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.

@reload2024

this might help then:

https://youtu.be/MMfn9vB4hEo?si=PkVW1z63wlhgvlQs

@fred 

I will have access to a blackbox where we will record the video, but I only have some hours with them one day. I imagine that asking them to wear something in a color could help. and then I will have to see what happens with the wires, that seems to be the main challenge I remember. I dont have the paid version of DaVinci, but it seems I might have to invest...

@reload2024

Sounds like a mistake I made when programming the patch. I'll take a look when I have more time next week.

@vtt said:

@vtt This runs on a Windows 10 PC but not on a Windows 11 PC ???

I've never seen any perceivable difference between running Isadora on a Windows 10 vs Windows 11 computer, so my first guess here is that this is related to the setup of your lighting hardware. Are there any additional drivers you installed or other hardware-specific setup steps that you performed on the Windows 10 computer that you didn't for the Windows 11 computer? 

@dillthekraut

Accelerometers give you rotational angles and acceleration along the vector. Even with 4 it will be very hard to get good tracking over space - angles of rotation will be great so if the object is attached to a singular point then this would work really well. Movement will be difficult.

If the screen moves freely accelerometers will be much less accurate and hard to combine than other methods that track from a fixed point (mocap or camera with marker). They measure acceleration and are often paired with gyroscopes. The combination can give you some useful data but even with a lot it will drift pretty fast. Some of this is from the hardware and interference and some of this is from the maths you need to do. 

Things like skeleton suits that use accelerometers gain a lot of accuracy from inverse kinematics (IK). They are attached to a skeleton with defined angular relationships. The skeleton actually makes the maths harder but more reliable. You have some limits as to how things can move and with walking you get a reliable ground plane confirmation. This means that due to the fixed angular relationship between points multiple accelerometers can be used to confirm or reinforce the tracking. Even then the most common issues you see are drift. There have been a lot of accelerometer based mocap suits come and go over time. They are getting better but drift is something you see in all the early versions. Then after some r and d time eventually they solve the planar shift that lets you track people as they climb. 

Without the skeleton (so tracking a single rigid object) you lose the IK solver that helps stabilise the movement model. With a single rigid body technically all your accelerometers will give you the same reading as it’s a single rigid body they are all attached to. Having more might help get rid of some interference but cannot add accuracy they way it does with IK. 

Here is a reasonable article on the issues with this kind of tracking https://www.embedded.com/achieving-accurate-motion-tracking-in-consumer-portables. 

If this worked well there would be a lot of cheap object tracking devices on the market. Although it is kind of possible there afaik no products that do this as it kind of doesn’t work. What you want to do is AR tracking and re-projection. Take a look at AR tracking methods. They almost all use cameras and different kinds of tracking. 

Another thought is that you could stick and iPhone to the screen and try write an app that uses apples ARKit to output position and rotation data  it will still drift and have issues though as you need to correlate the moving objects relative position with the projectors fixed position as well as its throw and lens distortion at different distances  

This would be a cool problem to apply machine learning to. If you had great synchronised recordings of accelerometer movements and mocap data you could make a model that would likely do much better at rigid body tracking with accelerometers  

Fred

@lilmp4

Highly recommend that you don't use the Text/ure, as it's a CPU actor. Instead use one of the GPU Text actors.

You can't actually adjust the vertical/horizontal positions in the other actors you mention, but you can do it in the projector actor if you have a fairly simple patch. You can also use the PanSpinZoom or Panner actors which are more flaxable in a complex patch.

Cheers,

Hugh

Got it - thanks!  I was using shapes / gaussian blur / Alpha mask, but didn't hook it up correctly. Appreciate your time and expertise.  - John

@reload2024
As usual, Isadora has many ways to solve this problem. You could try manipulating the image before it gets to the Projector by adding a Panner or the FFGL Pan, Spin, Zoom (adding a Scaler early in the chain might be useful). Or you could solve it using IzzyMap (doubleclick on the projector) - If this has an undesirable effect on the rest of your patch, you could use IzzyMap in a virtual stage and use Get Stage Image to route the results to your regular Projector.

@citizenjoe  Good idea, thanks!