Lurking within the bowels of our web site is Ms. Black's QC Kitchen, a resource for all of you Quartz Composer fans. In Ms. Black's QC Kitchen, you'll find a plethora of examples of using the CoreImage Kernel language (aka fragment shader code) to make stunning, real-time, Hollywood video effects.

Direct link:
http://b-l-a-c-k-o-p.com/Qamera/Quartz-Composer/

Labels: quartz composer

Do you have a favorite video effect from days gone by that you want to use with Q@mera? We want to make it for you. You just need to tell us. "Remember that Todd Rundgren video where he's a black square in a checkerboard?" Yeah, we do -- it's called "Change Myself" and that's where our 80s Horizon Sphere might have originated. Of course, in the 80s, everybody's favorite 3D effect was a sphere bouncing over a grid of squares. From the famous Amiga bouncing ball demo to Rundgren's groundbreaking 3D cheese, we love em all.

Sometimes we go back and make changes to presets we designed for earlier versions. Currently, Q@mera is not smart enough to check for updates to the QTZ files, so the best way to ensure you have all the latest templates is to periodically delete the contents of the QameraQache folder (located in ~/Library/QameraQache).

Check it out PEEPS! Very cool, especially the 'Roid emulation.

I'm starting a new blog for publishing our Core Image/Quartz Composer image processing kernels, patches. As such, the body of this post was moved to our free Quartz Composer downloads page.

Basically, the terms of the license are non-commercial, share and share alike. Any other use please ask us. VJs are welcome to use these in their live performance rigs.

Usually after we release a significant upgrade we do a stress test to make sure everything is kosher. In this case we setup an original Intel iMac, started both DotMatrx and Qamera, enabled the rebroadcasting feature, opened Quartz Composer with the 2x2 DotMatrix/Qamera display and let it run. It's been two days now and it's still running. In other tests we did find a couple of very small bugs with the CoreImage "Image Units", which we will be issuing a fix for shortly.

The new Qamera is here, with enhancements for Leopard (including PhotoBooth effects, install the Goodies folder). Most significant in this new version is our plug-in for Quartz Composer (Tiger compatible).

In the picture to the right, we've got both Qamera and DotMatrix running, along with CamCamX (to mix the output). In the bottom is a custom Quartz Composer patch that is taking both the Qamera and the DotMatrix inputs, and mixing them into a 2x2 grid. Sweet!

Now, not only can you use Qamera (and other b-l-a-c-k-o-p apps) with Arkaos VJ (the professional VJ standard on the Mac), but you can also integrate Quartz Composer with any existing VJ application that supports webcam input. While there are many VJ solutions out there, not all of them natively support Quartz Composer. But almost all of them support iSight/webcam input.

Since our Qamera effects REAPPEAR as a virtual camera input, any camera enabled application automatically becomes Quartz Composer enabled. And, if your VJ system already supports Quartz Composer, you can use Qamera to easily "chain together" two Quartz Patches. And with the integrated bookmarking system, which supports drag and drop, it becomes a snap to sequence a live performance. Just build up your bookmark list, arrange it from top down in performance time, and quickly switch patches on the fly.

Qamera also makes it possible to do 2-camera live interviews with Leopard PhotoBooth. Using our Picture in Picture effect, you can setup two Mac compatible webcams and run the primary cam as the PhotoBooth input (start PhotoBooth first), and then use the secondary cam with Qamera. Then, simply select one of the Qamera PhotoBooth effects and start interviewing. Or build your own effect in Quartz Composer using one of our pre-defined effects as a starting point. The Qamera part of the patch is already a macro, so it is super-easy to copy and paste it into another Quartz Patch.