No 1. Performance. I have done tests and often there is a severe drop in framerate for qtz files in Modul8 compared to the framerate in the Quartz Composer editor.

No 2. You cannot decide the rendering size of .qtz files in Modul8 (in version 2.5). They are always rendered as 640×480. In Modul8 v2.6 you can set the size in Preferences but there may be many situations where you’d like to set the size for the individual files.

No 3. You cannot set the duration of .qtz files in Modul8. Duration will always be 30 sec.

I find that these problems can be solved by following the steps below and converting the .qtz file to a .mov before importing it into Modul8.

If you have Quicktime Pro (as you should – it’s sort of a vj’s swiss army knife) just

1 – open your qtz file with Quicktime pro. Then
2 – resize the viewer window to your desired size. You can hit cmd+I to view the current size in the inspector.
3 – Save the file as a .mov using ‘Save as’ where you have the option to set another duration eg. 60 sec.

Now you can open the mov file in Modul8 and it will have the size and duration you want plus in many cases the framerate will improve. Note that even though the file is called .mov it is still a Quartz composition. It’s just been wrapped in a Quicktime packaging.

Also note that if the size is too big you won’t gain better performance even if you scale it down inside Modul8. You’ll have to scale down the mov file in Quicktime until you find a size that works.

Hope this works for you

I don’t know the reason for this so I don’t know if it’s a general problem or something that is limited to my OS/hardware combination. I’m running Snow Leopard on a 2.4 GHz duo core Macbook Pro.

So if you’re curious here are the files that I’ve tested with. I get approx. 14 fps with the .qtz but 57 fps with the .mov in Modul8. In Quartz Composer editor I also get around 57 fps.

particleleaves 6 (mov)

particleleaves 6 (qtz)

http://www.arkaos.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6828

So now I have the beta and since I am a seasoned Modul8 user I thought I’d try and do a Modul8 versus GrandVJ feature comparison. Keep in mind that I have a total of 5 hours of experience with GrandVJ versus 3 or 4 years with M8, but I will try to be fair and balanced.

General impressions of GrandVJ

The basic idea of GrandVJ is not that foreign when coming from Modul8. A lot of the features are pretty much the same in both apps and I don’t cover those here. For instance the midi mapping and key mapping seems to work in a similar way, and adjusting the size, speed, transparency of a movie is also basically the same. That said I will go on to describe the only the main differences between the two apps.

Modules?

In GrandVJ: No. So that’s perhaps the biggest difference of them all. But as far as I read you can write custom effects and so called generators – that may solve a lot of the same tasks as the modules in Modul8.

The interface and the clip banks

GrandVJ has way more space for clips than Modul8. The default clip bank is organized in 16 tabs of 16 clips and is customizable to hold as many as you like which is a vast improvement over the 8×16 limit of Modul8. Furthermore you can import and export banks of clips – something that is really lacking in M8. Also the interface of GrandVJ is more flexible than Modul8. Windows can be floating or grouped in tabs as you prefer.

Handling effects

GrandVJ handles effects as clips that you drag and put onto your media whereafter you can tweak the parameters of the effect. This is quite different from the Modul8 paradigm where effects are mostly handled by dedicated knobs and sliders in the interface or in the modules. One strength in GrandVJ is that you can assign an effect directly onto your ‘library items’ in the clip banks. For instance in your clip bank you have a clip of a dog with a yellow tint effect and another instance of the same clip of the dog with a red tint. In Modul8 the color or any other effect is always tied to the layer.
One major limitation in GrandVJ however: You can only have one effect at a time on any one clip. So to spell it out: In GrandVJ you don’t get a red dog with a blur unless you have it as a clip.

A and B group and layersets

GrandVJ doesn’t have layer sets. So if you need to switch between collections of layers Modul8 is the winner. However GrandVJ does have an A and B group and you can move layers to the other group by the click of a button. Also GrandVJ doesn’t allow dragging layers to change their order. However you can quite easily copy the contents of one layer to another.

Synth mode versus mixer mode

GrandVJ has two modes and you can switch between those as you wish. The Mixer mode has layers similarly to Modul8 whereas the synth mode is created for easier clip triggering. If you choose mixer mode GrandVJ functions very much like Modul8. You put your clips into layers and tweak some parameters of those layers. You have an A and a B group and you can fade between hose two groups.

In synth mode each clip you trigger is stacked on top of the others. You can however retain some control of the order of your clips by labelling them to go into the background, middle or top. All clips can be triggered with the keyboard of a midi controller and you have an onscreen label of what key is assigned to the clip.

As I see it this is a strong feature in GrandVJ – the ability to switch freely between these two modes within the same application – at any time during your performance.

Quartz Composer support

As I mentioned in the beginning a new feature of the 1.2 beta of GrandVJ is support for Quartz Composer files. Simply drag a file into your clip bank. There’s nothing much to say, it’s an improvement over Modul8 as Modul8 handles QC files only through a Safe Mode which disables a lot of the features of Quartz Composer. On the other hand you don’t get direct access to tweak parameters of your QC file as you can do in VDMX. This is however a feature that the development team of GrandVJ has in mind for a future release, whereas Modul8 team has stated that they don’t see any further development of QC support in Modul8 in the foreseeable future.

Where is the animation?

One major feature that is lacking in GrandVJ when coming from the Modul8 world is animation. Where is ‘auto move’, ‘auto scale’, ‘auto rotate’? And where is the sequencer module that I use all the time in M8? All the animation features of Modul8 makes it easy to create movement using still images with transparent backgrounds. In GrandVJ it seems that all movement must come from the clips or from manually triggering and tweaking parameters. I suppose with an external midi sequencer a lot of the sequencing and animation can be achieved in GrandVJ but I know my style of working is very dependent on those basic features.

Conclusion

Overall GrandVj seems to be designed for the club VJ whereas Modul8 is brilliant for all kinds of performances with a more strict choreography and scenography. GrandVJ makes it easier to browse and trigger a large number of media whereas Modul8 lets you preproduce mulitple sets of layers with custom settings.

In general though – for my needs GrandVJ has potential but there is still a long way before I would consider it as a general alternative to Modul8. When that is said I wish Modul8 would be inspired and solve some of the basic limitations of their software. Mainly import/export of clip banks and generally allowing for more items in the banks.

Also despite the new version 2.6 of Modul8 development seems to be stagnating, so if GrandVJ keeps evolving, who knows what the score looks like in a year.

Add your comments

Let me know what you think. Have you tried both apps? Have I missed some major features? Add your comments below…

Have a look at this video tutorial or read on for a text version – sorry about the less than optimal video and audio quality – this is my first attempt at doing a tutorial:

First of all you need to download a couple of components which I have collected in a handy zip file: DV screen capture components

Here are the links for the original sources of the components in the zip file:

• VirtualDV (in FireWire SDK 26)
• Quartz Composer Live DV
• v002 Screen Capture

Please be aware that as I have not created the software I have no way of making changes or helping out if this hack does not work for you.

1. Connect the two Macs with a Firewire cable.

2. Download the software and start up the VirtualDV app on both computers. This is to fool the computers into believing there is a hardware DV device connected

Step 2

3. Unpack the v002ScreenCapture.plugin.zip file and install the plugin into /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins

4. Start up QuartzComposerLiveDV on the computer that you want to capture video from.

5. Click apple+o and open one of the files inside the ’screen sizes’ folder – select a file that matches the area of the screen you want to capture.

Step 5

6. Now if you see a live screen capture in the window inside QuartzComposerLiveDV you’re up and running.

Step 6

7. Check that it works by going to the receiving computer and open Quicktime Player. Open the Recording tab in the Preferences pane of Quicktime to check that a new video source has been created.

Step 7

Things to note:
- I have only tested this on Leopard. Let me know if get it working on other versions of Mac OS.
- There is a visible delay as with other DV sources. This is because DV is a compressed format and so it also takes some CPU resources on both machines
- No sound is transmitted although sound is a part of the DV codec. I think this i because there is no sound included in the QuartzComposerLiveDV app.
- It’s only possible to capture the primary screen due to the way that v002ScreenCapture works.
- Keep the QuartzComposerLiveDV app visible – if you go apple+H the DV signal stops.

Other uses:
- You could also connect a DV camera and record the screen cast if that is of any use to you…
- Or you could load up any other Quartz Composer file in QuartzComposerLiveDV and send that instead. (I tried this and not all QC comps work. I am not sure why…)

1. You need a Quicktime Pro license, which is a paid upgrade to the free Quicktime Player. Get it – it’s useful every day when you work with motion graphics.

2. Open the qtz file in Quicktime Pro.

3. Hit ‘Save as’ and set the duration you want for the final movie. Now the file has been saved as a .mov file, but we’re not done. The file is still basically just a .qtz file in a Quicktime packaging.

Step 3

4. Open the new .mov file in Quicktime (if it has not automatically opened in a window already)

5. Hit cmd+J to display the movie properties

6. Click on the second line where it says Quartz composer track.

7. Click on the Visual settings tab

8. Now set the fields next to ’scaled size’ to your desired size.

Step 8

9. Hit cmd+E for ‘Export’ and select to export as ‘Movie to Quicktime Movie’

Step 9

10. Click ‘Options’ and then ‘Settings’ to select an encoding format. Eg. PhotoJPEG 25 fps Color High Quality

Step 10

Voila you have a movie….

PS: Try in step 8 to set the size to x2 the size you want. Then in Settings in step 10. set the actual size of the final movie. This will help antialiasing e.g making sharp edges appear smoother. If you have serious antialiasing issues you could go for an extreme size like x8 though this will of course drastically increase the time it takes to render.