While tis easy to think of each New Year as merely another line in the sand, let’s not forget that a prime component of sand is silicon (dioxide), that wonderful tetravalent metalloid which makes up a near quarter of the earth’s crust, and is the meat of most semi-conductor devices. For those who enjoy tweaking software on devices employing such semi-conductors, now is also a convenient time to research some new ways to mangle and shift data around.
www.skype.com
VOIP = Voice Over Internet Protocol, or using the net to transfer your phone/audio data, rather than the existing phoneline. As bandwidth continues to grow, this will continue to make more and more sense. Skype no doubt saw this a long time ago, and decided to aim for a slice of the global online phone pie with their free net-phone software. Skype allows good-quality phone chats between skype users online, and it can also connect to phone lines offline for a fee ( where they make their moola, obviously ). Good points about skype though, are that it works well across all-platforms regardless of whether you are behind a firewalled network or not, and includes a good file-transfer capacity that also works across networks or platforms easily. They’ve also recently built Skype into kazaa, the popular p2p file-sharing application, possibly attempting to ‘legitimise’ kazaa in the eyes of the law, whilst also expanding their user-base.
RSS Newsreaders
These things are great, they basically turn the web into ‘feeds’ you can subscribesoftware.gif
to so that the media you want comes to you as it is updated. You can see a previous article on RSS with a big list of available RSS software at www.octapod.org/jeanpoole. It only keeps rolling on though. Sample addition to my RSS newsreader? Just added DJ Rupture’s blog so am now notified with articles posted by him as he posts them. Which often happen to include interesting mp3s to download.
VideoBlogging
Like the tech-obsessives who fawned over each other in their weblogs 3-4 years ago, and wrote about – well, about how cool weblogs were, ‘videobloggers’ are going through the same phase now, with the difference being that you can see them, or whatever their video camera is focussed on. The topics tend to range from ‘how cool it all is’ to technical nuances as they collectively pursue ways to make online-video-publishing easier, and get bandwidth concerns with software like bit-torrent. www.videobloggin.info is a good starting point, and already interesting models are emerging – such as www.vimeo.com which allows easy splicing of narratives with the way it combines many videos into the one video playing back online.
www.soniccharge.com/products
Sonic Charge’s Tonic is a quite cool percussive drum VST plug-in made by Magnus Lidstrom, best known for his work with Propellerhead software.
VJ applications
www.garagecube.com/modul8
Version 2 of this popular gamer-tech built app is almost in the works, promising the ability to crossfade between two layer sets – edit a composition while displaying another one, new FX, new text features and a powerful recording mechanism.
www.arkaos.net
Version 3.03 adds some new FX, interface and real-time enhancements such as being able to assign midi in and out points for real-time control of loops. Arkaos now features 60+ real-time effects and will soon offer FreeFrame plug-ins support soon (a popular format with at least 100 free effects). The ArKaos VJ 3.0.3 DMX version ( at a hefty 599 Euros) also now allows you to assign visuals, camera inputs, effect parameters, to the sliders and buttons of a DMX lighting console and have full control over your visuals and effects through the console, as well as the venue-lights etc.
www.vidvox.net :
On the verge of releasing Grid Pro ( $250 USD, $50 discount for students ), which will combine their well-laid out sample playback interface with the ability to layer, apply blend modes, transition times, live camera input, recording & replay of real-time FX adjustment and more. VDMXX evangelists are next in line, with a long awaited update to be delivered after GRID is sorted.
www.troikatronix.com
Isadora 1.1 ( mac & PC ) is a regularly updated visual programming environment of sorts, that lets you build your video applications within it. Latest additions include increased freeframe support, outputting to firewire and much more.
Jean Poole
PS >>
In response to my mac-centric VJ updates, Asaf sent in the following links…
( Some of these are also available in a bigger VJ piece I wrote here )
I read your latest post on software updates & I’d like to refer you to some other great proggies in the VJ arena.
First, you have a cool & useful freeware to start with, called “Aestesis All Starz”. You can read about it here: http://www.virtualflavius.com/cgi-bin/purple.cgi?AestesisAllStarz. Aestesis also have another software, which costs money & is sort of a modular, MIDI controlled VJ environment – sort of Reason for VJs
Second, you have VJ Fader’s NeuroMixer – http://www.virtualflavius.com/cgi-bin/purple.cgi?NeuroMixer. Great for mixing two video streams, much like a VJ & more + it’s MIDI controllable – currently in Beta
And last, but not least, is a commercial software which I was surprised not to find on your list: Resolume – It’s a state of the art program for live performance. http://www.resolume.com
I really like reading your posts & I hope that helps.
Cheers,
Asaf Prihadash
Blog: http://www.virtualflavius.com/blog
Wiki: http://www.virtualflavius.com/cgi-bin/purple.cgi?FrontPage
WebJay: http://webjay.org/by/VirtualFlavius