TV station in a Mac

There has been very interesting development lately for broadcasters around Mac and Quartz Composer technology. VJ softwares such as VDMX has been doing incredible things in realtime for years without any special hardware but those hasn't been frame accurate or reliable enough for 24/7 broadcasters.

Now Austrian company called ToolsOnAir is building Composition Suite. Total broadcast playout solution based completely on Mac. I registered to their site and tried beta versions of softwares and I must say I'am impressed. I was able to play SD video with quite complex realtime Quartz Composer graphics (bug, lower third, ticker, clock) through AJA Kona LHe SDI output without any drop frames. I sure will be following their development with big interest.


ToolsOnAir Composition Player beta running in my edit. Video coming to AJA Kona LHe from digibeta (SDI), Composition Player overlaying Quartz Composer graphics in realtime and outputting to AJA Kona LHe SDI output (frame accurately). Impressive.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

As a big fan of South Park I've to post one of my favourite christmas songs. Sorry guys ;) And hope you have a pleasant christmas!

Where the Hell is Matt? - Youtube goes HD

If you're in bad mood this should really make you feel better. And as a sidenote Youtube has finally entered to HD age. So go immediately to Youtube and check Where the Hell is Matt? in HD.

Tapio's FxPack 1.0

Finally last weekend I had some time to make couple of plug-ins I've had in my mind for some time. It's called Tapio's FxPack (what a great name =) and contains four plug-ins.



Fake 3D (host: Motion, After Effects)
Works by replicating object in Z-space. You can get similar effect in Motion with replicator but this one renders faster and is easier to control.

Drop Shadow (host: Motion, Final Cut Pro)
I mainly made this for Final Cut Pro because FCP's own drop shadow has some terrible artifacts when you add it to video with alpha channel and have fields enabled in your sequence. This is standard filter so you can add multiple copies of it to clip. It also has "shadow only" option.

Numbers (host: Motion)
Generate counting/random numbers in Motion. Very similar to After Effects Numbers filter.

Grow Bounds (host: Motion)
Lets you grow bounds of individual layer inside Motion.

Download Tapio's FxPack 1.0 here.

UPDATE 1.6.2009 - Tapio's FxPack 1.1 available here.

Registered version of FxFactory Pro 2.0.5, Mac OS X 10.5.5 and Apple Motion 3 required. This is total freeware and was made as hobby. So there might be some bugs. Use at your own risk.

Inspirational - Imogen Heap vBlog

Imogen Heap is a Grammy nominated English singer-songwriter from London. Her most famous album is Speak for Yourself, which she wrote, produced and mixed herself. I like her music and couple of weeks ago found her video blog and find it very inspiring. Her music is already very inspiring but her healthy and positive attitude is even more inspiring. Check out at least couple of clips from her vBlog in Youtube.

What Matters to You // Me?

This isn't new clip but I just saw it first time in Vimeo. It's actually little bit similar to Girl Effect. I really like when I see motion graphics used to tell stories and make you feel something. Often I find motion graphics are just used to make things look flashy and awesome but they don't really make any emotional contact. At least for me.

This one was done by Jr. Canest for Vancouver Film School (it also won Youtube competition). Go to Vimeo to see the clip in HD.

Update - Numbers 1.1

So here's new version of my Numbers FxPack Plug-in.

Changes in version 1.1

- Fixed number rounding to be more intuitive for counters etc.
- Added randomness slider for generating random numbers
- Added date option [M/D/Y & D/M/Y - short/medium/long]
- Added spelled out [only integers] option
- Added support for After Effects CS3 & CS4

Download Numbers 1.1 here.

I got many questions about Numbers being really free. So this plug-in is FREE but in order to use it you'll need registered version (or trial time left) of FxFactory Pro 2.0.5. I know there are some totally free FxPacks around and I originally thought I could publish this as one but Noise Industries policy is that I'am not allowed to publish totally free FxPacks if I'am not FxPack developer partner. And I understand them. They have to make their living with FxFactory but for me this is only hobby and I'am more towards open source development so this way I can keep my FxPacks totally open so anyone can modify those, build better one or copy some parts.

So sorry guys. FxFactory Pro 2.0.5 required at least at the moment. It's great package. So I warmly recommend spending 399 bucks, learning some Quartz Composer and starting developing some handy plug-ins. I'am not programmer and made Numbers in couple of hours. Point is that some things are much easier to accomplish in Quartz Composer compared to Motion and with FxFactory Pro you can take that Quartz Composer advantage easily to Motion (or After Effects or Final Cut Pro). And I think it'd be great to see active community developing FxPack plug-ins. Although it'd might happen more easily if anyone could publish totally free FxPacks for the rest of the world to use. Don't know. Anyway I'am sure that guys at Noise Industries have think a lot about their current working model and found it best.