• Extended movie playback functions
• Video Inputs
• MIDI/OSC Talkback
• Media Banks
• Enhanced Sliders
• Momentary control of Buttons with Key/MIDI/OSC bindings
• From this version CoGe can update and install new modules within a release

Grab it by using the built-in updated, or from the brand new CoGe website! The complete changelog can be found on the forum.

Have a nice weekend, and have lot of funs with the app, and as always, let me know if you run into any issues!

So after the 1.2.1 release, I started designing and developing a custom plugin for Quartz Composer – since CoGe plays media files through QC – which uses the QTKit and Quicktime frameworks, makes those functions working and well, implements a kind of talkback with CoGe. After spending almost one hundred hours on development, I came up with a solution, yay!

In CoGe 1.3, you’ll meet this new movie Player module, with the name CoGeMovie, and it has the following functions:

• plays the audio channel of movies
• you can select the destination audio device, ie. audio routing
• adds a slider for view and control movies current position (playhead)
• loop, mirrored loop functions, also no loop function with hold blank/last frame at loops end, or trigger next slot
• start a loop from the last played position on trigger
• stretch-from-bpm-to-bpm

Better the see it in action:

That’s all for now guys, hope you found this useful, and wanna try it yourself tomorrow, after CoGe 1.3 will be released!

Tip of the day #1: Quartz Composer supports animated gifs.

Indeed, and in two different ways. First of all, you can access all the frames of an animated gif. To do that, simple load it with an Image Importer patch, and check on Extract All Images on the Inspector of the patch. This way the patch will create a structure type output, and you can access individual frames via Structure Index Member patches.

Extract images from an animated gif

The second option is much more useful. You can playback animated gifs as well! You just need to use them like video files, so load them with Movie Importer instead of Image Importer! The video below demonstrates the magic:

Tip of the day #2: CoGe supports animated gifs…

since the software uses Quartz Composer for media playback. You just need to use a Movie Player module for playback instead of a Still Image player. The best way is just set it up in Auto Player Select introduced in CoGe 1.2, the video below demonstrates this technique:

That’s all. Thanks the great example gifs  for Pixelnoizz!
If you experience problems with this in Quartz Composer, you may need to install the good old Quicktime Player 7, haven’t tested without it.

So, I’m very happy to announce the Video Input gadget, a new, Quicktime-based layer source  in CoGe 1.3. 

A Video Input gadget in CoGe

The VideoInput Gadget in CoGe supports the use of Quicktime-compatible video input devices (connected via USB, FireWire, PCI or Thunderbolt) such as (web)cams, digitizers and capture cards as a Layer Source. A VideoInput Gadget has its own Syphon Server like any other Layer Sources in CoGe.

Video Input gadgets in action

That’s all folks, for now, CoGe 1.3 will be released at the weekend!

How does it work?

The concept is pretty easy: if an interface element, a slider for example, changing its value by a control module, or by your mouse, CoGe checks out if you did map a MIDI or OSC control for it, and if you did, the app will send a MIDI or OSC message to output MIDI/OSC port(s). When a device got the message, and it could handle it, it will react – in other words: lights turning on!

MIDI Preferences

What you only need to do is enable Talkback function in MIDI or OSC preferences. The MIDI section of Preferences pane is something new. Here you can set up the behavior of the MIDI signal sending (Manual or Talkback), and it also has a section where you can  enable and disable MIDI endpoints, both inputs and outputs. I think this is also a great addition for people working with multiple MIDI devices.

So, back to the topic. After you enabled Talkback, the stuff is pretty simple. If you did map an interface element – slider, button, media slot, etc. – and do an action with it, the Talkback function just doing its job: sending MIDI/OSC messages back to devices.

+1 function: Showing up what senders doing!

Show MIDI Senders function in action

If you ever used CoGe to control Live, Max/MSP or something else, you know after a while is pretty hard to recognize the MIDI/OSC sending enabled items on the interface. But it was hard just till now! I added two new items to the Outputs menu to show up enabled MIDI and OSC senders. If one of those functions is enabled,  a blue background will show up on the sender item, with some information about the message its sending – channel, CC or Note number and the value! Much better, isn’t it?

Let me show it in action!

Here is a little video demonstrating  the things you just read about. First, how to work with MIDI Talkback, then some examples, and finally the new function for showing enabled senders.

That’s all folks, for now. Keep your eyes on the blog, I will write one more teaser-ish post, then release CoGe 1.3 next week!

Sliders for setting Current Value syncing-source on a Sequencer

Here we go, an other teaser-ish post for the weekend, about some lightweight improvements in the upcoming CoGe 1.3, and all related to sliders. Because I love sliders, you know?

Facts:

• Sliders in CoGe 1.3 displays their current value with numbers on the right side.
• Sliders can invert their controlling value in CoGe 1.3. This means if you turning a MIDI knob assigned to the slider tothe right for example, the slider will turn to the left – if inverting is enabled.
  
  

  Menu item for invert controlling value of a slier

• There are new sliders on Sequencers,  for sending values also with a trigger. Other sliders can use this value as a syncing-source.
• A special new slider is available for Player modules which can talkback with the QC composition – in other words, a Player module can control it. Very useful for displaying and controlling movie files playhead.

That’s all folk, for now! Next week I’ll show you the big hitters in CoGe 1.3!

See the Media Bank buttons above the Media Slots

Since the release of the new 1.3 version of CoGe is pretty close, it’s time to release some informations about the upcoming release.

CoGe 1.3 will be a huge and very important release, over 20 new features and many bug-fixes – as always some of changes and features are bigger, and some are lesser.  Can’t say any promising about the exact release date yet, but around end of April or start of May. As always, its a free update for existing customers. The official website will get a new dress as well, but its an other story.

I start  leaking information now, by introducing one of the new features of the upcoming CoGe 1.3 : Media Banks.

The facts on Media Banks:

• Media Banks are group of Media Slot contents
• A Media Bank holds content for 16 Media Slots
• Each ClipSynths have 16 Media Banks
• Switching between Media Banks is just a click
• Switching between Media Banks is fast
• Switching between Media Banks just replaces the content on the Media Slots, won’t mess around Key/MIDI/OSC bindings

That’s all. Its a simple, but a very useful thing. Hard to explain it more in text – see it in action in the following little demo video:

Hint: there are some other new things in the video – if you pay attention to the details.

That’s all, folks – for now!

VJ Diablos and VJ Forum International are organizing a four-day expo with workshops and performances, as part of the „Space VJ Meeting Poland” series by VJ Diablos.

This time VJ DIABLOS’ idea was to prepare a small
party@small club with one VJ and one DJ, but BJORN SAMSON (VJ Forum International, Dizzy&Woozy) offered help so this event is international now, lets get started!

Are you ready to show your skills in an amazing location?
VJ Diablos invites us to the Planetarium in Olsztyn, from 1st of March till 4th of March (4day event), where we can connect our favourite toys to some projectors and all share an extraordinary moment by doing what we like.”

The event, and the workshop is FREE, and the place looks like amazing! We are looking forward to meet you in Olsztyn, Poland this weekend!

More info:
CoGe workshop  event on Facebook
Space VJ Meeting Poland on Facebook
Space VJ Meeting Official Website 

• adds a new isActive parameter, for toggle the rendering on/off
• removes the restriction of the maximum rendering size
• fixes a page loading, and some other minor issues

If you missed this plugin, and you are familiar with Quartz Composer, you definitely give some attention to this plugin: it uses the WebKit engine to rendering web pages to texture (transparency supported), including Java and Flash (Adobe Flash plugin needs to be installed) content, also supports mouse interaction (you can scroll, click, etc.), also have a mini built-in web-browser window to make browsing easier. You can pass Javascript to the webpage and the plugin also make a structure for you with the images used on the current site. Sounds great, isn’t is?

Here is an – bit old – example video showing the plugin in action:

An other example, where George Toledo shows how simple is using Three.js - a super Javascript 3D engine - with CoGeWebkit in Quartz Composer:

And finally an other – old – example using Youtube’s JS API to control playback of a video on Youtube with CoGeWebKit plugin:

Disable Hardware acceleration

However, with Flash plugin 11 or greater, you must disable hardware acceleration in the Flash plugin preferences (right-click on a Flash content in Safari and choose settings) to make it working!

That’s all for now, folks! Grab the CoGeWebKit Quartz Composer plugin and try yourself, and check out the forum on CoGe site for some other examples!

Grab it from the project’s site, an example composition also available: http://code.google.com/p/cogetextfilereader/