February 2008 - Pro-apps-dev

Re: Building a generator FxPlug that reads from a device driver...
by Darrin Cardani 08 Feb '08

08 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Feb 8, 2008, at 8:34 AM, Wes Plate wrote: On 2/8/08 4:39 AM, "Kris van Rens" wrote: Sounds like "iSight Live!", an FxFactory plug-in for FCP/Motion. http://www.idustrialrevolution.com/free/fp1/ So to summarize: It is possible, but it's not recommended. Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Well, my device driver appears as a character device (IOKit USB driver with an IOUserClient interface); it can be used to stream video in/ out of the system. So it must be _possible_ to do an FxPlug that takes in an external video signal. Oh yes, it's definitely possible. The questions are - 1) is this useful for users and 2) is there a better way to do it? For "iSight Live!", it's not clear to me from the web page what the purpose is. It says you can pick a color off of a client's brochure. That's certainly useful, but you wouldn't really be using it in a sequence or Motion project that you're going to render later on. You might be able to use it for live VJ stuff with Motion. My point being that to use it as a capture device, you'd need to have the generator sometimes displaying the signal live, and other times playing back what it previously captured. It would be easier for users if you just made a QuickTime component which captured the video data to disk as a QuickTime file and let them edit it however they want in whatever application they want later on. That is, unless there's some other thing you're trying to do that hasn't been explained. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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FxPlugin context awareness
by Brian 08 Feb '08

08 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=U7p37txQvmQFFexOsnz8YS9AvESnGA2bftKMh4ruGP9gAuNdkDbarp5RKWBPVE0m; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Can a FxPlug tell if the frame it is processing is on a cut (edit) and/or if it is on a Marker ? Also can a FxPlug create a Marker or Edit ? -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Building a generator FxPlug that reads from a device driver...
by Wes Plate 08 Feb '08

08 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: AchqcG5UyzrDTQ4B2E+4ocGP5GkYmQ== Thread-topic: Building a generator FxPlug that reads from a device driver... User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.0.0.071130 On 2/8/08 4:39 AM, "Kris van Rens" wrote: > Well, my device driver appears as a character device (IOKit USB driver > with an IOUserClient interface); it can be used to stream video in/out > of the system. Sounds like "iSight Live!", an FxFactory plug-in for FCP/Motion. http://www.idustrialrevolution.com/free/fp1/ So it must be _possible_ to do an FxPlug that takes in an external video signal. -- Wes Plate Automatic Duck, Inc. http://www.automaticduck.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Motion - weird handling of large images
by Brian 08 Feb '08

08 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=j+P/AZIvOXgzsIcVjkzJObkN8YKKs4mhUq1TMlKkGfVghUscYmgazqhbA+YVZSV9; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; >So when I author a floating point Motion project on my Intel MacBook Pro and >send it to my G5 machine, it suddenly doesn't work in floating point. Actually, Pete. I'm in exactly the same boat. Same pair of hardware, same issues, are hitting me currently on my development machines. (And I only have 2 computers.) The studios that employ me always have a render farm (banks of hundreds of machines used for rendering). Issues like these are exactly the reasons why these machines are not banks of Apple Computers. The last Unix version of Apple's Shake is running on these render farms. A software/hardware migration path, post Shake, comes up often. Motion would be the next logical path, but it isn't "render farm friendly", so it is ruled out. Fast user interaction, accurate render farm rendering, and in-house extensibility (plug-ins & scripts) are the studio required checklist items. -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Building a generator FxPlug that reads from a device driver...
by Kris van Rens 08 Feb '08

08 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Dkim-signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; bh=n2XdigDN2BLIoUNvh9uTdD5fQtpDpa+TF1NOSDYpnCQ=; b=hTYLuG8DFKIwAfo1JK0+IpGaRpdrovApUr7zp1aL9hpp4Q1WuOqJTb9shl4F3cJUtTeOAOockD0BJFqv0OqKHkBnXFKjAxG/oxcV45FeDJwMM4D6GjMfacmFHtBNRCXammfIUM18f9u5t4V9j33SxW2gzq2UySpP0ilyoVqP3Zs= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=iuxTtVw7PGj7K2QLMoAPsuXdFkA0Q0Egv8LkLSvAT04FMHw6b27lY+2rGzzsDu8/lQPz3FvMTd/eSn7A/cgnO3uEOzBtALgcbxp4nklr4tRpuGewUZjkwc1xG/tWPr4ZhShJAC7Lcr3uP0UwKYAtF1d9MwNedMTD517A/NdRpBo= Hi Paul, First off, thanks a lot for your time! I really appreciate it. Paul Schneider wrote: > > it sounds like you want to write a file importing plugin. FxPlug > > generators are not really the best choice for that. For one thing, > > there's no "native format" for generators - they are expected to be able > > to generate any frame size, frame rate, and field order, and support any > > duration. > > > > If your USB device is exposed as a filesystem to the Mac, the best thing > > to do would be to write a QuickTime component that allows the video data > > to be wrapped in a QuickTime movie. Well, my device driver appears as a character device (IOKit USB driver with an IOUserClient interface); it can be used to stream video in/out of the system. > > If the Mac doesn't have access to the device's filesystem, you could > > write a standalone application that pulls the video stream from the > > device and saves it as a QT movie on disk. Your application could then > > create some XML that references the movie and load that into Final Cut. That could also be an option. But of course I prefer it to be possible to directly load the video stream from the device driver into Final Cut without additional applications. > > Here's some further reading that might be of interest to you: > > > > Using C++ with Objective-C: > > http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Articl… > > > > > > Final Cut XML: > > http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/FinalC… > > > > > > QuickTime sample code: > > http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/QuickTime/idxCompressionDecompression… I'll look into it, thanks a lot for your help and apt response! Greetings, Kris _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Motion - weird handling of large images
by Peter Litwinowicz 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: Achp5DJ0cMOaY9XXEdy3ZwAKlbriPA== Thread-topic: Motion - weird handling of large images User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.3.6.070618 > > On Feb 7, 2008, at 5:10 PM, Peter Litwinowicz wrote: > >> So a project I author on one machine can give drastically different >> results >> on another machine. This problem can be especially disconcerting when >> working in mixed machine environments where people are working on >> the same >> projects.. > > List, > I have no expertise here, other than to say that Motion is not alone > in this regard. After Effects does the same thing if you have OpenGL > previews turned on. Yes, but the difference is that within AE you can turn OpenGL OFF and get the same results if you wanted. I'm not asking all OpenGL cards within Motion be able to produce the same results. I'm asking that I be ABLE to get the same results on different hardware when necessary (and if that necessitates using a software renderer, then so be it). > As Pete mentioned, what would be ideal would be a software based > engine that could be invoked for the 'final' render that would produce > consistent results, regardless of GPU. Yes, so I guess we agree! Pete _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Motion - weird handling of large images
by Tony Huet 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Feb 7, 2008, at 5:10 PM, Peter Litwinowicz wrote: Just my thoughts, Tony Huet _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… So a project I author on one machine can give drastically different results on another machine. This problem can be especially disconcerting when working in mixed machine environments where people are working on the same projects.. List, I have no expertise here, other than to say that Motion is not alone in this regard. After Effects does the same thing if you have OpenGL previews turned on. The preview results vary depending on the card's capabilities. Final rendering is generally always software based so the rendered results are the same from machine to machine. However, you can render the final project using the graphics card if for some reason you prefer the OpenGL results. 3D is a tough area. Just look at all the high-end 3D gaming boxes - the same game can look dramatically different based on the graphics card in the host machine. While I don't like it, I do understand that any app that uses the GPU will also behave similarly. The thing that I really love about Motion over AE is the ability to change things while the animation is playing. From my understanding, this is possible because the GPU is doing all the work. Since the GPU can vary from machine to machine, the project results may vary as well. As Pete mentioned, what would be ideal would be a software based engine that could be invoked for the 'final' render that would produce consistent results, regardless of GPU. Rendering times would increase, but with the benefit of consistency. However, since I almost always now render my Motion projects in FCP right on the tiimeline, such a feature would probably need to be incorporated into the QT Motion engine to make it universally useful. That way if I create a Motion template for use directly in FCP, I can do so confident that no matter what Mac is used to render the template, the results will be the same. Ideally RT playback could be handled by the card, while renders would be software based. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Motion - weird handling of large images
by Peter Litwinowicz 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: Achp3phd1qDXbNXREdyqzAAKlbriPA== Thread-topic: Motion - weird handling of large images User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.3.6.070618 >From Darrin: > If we're not currently meeting your needs with our applications, >please let us know by filing bugs or feature requests. This software rendering brings up a long-standing issue for me (and I'll file an official feature request). Feature request: when I author a project on one machine, I expect to be able to produce the same results on another machine that is officially supported. For example: I have a 3 year old G5. Not that old as far as I'm concerned, but the graphics card that came with it doesn't support Motion working in floating point. So when I author a floating point Motion project on my Intel MacBook Pro and send it to my G5 machine, it suddenly doesn't work in floating point. So a project I author on one machine can give drastically different results on another machine. This problem can be especially disconcerting when working in mixed machine environments where people are working on the same projects.. A software renderer that supported floating point would alleviate this problem. I'm not one of those people that wants speed over consistent results. But hey, that could be just me (and usually is :-)). ===================================================== Feature request: not to have features disappear within Motion when you go from one machine to another. The UI to set the project bit depth can completely disappear in Motion if the graphics card doesn't support floating point! And while the manual fully discusses how to set the project bit depth, complete with screenshots, the bit-depth setting doesn't appear on my G5 machine. And there's no discussion in the manual that that feature might disappear. Very confusing! My suggestion is to leave the "Bit Depth" setting in the project settings, but leave the floating point options disabled. ===================================================== Thanks for listening, Pete _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Motion - weird handling of large images
by Darrin Cardani 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Feb 7, 2008, at 1:49 PM, Peter Litwinowicz wrote: So we would have to write the code to actually render those things in software before we could add such a switch. We are working on ways for the application to deal with this more gracefully in the future. Isn't there software OpenGL code that you guys have, or can purchase? Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Of course I realize that having a software-only rendering solution would not encourage (or force) people to upgrade their hardware when the newest version of Motion needs better hardware to run. :-) There certainly are software implementations. I believe we even ship one with the system. The problem is that the performance is so low that they're not worth considering for what we want to achieve (which I assure you has nothing to do with forcing people to buy more hardware from us). (Though actually, having a really slow renderer probably would encourage people to buy faster hardware!) I know Peter's aware of this, but for those who haven't heard my soapbox appeal before: If we're not currently meeting your needs with our applications, please let us know by filing bugs or feature requests. We use bug reports and feature requests to figure out what customers want and to set our future directions. So if you haven't filed either a bug report or enhancement request, we have no way of tracking that there are people who want those particular changes. The features we release (and bugs we fix) can seem very arbitrary, but we really do try to do those things which will help our customers the most. This isn't a guarantee that your particular bug or feature will be addressed, because you might be the only person who wants it. It just wouldn't be cost effective to do everything for everyone. But the more people who tell us the same thing, the more weight we give to that feature or bug fix. As an aside, you might be surprised to know what old hardware we have to continue to support in the future. Supporting it means lower upgrade costs for our customers, but it also often means less time for new features, as we try to accommodate older hardware. For example, it might be really easy to write a filter if you have hardware support for blending in floating point mode. But if you have to support cards which don't support that, suddenly you have a lot more code to write. It's always difficult to find a balance, and it's impossible to please everyone. We're trying very hard, though. :) This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Motion - weird handling of large images
by Peter Litwinowicz 07 Feb '08

07 Feb '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: Achp01Z7lT4yetXGEdyx+gAKlbriPA== Thread-topic: Motion - weird handling of large images User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.3.6.070618 > So we would have to write the code to > actually render those things in software before we could add such a > switch. We are working on ways for the application to deal with this > more gracefully in the future. Isn't there software OpenGL code that you guys have, or can purchase? Of course I realize that having a software-only rendering solution would not encourage (or force) people to upgrade their hardware when the newest version of Motion needs better hardware to run. :-) Pete _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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