M8 + Alchemy + Syphon (v002 Screen Capture 2.0.2)
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    orion
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    M8 + Alchemy + Syphon (v002 Screen Capture 2.0.2)

    by orion » Tue Oct 25, 2011 11:55 pm

    Okay so yesterday i came across an open source free drawing program called Alchemy (http://al.chemy.org/). After playing with it for 5 minutes i knew i needed to use it in my vj sets. Well of course out of the box it has no Syphon support, that would be the easiest way to create live drawings (besides using paint which i'm not a big fan of), so i did a little searching.

    Turns out Syphon has a screen capture .qtz file that you can drop on a layer in m8. You can download it here (http://v002.info/?page_id=4). Just drag the .plugin fill into your quartz folder, navigate to example patches and drag the .qtz file anywhere you'd like to be able to drop it into a layer in m8.

    Open M8 and drag the v002 Screen Capture.qtz file into a layer. I've set the blending option for this layer to ADD
    Open Alchemy. View > Load Background Image (create a big black square in Photoshop or whatever). You are going to need to resize the Alchemy window then hit reset in the main window to get everything centered.
    And WALA!

    It's pretty crude and there might be moments where one may be able to see your interface but that's what midi controllers are for.
    Hope this helps someone!
    Image
  • vanakaru
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    Re: M8 + Alchemy + Syphon (v002 Screen Capture 2.0.2)

    by vanakaru » Wed Oct 26, 2011 7:31 pm

    I have no time to test this. But if the quality is good it is great news to me. All other methods have not been too good.
    I have been asking Alchemy developer to implement Syphon since it came about. Apparently he has other things to do. Nobody else has tackled it as well. Only thing I was able to squeeze out of him was a version with ability to record session every half second. That is enough for getting live like recording(mov) in very good quality.
    So I have to find time to try with my performance machine (screen capture does not work with Lion).
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    orion
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    Re: M8 + Alchemy + Syphon (v002 Screen Capture 2.0.2)

    by orion » Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:47 am

    I haven't played with it for any long period of time but i'll let you know how if goes. There's another program that The Midi Thief introduced me too which does have syphon support (although i can't get it to display properly) it's called eMotion, it's free too.

    http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29563/emotion

    It's way different but also similar and includes support for Wiimotes, watch some videos on the developers site: http://www.adrienm.net/emotion/video.html.
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    Re: M8 + Alchemy + Syphon (v002 Screen Capture 2.0.2)

    by vanakaru » Fri Oct 28, 2011 10:39 am

    I know eMotion for years. And after a while I try to understand it again and again. But no luck so far. It is amazing what Adrien have done with it but I am not too good with figuring out how apps work without good explanations. Maybe I should ask my wife to look into this. She was the one who produced a pretty impressive result with Bender after 2 hours at first try.
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    Re: M8 + Alchemy + Syphon (v002 Screen Capture 2.0.2)

    by orion » Sat Oct 29, 2011 8:22 am

    Indeed Adrien is an awesome man for this.

    So I tried this out for about 2 hours at my house tonight. It all ran fairly smooth except v002 Screen Capture.qtz would occasionally stop working. I just deleted it and reloaded it and it would work fine, this happened maybe 3 or four times. It could be the .qtz file or not. I had Serato and Mix Emergency also running with Syphon Client QC.qtz + tweejay_player_V3.swf so there could have been something else going on there. I'll run it by itself for a while and get back on the results.

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