Is there a simpler way to use multiple Crop actors?
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Hello kind forum people
I'm trying to make a video "mosaic" whereby I split a single movie into 9 simultaneous segments that form a grid, so that when all are played back together it forums the original movie, but so that each quadrant can be delayed independently when the Eyes actor notices a viewer.I have been using the Movie Player to 9 Crop actors to 9 video delays (which are enables when there is an object to track) to 9 Projectors, and while it works, the frame rate is dropping significantly, and sometimes freezes.My attempt at using CI actors has resulted in far worse performance, as I appear to need to transfer the image to video in order to use the Crop actor, as the CI Crop behaves very differently.Am I going about this the wrong way?Any insight appreciated.MBPr 16BG RAM OS X 10.8.3 -
Might the problem be that the Video Delay actors are all writing to the same buffer? I think this is how Jitter would work, and that there I could give them each their own name. Is it as simple as making multiple Video Delay User Actors?
Or might it be better to send the video to multiple Stages on the same screen?What I really want is an Actor that lets through only a specific 2D portion of the movie, and doesn't distort it otherwise. Am I missing something? -
Dear lpearse,
I think the best way to do this would be to output 9 different movies -- already cropped the way you want, and then to arrange them to form a single image by adjusting the width/height/horz pos/vert pos of the Projector actor. This will result in the greatest efficiency, because you've already reduced the playback bandwidth by a factor of 9\. (I.e., if you're playing 9 full size movies and cropping them, that is 9 times more bandwidth than playing 9 movies which are already 1/9 the size of the full size movie -- make sense.)But using CI, there is no need to convert it back to video. Take a look at the attached patch which accomplishes your goal using only CI actors.But again, you'll do much better if you make 9 separate movies. (The attached patch will provide some inspiration for that as well, by the way.)Best Wishes,Mark -
Thanks so much Mark. I'd been trying to avoid this multi-file solution so that I could be more spontaneous, but I understand the logic. That patch is much more elegant than how I'd been doing it. Much appreciated
