Grid Pro vs Arnold Schwarzenegger

Given the gargantuan almost heroic pixel tasks VJ software Grid Pro takes on for juggling, it seems more appropriate to weigh it’s merits against everyone’s favourite robotic bulging biceps, than compare it with traditional linear video software.
grid pro screenshot schwarzenegger

larger Grid Pro screenshot

What it is, What. It. Is.
“I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.”

Expanding on the pioneering work of vidvox.net founder Johnny de Kam ( node.net ), Grid Pro is the highly anticipated real-time video triggering, processing and sequencing software that tries to strike a middle ground between ‘Grid’ (simple video sample triggering software) and VDMX (vidvox’s more sophisticated, flexible and process based app). Clips and live camera feeds can be sequenced and processed on the fly, and blended or effected in a myriad of ways. Plenty of on-screen muscle for the sweatiest of pixel work-outs, yet versatile enough to be customised to suit particular needs.

Trigger Fingers
“I have a love interest in every one of my films – a gun.”
– the ‘Terminator’ who recently legislated limits for selling violent computer games in California.

After loading a bank of clips it becomes immediately obvious that Grid Pro can utilise the computer keyboard to trigger from a grid’ of clips, to either a left or right channel for mixing or cutting between. It’s simplicity is the result though of a long development time utilising strong levels of community input, which really shows in the refined ways the program works. For example, clicking on the left side of a thumbnail sends a clip to the left channel, clicking on the right side sends it to the right – a very helpful and visually succinct way of accessing clips. Latency ( clip triggering reaction time) is good and extensive midi support also allows easy midi triggering. As well as clips, or cutting to a live camera feed, shortcuts are also easily created and accessed, for triggering Grid Pro’s huge range of effects and processes.

Processing
“The most difficult decision I’ve made in my entire life…. I made in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.”

Effects in Grid Pro are very elegantly organised and effects variables can be adjusted by mouse movements ( & recorded mouse movements), oscillators and audio or video analysis which can automatically synchronise effects parameters with the sonic or visual dynamics of any sound or video being listened to or played. Both side channels and the main mix channel can be effected separately, and the FX ‘chains’ created can be saved as presets for easy changing to various effects combinations. Grid Pro makes clip processing and variation a snap, and allows unprecedented options for customized real-time adjustment of clips. Most of the FX are high on functionality and low on cheese, and work differently dependent on the order in which they are chained together ( like effects within Adobe After Effects ). The audio analysis is particularly useful, and is easily hooked up to just about any parameter within the program for beat or frequency driven adjustment of your chosen parameter ( eg crossfade time, motion blur, zoom amount etc ). A built-in ‘Font Synth’ enables cycling through text ( or dingbat fonts) with various advanced lay-out and masking options. In short: much pixel grunt, but more stealth ninja than body builder.

Flexibility
“My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave,”
– current Californian Governor to 33 million people.

Grid Pro ships with a great range of useful and smartly adjustible transitions ( luma-keying, chroma-keying, various blending and wipe modes etc ), allows recording and replay of both clip sequences and overall output, has an excellent customisability (heavily modular structure, easy custom shortcuts), has built-in playback and analysis of mp3 playlists, and even allows for blending of different ways of adjusting clips – eg it allows combining of data such as mouse movement mixed with an oscillator or audio analysis, creating parameter adjustment as smooth or chaotic as preferred.

Interface
“I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

This is where it all comes together. Grid Pro shines with it’s extremely well thought out one-screen interface. Interface hierarchies and bottlenecks are kept to a minimum, screenspace is used incredibly well to give access to so many features, and above all – it becomes very intuitive once played with for a while. Real-time video requires an instrument-like interface just as much as it requires brute processing, and Grid Pro probably sets a new benchmark for real-time video interface depth and highly customisable ease of use.

Requirements
“As you know, I don’t need to take any money from anybody,”
– Arnie, before he started funnelling taxpayers money to his favoured business interests.

Grid Pro needs $250 USD & a G4 or G5 mac. PC version in the works. Very generous discounts for students and educators, and FREE cross-grades for VDMX4 owners.

Verdict
Although the Terminator did defeat Gary Coleman in the Californian election, he reeks a little too much of the 20th century, or perhaps the 19th. In contrast, from within the highly competitive 21st century VJ software world, the release of Grid Pro quickly shuttles them surely to the top or near top of the ‘off the shelf real-time video software’ market. Much is possible with this software.

They’ll be back
Constantly being upgraded and refined, the future Grid Pro pipeline (from near to far away) includes :
– GP 1.1 with a range of minor tweaks, some audio analysis improvements, some new transitions and FX.
– expansion of LFOs ( oscillators ) into ‘behaviours’ with more maths smoothing & gravity like options.
– Integrating the sequencer directly into the media grid, ‘more like zones with patterns and behaviors’
freeframe support
-DV output over Firewire within Grid3
-Exporting of EDL/XML ( editing decision lists – useful for allowing real-time editing later editing on higher resolution footage within linear editing apps such as Final Cut Pro)
-GPU pixel and vertex shader based FX and composition.. on the horizon.

Link to GRID PRO tour
Link to GRID PRO forum

See also :
VDMXX 4 Review
VDMX 2 review
VJ Software Round-Up ( extensive list from 2004 )

by Sean Healy, October 20, 2005 11 Comments

Bit Torrent : Exploring Networked Distribution

( Dry but lengthy piece written for Metro magazine earlier in 05 )

Like the mp3 sharing client Napster many years before it, the Bit Torrent application has recently become the public face of peer to peer ( P2P) file sharing. While Napster provided an innovative way for users to browse and share Mp3 files, the Bit Torrent model extends on this by sharing not just user files, but user bandwidth as well. Inevitably, the improved download speeds of Bit Torrent have attracted a large userbase, and in turn, copyright enforcers and subsequent media coverage. Despite some bad press, Bit Torrent has much to offer online media creators, publishers, distributors and audiences alike, as it allows small operators to distribute large popular files, by cleverly utilising the bandwidth of the downloading users. Continue Reading →

by Sean Healy, October 17, 2005 0 comments

Viral Videos

Sure, melting glaciers, raised sea levels, increased tropical diseases, bleached coral reefs and extreme weather patterns may loom large over the next few decades, but is global warming really coming from car tailpipes and our massive energy usage? Equally formidable to consider is the amount of steam rising out of the ears of net-users around the world, a flock of heads bubbling away in a brew of ever more densely saturated media. Occasionally a step back reminds how utterly dizzying it is to be able to send and receive such vast amounts of text, image, audio and video around the globe.

New video classics are being born everyday online, hurtled around from site to site, blog to blog, even emailed to users. In the last week, several videos were thrust into the limelight by the crowd, the rush from obscurity to global recognition now almost possible instantaneously. Videoblogs are making that rush easier, with their systems for automating the publishing of video online ( see www.freevlog.org for easy tutorials about how to do it for free). Videoblogs can be easily watched, subscribed to and referenced. And all of this just got an injection with the new ‘video iPod’, not an amazing device in itself – but with Apple now enabling subscription to videoblogs through iTunes ( as well as music videos and some tv programs), the path from bedroom video to global eyeballs is getting easier and easier.

Last Week’s Top 3 Viral Videos?
subway cinema1. Moving Canvas
A project by Frédéric Eyl, Gunnar Green and Richard The (UDK Berlin), which sticks a computer and pokcet projector onto the side of a subway train and creates unexpected surreal flickering imagery for the train passengers.
2. Mutant Eyeball Plants
Holy crap this animation is crazy good. More here.
3. The Shining Remix
A competition where assistant editors ‘re-cut’ trailers for famous movies to try and make them seem like different movies, and Robert Ryang managed to morph ‘The Shining’ horror into a romantic comedy. Interview with Robert here.

by Sean Healy, October 13, 2005 1 Comment

Pixels For A Melting Planet

Somewhere in the universe, the human race is passed out on a lounge, eyes glazed over, remote control still in the hand, slimed in popcorn butter. Climate change continues to flicker it’s tongue across our eyeballs. Polar bears serve drinks in bikinis. A dwarf (of course) whispers a reminder: “The house is on fire, your fridge is melting.”

Snowflake Disco
“If the melting continues, as many Arctic experts expect, the mass of floating ice that has crowned the planet for millions of years may largely disappear for entire summers this century.”
– recent New York Times story about the Arctic melting more rapidly than previously expected.
( NYT log-in required, see also bugmenot.com )

Bob Dylan once sang ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’, and sure enough, up towards the North pole, the local fishermen don’t need to be told about melting ice by weathermen. Count enough drowned polar bears on their shores ( because there is less ice, spread further apart and the polar bears can’t swim that far ), and you start to get an idea. Human induced climate change is real, something even the U.S. seems to be finally admitting after decades of denial.

ice world hotel

Like any good nation with a frontier mentality, the U.S. also smells opportunity with the melting Arctic. New cruise ship destinations, new commercial fishery areas, oil and gas explorations – the list is endless for the right entrepreneurial spirit, and all of the above are being chased right now. At any rate the melting Arctic should make for interesting sea levels / body surfing weather along the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. ( and the Netherlands, Bangledesh & other low lying coastal areas). Not to mention more of the extreme weather patterns enjoyed lately. Of course, much of this extremity can be avoided – but who ya gonna call?

Hollywood Gallops In
If a few natural disasters and melting icebergs can’t grab our attention, then maybe the movie-makers will have better luck in helping steer the 6,477,480,338 humans (at time of writing) away from heating up the planet too much. They seemed to have moved on from robot and machine-take overs for the time being anyway ( they’ll be back ), to framing the climate itself as the bigger scary enemy. Long familiar with farming the goo of our deepest fears ( or popping them like a gruesome pimple) Hollywood is now grappling with the giant question marks we have shaped in the sky.

First we had Dennis Quaid leaping across melting glaciers, outrunning tidal waves(!) and even outrunning the freezing over of New York City in the spectacularly woeful ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. ‘Syriana’ is next, a political thriller starring George Clooney and set within the global oil industry. Apparently the film explores the back room deals within the pursuit of wealth and power, but ultimately forces a focus on our oil-dependence, a now climate defining trait of ours. Alongside the film, the makers have released a website tackling oil dependency and encouraging action and education around renewable energies and hybrid cars. www.participate.net/oilchange.

by Sean Healy, October 13, 2005 0 comments