound in most LD48 games.

What are LD48 games?

LD48 stands for Ludum Dare 48-hour game development competition. It is, as the name implies, a competition where entrants sit down and develop a game within a period of 48 hours. Everything about the game has to be created by one person within the given time limit, so you’re not allowed to use content downloaded off the net or borrowed from friends.

Continue reading “Tomas Pettersson on SFXR and the Ludum Dare 48-Hour Game Competition”

train_clock shows how the “shape” of the UK changes over the day with the coming and going of trains from Ipswich. Each of the “stars” is a different town, where its size reflects the population. As time passes towns move closer as a train is about to arrive and spring back when it leaves. The hands on the outer ring display the time. When shown the rings indicate distance in time, one ring per hour from Ipswich.

This sequence shows 24 hours starting and stopping at midnight, using real timetables from one day in October 2007.

The sound track is Stellar Music No. 1 by Jenõ Keuler and Zoltán Kolláth, composed from star radiation.

Shown at the Key Arts Video Showcase on Friday 14th December, in Ipswich.

train_clock was built using the Processing language and an interactive version can be found at http://www.davidchatting.com/train_clock this version is higher resolution.

Author: davechatting
Keywords: curiositycollective trains ipswich processing.org time clock UK java
Added: December 22, 2007

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Wish you a merry and glistening holiday season! Ho ho ho!

The always thorough and generally pithy DansData have reviewed the ETime Home Endoscope (”Digital Pen Camera”)

© Jaymis for Create Digital Motion, 2007. |
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Cast: Barnaby Sheeran

big screens show at IAC, Dec 7th,2007

Cast: reBlank

Rob Faludi and I are working on a Processing library for Digi’s XBee Series 1 radios. Direct from Rob’s blog:

The library currently facilitates receiving single sample I/O packets in API mode, and returns an object that contains the analog values, digital values, sender’s 16-bit address and RSSI value. The next tasks will be to receive regular RX frames, issue AT commands and receive responses, issue TX frames and receive responses to those. We’d also like to support the XBee Series 2 radios, which have a similar API structure.

Here’s where you can download and learn about the library.

I’m behind updating this place so here come three quick holiday blog posts. . . First one is just a link to an interview with me on Vague Terrain conducted by Jeremy Rotsztain. Jeremy’s project Slow Down West Side Highway was featured in the ITP Big Screens show, which will be the subject of the next post. . .

it is my first succeed animated bezier.
thank you Louis, she is help me a lot in typing this description.

Cast: basara

前のポストをもとにProcessingで背景差分法をつかったアプレットを動かしてみたよ。F91の質量をもった分身みたいになったよ。

Cast: purosessingu

At the website of the excellent Pragmatic Programmers publisher website I came across a book that’s called Practices of an Agile Developer. The book seems to be very good, not only for newbies, but also for experienced programmers in order to get insight and knowledge of good development practices and coding habits. There is a try-for-yourself chapter online with the weight of not less than 27 pages. It is about coding and debugging and I highly suggest the reading of it.

I’ll point out one of the things mentioned there: it’s a good habit in object-orientated programming to design your objects in a way that they are somehow independent from other objects. Each should only influence things inside itself, not in the other objects. Other tasks should be submitted by communicating with the other objects.

“Tell, don’t ask. Don’t take on another object’s or component’s job. Tell it what to do, and stick to your own job.”

There’s the example of the paperboy, who delivers paper and then turns around the receiver (you) to get your wallet out of your pocket, in order to take the money for the paper. That’s the unwanted way. We want objects, that clearly do for what they are intended for and nothing more. So in this case, the paperboy should deliver the paper and ask for money. The rest is up to you. If you want paper, you have to do specific tasks on yourself and once again communicate with your own objects. There’s much more like this, so best directly start reading.