@woland Maybe, if this feature is implemented one day (I also tend to do monster patches...) maybe one of its output is to generate a multi column list where in each line there is one entry (control number on column a, control name on column b, connected actor name on column c connected input on column d and active link status on column e). I think that the status is important because actors in the patching widows don't lose the control ID link number attached to their inputs if the control is deleted. Also it would be nice to have a visual feedback on that (control id number background in control window and actors in patching windows that are not connected could be red if not connected and green if actively assigned). Just a thought

@dbini

Some wonderful stuff there John! I'm gonna get to one of those one day!

Hello, there is a job opportunity for a professional Isadora programmer for a small demo teleperformance project with Izzycast in Between Montreal and Rouyn Noranda in Quebec end of October. The programmer should be Montreal based. Please DM me if interested. All the best

@pingdesigns 
If the sound file is recorded, you can set up Isadora to sequence the effects. As the sound file starts with a sudden noise (is this the 'clash' you are trying to sync to?) - you could use a Sound Watcher to listen for the start of the track and trigger a series of Envelope Generators so that the End Trigger outputs send your video flash cues. I've done this before when working with prerecorded soundtrack.
It's possible to do this using Trigger Delays, but I find that Envelopes are more obvious - you get to 'see' the pauses between triggers.
The way you chain them together can get a bit complicated, but there are many configurations: You could trigger all of the envelopes at the beginning of the track, each one a little longer than the previous one - this would help you to fine-tune the timing of each end trigger.
If it's being improvised, then you would need another method. How is the composer playing the sounds? is there a MIDI controller involved? you can network machines together and grab MIDI signals from their machine to trigger your video effects.
If it's recorded, can you play the sound file from Isadora? Then you will have timecode to link your effects to using Comparators.

@skulpture

Hi,

Great topic for discussion. I can only provide anecdotes from recent purchase history and wishlist thoughts. Earlier this year I created an interactive piece in Isadora for some artists based on OpenNi tracking with an Orbbec Astra Mini- this included purchase of the device. However, the current device available from the Orbbec range of Astra cameras is no longer compatible with OpenNi Tracker in Isadora. I had an original Astra Mini that I could deploy in this case and swapped it. This left me with a new camera that was not usable with Isadora - however compatible with the Orbbec Top now available in Touchdesigner for point cloud and RGB.

I also purchased a second Orbbec Astra Pro - preloved - to add to my legacy kit of OpenNi compatible cameras. This kit is now a couple of Kinect and a couple of Orbbec Astras. Even though these are legacy cameras they are important because they are an IR solution that will work in very low light levels with a functioning OpenNi solution in Isadora. 

The current development in the field of camera based body tracking is amazing and focused on standard RGB video streams. There are now OpenCV solutions for body and skeleton tracking that can be implemented in Isadora using the Pythoner environment. it works very well, but for one big problem, the RGB cameras need lots of light to capture the subject you want to track. If you work in a darkened theatre, black box or gallery where light is being kept to a minimum - then RGB cameras are not very good and OpenCV tracking is severely compromised or just doesn’t work well enough to be viable. 

The new camera systems available from Orbbec address this issue by pairing OpenCV with their IR camera technology. I am unable to review their performance as I have not seen them in action and do not know how they might interface with Isadora.

I would be happy to invest in a camera that has very low light (IR) capability and OpenCV compatibility that can be harnessed in Isadora. I am hoping this combination is not too far off in the future.

Best wishes

Russell

@dbini It is with the pythoner actor!

Here is some cross platform code that will open an external application from Isadora. Funnily I have a memory that this kind of trickery was explicitly blocked from the Javascript actor, but python is another beast.

Put this code in a pythoner actor and change the name of the application to the one you want to launch (it is notepad or textedit at the moment). Due to the way the actor works all you need to do is send a 1 to the trigger input of the actor (or change this to whatever you want to be the trigger). 

import subprocess import platform # python_main is called whenever an input value changes def python_main(input_1):     # Check if the input is 1 (or any specific condition to trigger the action)     if input_1 == 1:         if platform.system() == "Windows":             # On Windows, open Notepad             subprocess.Popen(["notepad.exe"])         elif platform.system() == "Darwin":  # Darwin is macOS             # On macOS, open TextEdit             subprocess.Popen(["open", "-a", "TextEdit"])     return input_1  # return the input back to the output # iz_input 1 "trigger"

Of course use this safely, you wouldn't want to play some mean trick on an operator that launched a whole lot of applications on a scene change.

You can modify this further with chatGPT to make the application launch minimized if you want too, or some other conditions like screen position, and if the application allows you can likely pass some variables to it.

Fred

Shutter Encoder is awesome!

@dusx @Reload2024

AMIA (The Association of Moving Image Archivists) are offering an online webinar ($40) on Tuesday for how to use Shutter Encoder - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/i...

I am so glad someone made a tool like this (and free!!). i had a liitle play and it looks like very powerful though I definitely feel like I need a walkthrough the interface

Hi all

I have just helped install a multi-screen work for an artist at a gallery. Everything seems to be working great, however, a couple of times we have noticed the mouse cursor appearing on the screens. It's like it keeps popping back up!

Here's the setup

3 x mac minis (2 x 2018, 1 x 2014)all running OS 10.15 Catalina isadora 3.0.7five videos, full screen, on 5 screenswireless mouse and keyboards

My first assumption was that it is the bluetooth mouse and keyboard communicating / disconnecting. The gallery tech has told me that they have since "turned off Bluetooth on all the Macs and the cursors still show up".

I'm going to login remotely tonight and double check settings, but my feeling is that something is bring finder or another app to the front. If it's not the bluetooth, what is it? Is it the remote login software?

I just had a play with the Cursorceror app / pref (suggested in this post ( ...then again, there is the thing with the cursor), and that looks like it could be a really great band-aid solution.

But I'm keen to find the actual cause. Any ideas?

I'll update as I find out more...

Hi, i would like to use the audio level of a quicktime video that i am playing in the scene as a parameter to manipulate the video. I understood that what was used before for this purpose was the Freq bands property in the Movie Player actor. I do not see the option to display the Freq Bands as the output property in the movie player actor and i read in the previous forum that this became obsolete. Could someone please tell me what i could do? I have read https://community.troikatronix...

but do not know what exactly it means for me to do. If anyone could explain to me, i would be so grateful!
I am using Isadora 4.0.1, running OS 14.5. Thank you very much!

@reload2024 there are different ways of unwrapping the equirectangular video used for 360. I think the way you are working now uses a spherical projection. For your use case a cube map sounds more appropriate. 

I think you can use ffmpeg to process the video to a cube map https://jiras.se/ffmpeg/mono.html

this should fix the distortion you see when you project into the square room. 

@dusx Thank you!

Hi all

I just thought I'd share something I have been working on as a tech support this last couple of weeks. 

Frnch artist Bertille Bak has a show on at Vox Gallery, Montreal, featuring many video works, some with multiple screens. In fact there is also another multi-screen show next door by an artist Alexandre Larose.

Anyway, I helped setup a sync system for Betille's 5 screen piece, Mineur mineur (2022), using Isadora and 3 mac minis. I think the gallery had either used all their Brightsign players, or simply didnt have the time to wrestle with firmware etc (I still havent got to grips with Brightsign myself). So it was a good chance for me to learn and apply some sync techniques using OSC signals over the gallery network!

It seems to be running ok. The setup uses 3 mac minis connected to the network via ethernet, and 5 screens in portrait, and 5 HD videos (h264). Mac minis A & B play two videos each, and mac mini C plays just 1. There is a 'SETUP' scene with a 'preload scene' actor in it, followed by a 'MOVIE' scene. All Isadora patches end-jump to the preload scene once the movie has finished. (the films have titles / black at the end, so a seemless loop is not required). MAC A then waits 10 seconds, and then sends an OSC signal to trigger a jump back to the MOVIE scene for MAC B & C, and also jumps itself.

One small issue I had was that one mac was occasionally not recieving the osc signal to start - it turned out that I'd copied the wifi IP address for that one, rather that the ethernet IP address, so I guess it had been occasionally falling of the wifi network. Once I updated the address list with the ethernet address, it was fine.

I've also incorporated a few Data Array actors so that IP addresses can be read / edited from text files, and the delay / restart time is also here. I'm also using Data Array to write a log that records information to a text file every minute about the movie position, scene, and time. I can then access these via a remote desktop software (Splashtop) and make a quick comparison. Considering these are different machines (mac C is lower spec), they are holding up pretty well (see below).

anyway, if you get a chance to see the show, I highly recommend it - the work is darkly humourous - a playful approach to serious subjects (labour and working conditions), and extremely well presented - almost theatrically. The other work by Alexandre Larose is super too - though not
if you have vertigo!

MACHINE   SCENE    MOVIE POSITION    DATE(DMYYY)-TIME(HMS)

MAC B     movies     90.218697     5-9-2024-11-2-0
MAC C     movies     90.2062     5-9-2024-11-2-0
MAC A     movies     90.215096     5-9-2024-11-2-0
MAC B     movies     96.709099     5-9-2024-11-3-0
MAC C     movies     96.706001     5-9-2024-11-3-0
MAC A     movies     96.7089     5-9-2024-11-3-0
MAC B     movies     2.1086     5-9-2024-11-4-0
MAC C     movies     2.1053     5-9-2024-11-4-0
MAC A     movies     2.1092     5-9-2024-11-4-0
MAC B     movies     8.6026     5-9-2024-11-5-0
MAC C     movies     8.598701     5-9-2024-11-5-0
MAC A     movies     8.6047     5-9-2024-11-5-0
MAC B     movies     15.1008     5-9-2024-11-6-0
MAC C     movies     15.0922     5-9-2024-11-6-0
MAC A     movies     15.0968     5-9-2024-11-6-0
MAC B     movies     21.592499     5-9-2024-11-7-0
MAC C     movies     21.5868     5-9-2024-11-7-0
MAC A     movies     21.593601     5-9-2024-11-7-0
MAC B     movies     28.0889     5-9-2024-11-8-0
MAC C     movies     28.077099     5-9-2024-11-8-0
MAC A     movies     28.089401     5-9-2024-11-8-0

Dans Mineur mineur (2022), il est question du travail des enfants. Cette vidéo a été entièrement fabriquée à distance pendant le confinement : à Madagascar, en Inde, en Bolivie, en Indonésie et en Thaïlande, chaque famille a reçu de la part de l’artiste un kit pour enregistrer des images. Des enfants trimant dans des mines d’étain, d’or, d’argent, de saphirs et de charbon chorégraphient une scène semblable à une kermesse d’école dont ils sont privés. Leurs silhouettes ont par la suite été incrustées dans d’étroits boyaux miniers vus en coupe comme des fourmilières observées par un entomologiste. Bertille Bak construit avec ses sujets des actions collectives pour dire leur réalité autrement. Elle est de ceux et celles pour qui faire ensemble s’inscrit dans une vision du bonheur. Il en résulte des images spontanées, montées dans la rapidité du geste.

@knowtheatre

Here's the finished product: patch-scrolling-picture-loop-2024-09-05-4.01.zip

It'll adjust itself automatically to the number of picture files you've imported. This is only tested with pictures that all have the same aspect ratio, so wacky things may happen if you use custom aspect ratio pictures mixed with 16:9 pictures and 4:3 pictures, etc.

Note: I used Enter Scene Value actors instead of initializing values just because it made it more transparent what was going on.

@mark_m said:

ATEMosc

 I've used it in the past, back when it was free, and it already did everything I needed it to. It's fantastic to hear that it's no longer Mac-only and that they've added more features.

@citizenjoe said:

I always leave the monitor attached, because it's very difficult for to troubleshoot without one.

 Excellent point

@dbini said:

Is there any plan to offer compatibility with more 3D formats? It seems like 3DS is becoming quite redundant elsewhere.and:Would it be possible to enable Live Capture settings to be saved with files? Like the Stage Setup now gets saved specific to each file, it would be great if the AV Input settings could be stored when you save a file.

 These are both existing feature requests but I've just +1'd them :)

@montana 

Can you please attach screenshots of the Matrox software, macOS display layout, and the Display Overview from Stage Setup in Isadora?

@timeg

Not specifically, but with the addition of Python to the program now, one could likely whip something up with that.

@reload2024

You can output a Frame/Box with shapes, to a Projector actor, double click the Eye icon, and activate the 3D options. Then you can manipulate the plane the Projector is outputting to in 3D space.