qlab – Joel Adria

Mavericks, App Nap, and Theatre Software

It’s been six months since the first public release of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and if you’ve been a dutiful theatre technician, projection designer, or other multimedia professional, you’ve likely avoided upgrading out of fear of broken applications. Good on you!

Here’s a tip that will hopefully save you some grief as you plan your upgrade to Mavericks. Disable App Nap for all your show or live applications. Isadora, Quartz Composer, MadMapper, QLab, Air Beam, Ableton and more can all be affected by how App Nap puts your application “to bed” when they’re not “in use”.

Problems may develop in weird ways, such as QLab (v2) not fading video cues properly (likely QLab talks to a child process that is “napping”) or Syphon streams from other programs randomly freezing when they’re not the foremost application running on your Mac.

App Nap is built-in to OS X Mavericks, but you can disable it on a app-by-app basis by going into your Applications folder, clicking on the offending application and selecting File > Get Info… and checking the “Prevent App Nap” checkbox. Restart the Application.

Hopefully you get the chance to upgrade to Mavericks on your show machines as the theatre season wraps up for the summer!

ShowStages collective

Last May, Erin Gruber, Elijah Lindeberger and I began working together on some really great theatre projection and video projects. Although it has been no secret, I’d like to formally announce ShowStages on my blog, and invite everyone to subscribe, like, and follow ShowStages as we continue to pursue new interactive video opportunities.

ShowStages is a video and design collective. We build narratives through projected media and interactive audio-visual experiences. We work in theatre and new media.

ShowStages consists of Erin Gruber, Joel Adria, & Elijah Lindenberger.

AirBeam Controller for Isadora Core & Quartz Composer

One of my favourite new iOS Apps of late is AirBeam [$3.99], a simple way to transmit video from your iPhone, iPod, or iPod’s built-in camera to a computer, another iOS device, or with the companion Mac OS X app, into Syphon. Performance is very good, with low latency, high frame rate, and bonus features like remote video recording and remote iPhone flash on/off. Add in Syphon functionality, and you have a low latency go-anywhere camera ready to be used in the video tool of your choice.

I used AirBeam on a few shows this summer, (DELETE & The Haunted Reel), the latter using it as a primary part of performance. In the former, we used Isadora to manipulate content quickly, but needed a simple way to control the two iOS devices we were using as AirBeam cameras.

Enter AirBeam Controller. This simple Quartz Patch can be dropped into your Isadora Quartz directory to control any AirBeam device on your network. It works by sending simple HTTP requests to AirBeam’s built-in web server using the the Load Web Page QC patch. This might not be the most direct or efficient route, but it definitely works and performed well in our show.

Installation

AirBeam Controller for Isadora — AirBeam Controller in Isadora Core

Isadora Core

Unzip AirBeam Controller zip archive.
Copy .qtz file to ~/Library/Compositions/ or /Library/Compositions/ or /System/Library/Compositions/ (Your account, or the entire computer. Go to Isadora > Preferences… > Video to make sure you are scranning those locations.)
Restart Isadora. It will now appear in your Library.

Quartz Composer

Unzip AirBeam Controller zip archive.
Copy .qtz file to ~/Library/Grahpics/Quartz Composer Patches/ or /Library/Grahpics/Quartz Composer Patches/ (Your account, or the entire computer)
Restart Quartz Composer. It will now appear in your Library under Custom.

Usage

Host/IP : Enter the IP address or Hostname of your AirBeam device. This should appear when you are in camera mode at the bottom of the screen.

Camera : Front or Back camera, if applicable, on supported devices.

Framerate : Choose from various framerates. Not all framrates supported on all devices.

Resolution : Select your resolution. Not all resolutions supported on all devices.

Torch : Turn the flash/light on or off on iPhones.

Record: Activates steady video record function on device. Stops when value changes to “off”.

Motion Record: Activates the motion record function on device. Stops when value changes to “off”.

Stage, Horiz. Size, Vert. Size, Image (Isadora): not used

Notes

Please note, that when used with Isadora, the Image output is not functional. You still need to setup your own Syphon streams to use the video from your AirBeamer. Matthew can teach you this.

AirBeam Controller has been tested on Quartz Composer 4.6 (147) and Isadora Core 1.3.0f24 under Mac OS X Lion (10.7). Your mileage may vary.

Download

Download AirBeam-Controller-1.1.zip

Change Log

Version 1.1

Initial public release

Quartz Composer 3D Lighting with MIDI Control Surface

Playing around with 3D lighting in Quartz Composer. Shadows are rendered somewhat lamely, but still very cool for any sort of experimenting, prototyping, or less critical interactive components. In this demo I was testing out my custom Quartz nodes (Editor -> Add to Library ) for my Korg nanoKontrol MIDI control to manipulate parameters on the fly. Apologies for the crappy audio, my computer fans were blasting and I was too lazy to plug in a mic. Recorded with the most excellent Syphon Recorder.

Quartz Composer 3D Lighting with MIDI Control Surface – YouTube.

HUB Mall LED Lighting Competition

Back in March I helped out and participated in the HUB Mall Lighting Design competition, organized by Mel Geary.

The goal of the competition was to encourage experimentation with the new ETC Ion lighting console purchased for the FAB Media Room, while also allowing students to explore moving light fixtures, lighting pre-viz using ESP Vision, experiment with possibilities of the HUB Mall LED lighting rig, and of course to spur a bit of department competition!

My design was a series of chase effects programmed as step cues on the ETC Ion, all fired through QLab using Midi Show Control, timed to the music video, I Love Cats by schmoyoho. I also built the entire show exclusively using the off-line editor.

The winning design by first year BFA Theatre Designers Camille Maltais and Cheyenne Sykes earned them a free 1-year license of ESP Vision.

Overall it was a great experience, and plenty of HUB Mall residents poked their heads out to check out the shows. Typically the LEDs installed are operated at less than half their potential output, so the full-intensity fixtures were quite dramatic. We did have a few issues with some fixtures not responding correctly over DMX, probably due to the length of the runs and speed of data changes used. The wireless DMX transmitters/receivers we used to link our control station and the projection/I-Cue station setup mid-mall worked well though.

Check out the video Mel produced, or some of the photos I shot during the event, below.

HUB Mall LED Lighting Competition, a set on Flickr.

Production: GFS 2010

I recently came to the decision and announced that I would be applying to the BFA Technical Theatre – Technical Production program at the University of Alberta this Fall, transferring from Computing Science. I haven’t really looked back since the realization came upon me, and last night’s Grad Fashion Show was a great reminder of how much I enjoy the production process.

The Show

To summarize, the Grad Fashion Show is a yearly fundraiser for the graduating class at Harry Ainlay. To most, it’s an opportunity to dress up in donated fashions from our local mall, and enjoy some food and do some silent auction stuff. To us, GFS is the technical extravaganza of the year. It started in 2008 when we were approached days before the actual event requesting live video. At first it seemed like it would be all but impossible, but we threw all our best efforts into it and made it happen. We had a single camera, feeding a quasi-analog video card with PowerPoint overlay.

Since then, it’s been an excuse for me to mess with digital video mixing and FireWire cameras. Last year we used VDMX for the video mixing and GrabberRaster in conjunction with Apple Remote Desktop to have a very high-latency secondary camera over ethernet. This year, despite having moved on and graduated, Kevin invited me to return and help out. Before we knew it, we were hatching plans to deliver my Hackintosh and other materials the next morning.

(A shot of Camera A, a Canon GL2 tethered to jQuad running QLab at the 2010 Grad Fashion Show, Harry Ainlay.)

The Rush

After much preparation, it came down to setting up the video mixing software with the two cameras. Luckily the school now has three Canon GL2s (old, but better than nothing). We used one tethered directly via FireWire right beside jQuad (A), and a second on the other side of the gym (B). Camera B was sending an analog signal (FireWire doesn’t work well/at all over long runs) and then fed into the third GL2 which was acting as an analog to digital converter and supplying the second FireWire signal to jQuad.

The software I planned on using, VDMX, did not support the use of two FireWire cameras simultaneously though, despite having two separate FireWire buses on jQuad. After some quick diagnosis, I realized that Plan B, CamCamX suffered from the exact same problem. Both GL2s showed up in “Camera A” and 0 cameras showed up in “Camera B”. Things were beginning to look bleak, not to mention the fact that our lighting personnel had bailed, and time was running short.

(A shot of our video monitoring rig. We initially brought the mini-TVs along for fun, but we ended up needing them to monitor feeds, which aren’t visible in QLab.)

QLab 2 to the Rescue!

So just like those many years ago when QLab came to rescue me from the complexities of In on It, QLab 2 pulled the whole thing off. It had no problem recognizing two FireWire cameras, even identical GL2 models. The Camera cues worked well, albeit there were a few issues with crashing along the way. I suspect it had something to do with the whole Hackintosh/8GB RAM/Crappy Graphics card/Failfest that was going on, but QLab would choke occasionally and I would need a total restart of the program. We rented a $3 license (which was essentially the only thing we bought to run the whole show) so I could easily reload the camera cues after a crash, but overall the cross fades and everything worked very well. In fact, QLab was definitely pushing out the lowest latency and best frame rates out of anything I had tested over the years.

Monitoring the two video feeds was tricky with QLab because that is not entirely what it’s designed for (but perhaps that would be a feature request?). With the help of the extra mini-TVs Kevin brought along, we were able to preview both cameras successfully though.

It was by no means a completely flawless system, but for $3, it was another great experiment in live video, and in particular, digital live video mixing. Learning how to chose the best shot at any given moment takes loads of practice, and this was without a doubt a great opportunity to do it! Most of my friends at Ainlay will be gone next year, so I doubt there will be another GFS, but I look forward to the many opportunities that lie ahead in my technical theatre career, and hope to share them here on jole.ca along the way!