Hey everyone!
We're very very excited to release this new update to VDMX:
http://www.vidvox.com/download/VDMX5_b8.6.0.6.dmg
As always we love to hear feedback so please send us emails to let us know how things go. If you run into any problems please send us the issues by choosing the "Report Bug" option from the Help menu.
Special thanks to all of our private beta testers who have helped with getting this ready for release and double high fives to Tom Butterworth for his continued work on the Hap codec family!
So what's new in this release?
Several new plugins:
- New "Timecode" plugin! This plugin receives, generates, and sends SMPTE timecode over a variety of formats- it can receive timecode via MTC (MIDI timecode) or LTC (timecode sent over audio). It can also generate timecode locally, or use a data source in VDMX to generate timecode (which means timecode can also be received via DMX and OSC). The timecode it receives (or generates) is published in VDMX as a data source, so you can use it to control things in VDMX. The plugin's timecode can also be published over any combination of MTC, LTC, or OSC destinations.
- New "Cue List" plugin! Use this plugin to set up pre-planned clip triggers and changes to locally-created data sources that occur at specific times during a performance. It has an assortment of timing control options (index/beats/measures/seconds/SMPTE), and can play back on its own or synchronized with other systems using internal (clock and timecode plugins) or external (MIDI, OSC, DMX, MTC, and LTC) data sources. Cues can also be exported and imported to a simple CSV document for collaboration or use in other projects.
- New "Data Looper" plugin! This plugin lets you record values from data sources into tracks, which are published in VDMX as data sources, and played back/looped. A single plugin can have as many tracks as you want, and the tracks can be re-recorded and edited on the fly.
Hap codecs:
- There's a new flavor of Hap: HapQ+A adds an alpha channel to HapQ.
- Performance improvements to Hap encoding
- Performance improvements to Hap playback
- Included the AVF batch exporter in the "Extras" section of the dmg. This is a very simple batch exporter that uses AVFoundation to transcode media, and is part of the "HapInAVFoundation" open-source project.
ISF:
- ISF has been refined with a number of small changes, ISF v2 is now public. All local VDMX assets have been updated- for more information about ISF, you can go here: https://www.interactiveshaderformat.com/
- Included the ISF editor in the "Extras" folder of the dmg. This is an in-house editor we wrote for browsing, previewing, and editing ISF files. There's a GUI so you don't have to deal with JSON, a converter for Shadertoy/GLSL sandbox shaders, UI items for tweaking and working with parameters, a built-in browser/search function for the official ISF site, an optional Quicklook plugin for previewing ISF files in the finder, and lots more good stuff!
New Functionality:
- iOS devices (iOS 8+) appear as video inputs when connected to your computer. What you see and hear on your device is what you get in VDMX- no software is required on the iOS side.
- Added LUT based FX support- there are a LUT, a LUT Mixer, and a LUT Mask Mixer fx, all of which load their contents from any .cube files in the LUTs folder in the user-defined assets folder (accessible by Help menu, defaults to app support folder, just like everything else).
- New included GLSL composition modes and ISF FX
Improvements and Fixes:
- Added an HSV toggle to the default color UI items
- Added 16 and 24 bit DMX receiving and sending, cleaned up and reorganized DMX prefs
- Added badges to sliders that indicate whether the slider is being influenced by smoothing, soft takeover, or numfx
- LFO and Step Sequencer now receive clock or timecode (changes in transport controls)
- If VDMX is in "installationMode" then the "are you sure you want to quit?" dialog is skipped
- Added "smoothFPS" toggles to AVF and BM inputs- toggle adds very slight (1-2 frame) delay to input stream by buffering a couple frames, and attempts to compensate for discrepancies caused by the two streams being very slightly out-of-phase. Most noticeable with smooth animations and 60fps content
- Added a "UI item max rendering FPS" field to the prefs, which allows you to specify how fast your UI items render (default is 20fps). This was added because some apple hardware (anything with an AMD GPU) is so poorly supported by the OS that animating a lot of UI items can cause significantly higher than usual CPU use. This field lets you decrease how frequently UI items are rendered, which will drop the CPU load by an order of magnitude under these circumstances.
- Rotate ISF shader backend change, should work when the aspect ratio of the rendering environment doesn't match the aspect ratio of the input image
- Change in behavior: AVFoundation-based inputs will no longer discard late video frames- with newer versions of os x this can result in better performance if a large number of identical cameras are connected
- VDMX will now automatically delete any cached vuo resources on launch when the internal copy of Vuo.framework has changed and the resources will need to be recompiled.
- Min and max env fields in slider inspector displays SMPTE timecode where appropriate
- Worked around a ridiculous bug with apple's OpenGL/NSView integration that would cause a crash under some circumstances (if there are many GL-based views in play) on some hardware
- Fixed some bizarre detect behavior with blackmagic inputs
- Worked around a bug with 10.11 that resulted in the legacy CoreImage filters bundled with VDMX not displaying their UI items
- Fixed a bug where BM inputs would appear to stop sending video to layers/taps even though the input was still running and its preview in the inspector was visible
- Fixed a bug with super-old CI FX bundled with VDMX- they weren't saving their state properly under several different circumstances
- Fixed a bug where still images were being imported as premultiplied alpha
- Fix to bug with audio inputs and outputs with multiple buffers (MOTU, RME Madiface XT)
- Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when deleting a layer under some circumstances
- Fixed a bug where fullscreen would obscure a modal quit confirmation dialog
- You can now right-click-drag from the dial in the clock plugin to start a data source drag
- Fixed a bug where the flash plugin path prefs were non-functional
- Worked around a bug with os x that would cause a crash when dragging some things (most commonly data sources) over buttons in tab views
- Fixed a bug with page auto-reloading
- QC source list filters out ~.qtz files
- Fixed a seemingly-random crash with files that would occur rarely
- Hap movies rendered with non-square pixels display correctly
- v002 installer used to only work on non-server installs of os x, this fixes it to work on any flavor of os x
- Fixed an issue when recording movies under some specific circumstances (odd dimensions with YCbCr download path)
- Fixed a bug where some combinations of GLSL comp mode wouldn't work
- Fixed a bug where under some very specific circumstances, prerolled clips that were triggered wouldn't display at the correct aspect ratio
- Fixed a bug where speeds wouldn't always be respected with reversing loop mode
- Fixed a bug where using the "set in/out point" buttons would set the in/out point but not loop that first time
- Fixed a bug where some file attributes werent being applied correctly when ejected
- Fixed a bug with the movie recorder plugin where alpha channels werent being exported when saving still images files
- Fixed a bug where a pixel would be distorted while recording
- Fixed a bug where preset thumbnails wouldn't render correctly under some circumstances
- Fixed a bug where the opacity data source for layers wasnt being set correctly
- Fixed a bug where VDMX would hang on launch under some specific circumstances
- Fixed a bug where warnings were being displayed with ISF FX
- Fixed a bug when playing back Hap movies that would sometimes skip frames
- pop-up buttons in the control surface plugin can now be right-click dragged from to assign other UI items to their data source (if the pop-up button is publishing its value as either an index or a string)
- It is now possible to control-drop data sources onto all pop-up buttons
- Sliders in the control surface plugin that you right-click-drag from configure the receiver in the UI item they're dropped on to interpret the data as being normalized or non-normalized
- Buttons in the control surface plugin that you right-click-drag from configure the receiver in the UI item they're dropped on to to toggle or take its value directly from the UI item depending on whether the button is a toggle button or not
- The + button and R/W toggle in section presets can now be inspected by single-clicking on them
- the presets in section preset UI items are copied/pasted between section preset items of the same type
- worked around a QC crash with published image outputs from QC comps loaded as plugins
- Moved the "disable after writing" option for section presets into the preferences (made it a global option, rather than the per-item option it was previously)
- Fixes to audio sync when using non-default and multi-channel audio device and changing to default device
- Fixed a bug- smoothing wasn't working correctly on the "track value" slider in data looper tracks
- when you drag a data source to a UI item, the whole UI item (including the "buttons" for UI item presets) is highlighted
- If you drag a data source to a UI item's preset, the data source will be used to trigger that specific preset. this means you can now right-click-drag from data sources in vdmx to the presets in section preset UI items (or any UI item, for that matter) to assign shortcuts for triggering section presets.
- Fixed a bug, sometimes the cursor wouldn't get hidden if you fullscreened on the main screen
- Fixed a bug, color wheel inspector wasn't refreshing after deleting a receiver
- Various other fixes and tweaks!