What's new in Quartonian Mixer 0.55
Aug 7, 2008
- Added preview window, HD 720p support, boost colour control, output overlay masks and many bugfixes.
- Quartonian now has three modes. �Practise Mode�, �Blind mode� and �Preview mode�.
- It starts up in practice mode with the thumbnails and interface overlaid on top of the main output window in a single screen. Use the �`� key (below tilde) to toggle between practise and blind mode. Blind mode is designed to be usable on a mac mini or another machine with only one video output. In this mode you must write down or memorise your clip assignments. �Preview mode� has a separate preview window, thumbnails and bus previews outside the main output window. Press �command t� to bring up the options window to turn preview mode on, check the option �preview enable�.
- Window arrangement for Preview mode: arrange your second display like shown, suggested you set the second display to 800?600. Then stretch the window out to be very wide and arrange the displays so that the main output window covers the whole second display while the preview window and other interface elements are on the far left of the main computer monitor.
- Mixing using the mouse is not convenient when in this mode, I suggest using a Midi controller for the cross fader. The Evolution UC17 X-Session is a cheap reliable controller with 16 rotary knobs and a cross fader and costs only around 100US dollars. Because of limitations in the Quartz Composer midi implementation you will have to go into the composition and edit the �mixer position� macro to assign your midi controller to the cross fader.
- As Quartz Composer cannot render in two output windows this was the easiest way to have a preview, thumbnails and other interface separate from the main output.
- Note you can access the quartz composer window to add new clips to the mixer while the mixer is running using this new method�
- HD Support: there is a separate version of the mixer included in the download which has been optimised for 720p 1280?720 mixing. I tested HD mixing using Quicktimes shot on a HDV camera and then reencoded as 1280?720 25fps Quicktime Photo-jpeg 50 percent quality. Mixing was acceptable on an imac g5 (12-15 fps) and smooth on a MacBook Pro (25-30 fps) both using an external firewire disk to play content from. It�s also possible to save out quartz composer compositions at 720p resolution and mix them very smoothly.
- Due to limitations in Quartz Composer is was necessary to make the HD version a separate patch, in particular the �render in image� function cannot have it�s resolution controlled by input parameters making supporting multiple resolutions in one patch very difficult.
- Boost: boost performs an overall contrast adjustment on all clips on all buses. I often find I have to increase it to about 1.15 to match contrast levels when mixing my output with output from Resolume or another pc based mixing program. Access it via the �command t� preference sheet.
- Output Masks: this option overlays a shaped mask over the entire output, either hex, circle or rough with position and scaling controls. It is designed for shaped screens, again it is accessed via the �command t� options sheet.
- Notes for faster performance: You can control the resolution that effects are processed at using the �render mix: lo or hi?� option in the parameters window. Setting it to hi (checked 640?480 resolution) will slow down the patch considerably on slower computers. It is recommended to leave it to the lo (unchecked) setting on all G4 computers or mac mini�s. G5�s and Intel Mac�s with 64MB graphics cards (non intel integrated graphics) can handle smoothly mixing 640?480 or higher resolution clips.
- Hex mode is also taxing as it needs to multiply every clip by multiple hex masks to do the effect. Use 320?240 clips only in hex mode unless you have a fast machine.
- The recommended low end machine is a G4 1.25Ghz with a 32MB graphics card. Mixing with the preview mode enabled is smooth on this configuration when using 320?240 clips an external firewire HD. In general a fast firewire 7200 or 10000 RPM FW400 or FW800 HD is highly recommended as it will substantially improve framerate.