Custom Quartz Composer Question

raganmd

Thanks Skuplture. I'll give that a try when I get the system booted back up.

raganmd

With the CI Affine Transform actor added to the workflow I'm still running into the same issue.

Weird, right?

Skulpture

Yes thats intersting.... Hmmm. Does it do the same on another machine? I can try it on mine if you wish?

mark

Dear Raganmd,

If you don't mind, can you send the Custom QC patch to me so I can try this? It should most definitely work directly into the CI Movie Player.

Best Wishes,

Mark

raganmd

Hi Mark and Skulpture,

You two are phenomenal.

Alright, included here are the quartz composition and an Isadora patch with two scenes:

CI projector - the patch using the CI projector

Video Projector - the patch using a video projector

As a note, on my end both work in Forced Stage Preview, but only the video projector scene works when outputting to an actual projector. I've tried this at resolutions of everything between 800 x 600 to 1920 x 1200 and have had the same results for each resolution.

**_Technical Details_**

_Mac Pro_

OS X 10.8.4 (12ES5)

3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

8GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Dual ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

_The Projector_

Barco RLM W8

1920 x 1200

Isadora 1.3.1f06

Thanks for another set of eyes on this.

Best,

Matt

204cea-ci-projector-issue.izz ef730d-escher-cube-iterations.qtz.zip

mark

Dear Matt,

My initial tests on Mac OS 10.6.8 worked as expected -- no crashes or problems with a 1920x1080 external monitor. I'll try with 10.7 later, but won't be able to try with 10.8 immediately because I'm away from home for the next three weeks and won't have access to my Mac Pro. But the laptop isn't a totally fair test, because things can be a bit different when you have a discrete GPU card as you have in the Mac Pro.

Matt, can you set your force stage preview size (in the Stage tab of the Preferences) to 1920x1200 and see if this stops the patch from working? (If the QC patch were for some reason to exceed the maximum texture size because of the output resolution, this could cause a problem.)

Also, ensure that the 'stage' input on the QC actor is set to the actual stage you will use when you're showing it on the Barco.

Maybe Graham will find a problem if he tries it. Graham?

Best Wishes,

Mark

Skulpture

Just got home. Will try it shortly. This problem has been playing on my mind for a few days now... Will report back this evening.

Skulpture

So... I have no external monitor but when I full screen it on my laptop screen (as per sig) all is fine. Same for both scenes.

I can try it on an external screen tomorrow though but technically it should be no different should it?

raganmd

Hi Mark and Graham,

I did some additional tests on my computer at home and like you I'm not having any issues rendering to an external monitor. For my home test I'm running OS X 10.8.4, and Isadora 1.3.1f06 to match the set-up of the theatre. Huh.

Mark - when I get to the theatre tomorrow I'll try a force preview at a stage resolution of 1920 x 1200 and report back on the results. In programming the show I have been using remote access over a wired network to screen share with the Mac Pro. Is there any chance this is causing a problem?

Tomorrow I'll try both:

Force Preview at 1920 x 1200

No Remote access

Thanks again for the extra help on this gentlemen!

Best,

Matt

raganmd

Hi Mark and Graham,

Whoa golly what a snipe hunt am I on in this theatre.

I upgraded the MacPro to Isadora pre-release 1.3.1f06.

In doing this I'm able to force preview to the CI projector at resolutions less than or equal to 1024 x 768 (Mark, when I made the force preview window larger I was only getting a black stage).
Using the Image to Video and connecting to a Projector actor, I see a black stage both in forced preview, and displaying only to the stage.
There's no difference in performance with or without remote access.
The long and the short of it is that on the Mac Pro in the theatre, quartz does not behave in 1.3.1f06

To trouble shoot, I installed 1.3.0f24 on another partition on this same machine.

In 1.3.0f24 I'm back to seeing the CI projector actor work in forced preview, but not in the full stage.
The image to video actor now works as expected rendering both to the forced preview and to the full stage.

This has been a fascinating set of odd behaviors from this MacPro.

What do you guys think... Other ideas about what might be going on here?

As always, thank you for your time and thoughts on this.

Best,

Matt

mark

Well, I guess the other test is to see if the patch works OK in Quartz Composer itself. Does it?

Best,
Mark

raganmd

Windowed and Full screen it works great in just Quartz.

Crazy, right? I think I'm most confused by seeing it work on other machines. Maybe a driver update would help?

Thanks Mark!

Best, Matt