News: Guru Session on Summer Holiday, Features Heading into the Fall, and Big Sur

[laurentR]

Dear Mark, I want to join the thanking ( is that really english? ) about your Guru sessions. I have followed many of them with enthusiasm, since it was like you just choose the topics following all my dreams and near future needs :-) : GLSL, NDI, 3D, Midi, and many others that make me learn some new ways of building a project, after… around 12 years using your great software in most of my work! It was also a real pleasure, as a french guy, to listen to your very clear english...
I wish you the best for the future and look forward to the future Isadora wonders!

PS : I also will continue to promote Isa around me in theaters, as I alway do, specially when they start to speak about this M.....n software I dislike! :-))

[vjw]

Dear Mark,

The guru sessions have been fabulous!  Thank you.

I promote Isadora to everyone.

Valerie

[Woland]

@juriaan said:

Perhaps it is time that we do summer sessions with some members from the community and show our complex patches / show our shows behind the scenes / build some patches live on YouTube ?

 I'd love that

[crystalhorizon]

@juriaan Great idea  Following 

[Demetri79]

@mark , thanks so much for the update and all the great guru sessions.. we have plenty to be inspired by:) glad to hear about the updates in the works. For me as a longtime user of isadora since 2007 one thing I value most is backward compatibility. I have spent many years developing on isadora and really need my creations to continue to function through the new versions more than any thing else. New features are much desired but if previous functionality cease to work or become unstable that is a real killer. I am loving all the recent improvements and looking forward to the planned ones and will continue to spread the word to other artists out here in LA. I just really hope my creations relying heavily on CI and QTZ won't have to be abandon but I understand apple moving to ARM is a huge unknown and will be a major hurdle. thanks again. D

[bonemap]

@juriaan

Hi, Great idea! I would love to learn more from users willing to share their processes, patches and prowess!

Best Wishes

Russell

[mark]

@demetri79 said:

I just really hope my creations relying heavily on CI and QTZ won't have to be abandon

Quartz Composer (QTZ) was deprecated for Catalina, meaning Apple intends to remove it. My understanding at the moment is that Quartz Composer is removed from Big Sur. I am not sure about Core Image. I should be able to find out once I get the main Isadora app to produce images again in Big Sur.

Best Wishes,
Mark

[DanielPineiro]

Thank you so much Marck for all these inspiring Guru sessions. If there was anything good about this confinement, it was the possibility of learning so much about Isadora and its infinite possibilities.

Health and luck for everybody!Daniel

[nandada]

Thanks so much for the wonderful Guru Sessions. I've learned so much and they have helped to save my sanity. Thanks also for anticipating the need for a remote performance platform. Building out my version of that has also saved my sanity and allowed me to sustain the collaborations that are at the heart of my work. I'm always bragging about Isadora. Hopefully that has brought you a few new customers. Good luck and have fun with all the new programming!

[Woland]

@demetri79 said:

I have spent many years developing on isadora and really need my creations to continue to function through the new versions more than any thing else.

If you have work that depends on infrastructure is using old (essentially Isadora 1) features like QC and CI actors which are not terribly efficient, it's best to create a computer setup that's "frozen in time" that you know works for that old setup. Using QC and CI actors really isn't really the recommended workflow anymore unfortunately. 

@Demetri79 said:

New features are much desired but if previous functionality cease to work or become unstable that is a real killer. [...] I just really hope my creations relying heavily on CI and QTZ won't have to be abandon but I understand apple moving to ARM is a huge unknown and will be a major hurdle. 

As you yourself said, we can't control how Apple (and Windows) develop, we can only work with that they give us. It's the same reason that Isadora 3 can't support the old 32bit FF plugins. Isadora 3 had to be a 64bit application because Apple has indicated that they are going to, or have already, dropped support for 32bit applications in their newer operating systems. This means that Isadora 3 can't use 32bit plugins (like the old FF plugins). Please understand that QC and CI are essentially Mac-native 3rd-party plugins that we've given Mac-users access to; they're not truly-native Isadora plugins (otherwise they'd be available to Windows users as well). The longer they sit untouched by Apple while Apple continues to develop new OS's, the more and more likely it is that Apple will eventually break or remove our ability to use them (as Mark essentially said). This is why I recommend the "frozen in time" method, because we cannot guarantee that these non-standard, 3rd party plugins will continue to work forever because it is likely that Apple will eventually decide that they've reached end-of-life and drop them as they are becoming more and more outdated.

All that being said, looking for GLSL/ISF Shaders/64bit FFGL plugins, learning how to write GLSL/ISF Shaders/64bit FFGL plugins, or paying someone who can create GLSL/ISF Shaders/64bit FFGL plugins that could replace your most essential QC and CI actors are three avenues I highly recommend that you explore. Once we have an SDK available for Isadora 3 it will also be possible for people with coding experience to attempt to replicate QC and CI actors, so there's another possibility to explore. If these video effects are integral to your artistic practice, I would say it's worth investing the time in learning to write shaders/FFGL plugins/code or investing the capital to hire a programmer to replicate the plugins for you as shaders/FFGL plugins/custom Isadora plugins.

Best wishes,

Woland

[Demetri79]

@Woland @mark thanks for the feedback and I know you guys are doing the best you can with a changing hardware and software environment. The frozen in time method is exactly why I'm on a 2012 mac pro maxed to the gills.. but yeah i absolutely would like to find new more efficent ways to recreate my patches.. the concepts are not that difficult I dont think. I'm a musician and audio engineer by day so video software/plugin coding isn't gonna be my wheelhouse. I would like to hire someone to help me.. I think it could probably all be done with GLSL shaders, and some simple 3D models.. I posed an add about a year ago here on the forum to hire someone but no one was interested at the time. I guess I'll try again. If anyone is interested please let me know. thanks, D