chocochunk

I have a Mac mini that I purchased initially with the intention of mounting in the dash of my van. While I had it all worked out how I would beam podcasts to the van in my driveway while I was sleeping, I had not worked out the burning rings that kept the “Atari van” from passing Portland’s strict DEQ standards. My interest in wrenching ends with the vintages. In the coming weeks I will write about some great uses for this aesthetically pleasing low-cost box from Apple, which still maintains mass crowd appeal.

Apple has an advanced video processor built into the core of the OS. This is referred to as CoreVideo. It is like a low-level OpenGL, which is a graphics architecture that allows many modelers and shaders to work smoothly. Think of Google Sketchup to get an idea of where OpenGL excels. With the newest Apple OS, the kind developers have enhanced some of the tools surrounding CoreVideo. I would like to share one of these fantastic tools–Quartz Composer–one of my favorite hobby tools that allows you to tap into the power of the CoreVideo with a reasonable modularity for anyone to tackle in an afternoon.

The Mac mini has been built with either Motorola’s PowerPC or the newer Intel chipsets. While an Intel would be nice, the shortcomings of the graphics really make this more of a hobby machine. In many cases Mac minis have been popular as servers due to their size and efficiency. As a longtime creative PC slave (money decisions, don’t flame the meek!) there are a few differences I have noticed here. First, Apple power saving works, regardless of what is attached. My mini will try to run anything, and features are disabled to make the program run reasonably. I like that, so the box stays. So how do I use it? Allow me to show and tell.

Quartz Composer is used by many people for some very different uses. To install it, you must find your original Apple OS CD and install the Core X components (check the web for a guide). Quartz files can be used as screen savers natively, and there are some unique capabilities such as the RSS feed puller that make Quartz more like Max/MSP or other “if you can dream it, there’s a way” tools for artists. Quartz files can integrate deep into Apple’s flagship software Quicktime. And for those media-savvy blurkers, I don’t need to tell you that Quicktime is a part of just about everything Apple. From Ableton Live, to screen savers, even flash and Adobe–on some level every application in use today has some sort of ability to incorporate Quicktime. Quartz can make it easy to write code for these programs in a spaghetti environment that allows you to keep your mind on what you want to do, and not how to do it.

Here in my photo I have adapted kineme’s little module for midi controllers. With any midi music controller, you can control your transitions and effects with much more precision while being able to change several things at once. Much more fun than pushing a mouse. What you see in the “inspector,” which is the window from where all options are placed, is a simple conversion formula I used to add more control options from my midi controller. Midi CC messages are very common for any midi-capable device; however, the slider range is typically integers 0-127. With many video and audio software the value scales from -1 to 1, which is basically a DC or audio range. With this you can connect your controller to any value plug. Or you can send it to your audio card if you want to control hardware or attach relays to your audio card… really powerful stuff from a free package!