Add Max patch effects to DNA. from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.
Yesterday, we saw some splashy video distortion techniques applied to real-time video. You know what that means: it’s time to use these in live performance.
Liquidify Video, Live: Optical Flow GLSL Datamosh Technique
Here’s one start.Peter Nyboer, Max whiz and Livid developer, has run with the idea of squishing around video using optical flow analysis, and shows you how to add the effect to Livid’s Cell DNA VJ app. For Jitter users, this means you can rely on Cell for quick access to video taps and files, while adding unusual effects built in Jitter to get your custom processing on, not only with this example but any other patches you’ve created. One little detail of Cell DNA I missed – it requires Max 4 patches, not Max 5 patches. Peter has also posted a tutorial for working with that, after the jump.
And yes, if none of this is really making sense to you, you can go download the files and just try it out – no need to fully grasp all of the internals straight away.
Don’t want to use Jitter and/or Cell? The guts of Andrew Benson’s video datasplooshing technique is an OpenGL (GLSL) shader, so it doesn’t even rely on Jitter – Jitter can just be a convenient environment for playing around with such things. There’s word we may see a Quartz Composer wrapper around this shader, which would make it easy to use with software like VDMX.
Oh, by the way, I’m officially rescinding my editorial ban on the term “datamoshing.” Why? Because it means absolutely nothing, and therefore can be declared reasonably harmless. Also, unlike the term “glitch,” it comes without any baggage. We therefore have a nice, nonsense term for making video all mushy and unpredictable – a good thing.
Here’s a more general tutorial on making your Max patches work inside Cell DNA:
Making a Max Patch work in DNA from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.
And from Andrew Benson, more squelchy videos:
motion distortion 3 (dark abstract) from andrew benson on Vimeo.
motion distortion from andrew benson on Vimeo.