It doesn’t surprise me that so many discussions of technology have to do with tools rather than “art.” Odds are, you know what art you want to make — it’s the tools that may or may not help you get there. On that note, I want to point to an interesting chat I’ve been having with subbasshead on the forums:
Best tool for QT random frame playback/output?
Jitter is an excellent tool for doing what he wants to do here; it’s perfect for creating custom video patches that do what you like. My focus lately has been on building all my VJ apps in Jitter, not to impress anyone, necessarily, but because even for simple playback they do everything I want and nothing else.
Subbasshead comes across one of my favorite sets of Jitter sample patches to play with, the “Jitter Recipes” by Andrew Benson. Andrew’s name is all over the Jitter example content, too. (Speaking of which, I find a lot of people don’t actually know how much example content is included in the Jitter install. Aside from the tutorials, there are folders full of example patches in the [Max folder] > examples > jitter-examples folder. Many of these cover topics you won’t find elsewhere in the documentation. I wish some of them had better contents or were more simplified, but they’re useful nonetheless. Andrew has been taking these the extra mile in updated recipes online:
Jitter Recipes Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
If you haven’t checked book 3 since May (I hadn’t), you’ve missed two new patches, including an homage to the legendary Video Toaster. (Ah, Video Toaster.) Some of Andrew’s crazy results are pictured above.
I promise we’ll have some ready-made video tools covered here on CDMo, too, but for those of you adventuring into Jitter, we’re here to help you make sure those escapades are rewarding.