just a bump on this ?

In a recent forum post, a user pointed out that Isadora 3.1.1 and Isadora 3.0.8f12 were not compatible with USB-C Hubs that rely on DisplayLink drivers. I wanted to address this briefly.

SHORT VERSION: Yes, it is true that many hubs that rely on DisplayLink drivers are incompatible with Isadora, though there is perhaps one exception. (See "EXCEPTION" below.)

LONG VERSION: It is clear that most USB-C Hubs that rely on DisplayLink drivers don't work with Isadora because the drivers do not allow you to create a valid OpenGL context, something that's required for high speed rendering. But, I wanted to find out more. So I went to the (excellent!) local Mac shop to purchase one of these hubs so I could try it. While the headline of the DisplayLink web page leads off with the headline"Truly Universal", a tech at the shop said that these devices caused so many problems for so many customers with so many apps, that they simply stopped selling them. They now actively tell their customers not to use devices that rely on DisplayLink at all.

EXCEPTION: @liminal_andy shared a post about a specific USB Hub from a company called Plugable that apparently does work very well with Isadora. Perhaps there are others. But I can say with some confidence that is Andy says it works well, then you can have some confidence it does in fact work well.

CONCLUSION:

So we're sharing their recommendation: we currently do not recommend these devices for use with Isadora. If you do find some that work well, then please reply here and share your experience with the community.

Best Wishes,
Mark

P.S. I want find a way to investigate this when I can make time for it. Even though the DisplayLink system will be inefficient compared to a for-real OpenGL enabled output, I want to see if there is at least a workaround that allows 1) Isadora to work with these devices, and 2) for us to warn the users the device will be low performance.

Dear Community,

So I bought this power adapter for a Kinect v2 on Amazon, thinking "of course they will work". But even though they are expressly designed for the Kinect v2, the Kinect is not recognized.

Do any of you know a source where I can purchase two of these power supplies for overnight delivery? (They of course need to work with the OpenNI Tracker in Isadora for both macOS and PC.)

I'm in the middle of a workshop and need them urgently.

Thanks in advance for the Help,
Mark

Dear All,

If you don't know it, I have recommended Epoccam dozens upon dozens of times in this forum as a way to get an iOS device's webcam into Isadora via Syphon on macOS. It was easy to use, reliable, and low latency.

I am disappointed to inform you that that Epoccam has been bought by Elgato, and they have just informed me in an email that they will no longer support Epoccam Viewer Pro -- the app that allowed up to four iOS devices to provide a Syphon feed into Isadora and any other application that supports Syphon. Instead they are now supporting only a virtual web cam input. As a video developer, I can only surmise that such a system will have a much higher performance impact than using Syphon. 

Because of this, I can no longer recommend this software.

If you use Epocam and love it as I do, you are invite to write Elgato support and tell them they are making a mistake.

That said, you should know that a copy of Epoccam purchased by a friend from the App Store last week still works with Epoccam Viewer Pro. I had to .zip my copy of Viewer Pro and send it to this person. So if you have a copy of Viewer Pro, you can still use it at the moment. Of course, that could all end if they update the iOS app.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Dear Community,

Like all of you that use Apple machines, I'm reading many initial reviews about the new Apple Silicon / M1 machines. There are many that are touting the power of the M1 chip, and I think (in general) Apple is going in the right direction with this new technology.

For one, the fact that the CPU and GPU (graphics card) share memory. This means pulling data from GPU to to CPU – something that is dreadfully slow with existing GPUs – will be ultra fast. For things like outputting Isadora's stage to NDI and Blackmagic devices, there is the potential for massive improvement.

However, this critical article in Forbes caught my eye. It calls into question many of the claims Apple made during the introduction event. I leave it for you to read and interpret. But these "bullet points" seem crucial for anyone using Isadora and related software.

First, these machines are limited to one external display. To me, this is a serious limitation that would affect nearly every Isadora user.Second, these machines only has two USB-C ports. After you plug in the power you're left with one port. Plug in an external display, and you've got zero ports left for a mouse, an external drive, etc. Of course, you can add ports with a USB-Hub. But for something called a Mac Book Pro, two ports feels pretty limiting. Third, there problems with lots of apps, drivers and third-party software – some won't even install, others simply crash. Notably, the Adobe Suite is not officially supported. (There is a growing list of that shows which apps are compatible or not; you can see here.)Finally, Apps that are not natively compelled for the M1 chips (i.e., are compiled for Intel) run under emulation, and this imposes about a 50% performance penalty.

Of course, the last two points will become less troublesome as more apps and drivers are ported to run natively on the M1 chip. (The unknown factor is, how long will it take for developers to offer updated versions.) But at the moment, the lack of compatibility is something one must consider before moving to one of these machines.

In any case, we will get our mini-Mac based M1 as soon as possible and start to find out what it will take to port Isadora to the M1. Right now, Isadora 3.0.7 is incompatible with the Intel version of Big Sur, but we're getting close to finalizing a release that will address this. We're staying as on top of the new Apple Silicon developments as much as we can, but it's a good idea to read the article above and form your own opinions about how quickly you might migrate to one of these new machines.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Dear All,

So I was invited to a little birthday party/dance jam that took place on Zoom. Wanting to impress the group, I whipped up a little reactive patch that does some trippy effects on the live image, modulates those effects with the using the computer's built-in microphone, and then sends the output into Zoom. It seemed to have the desired effect because people were writing in the chat, "Whoa! What Zoom effect is that???", and I was saying "Well, it's not done in Zoom at all; it's done with Isadora." 😉

I thought I'd share the patch and some instructions so any of you could do the same and also learn this technique of sending Isadora's output to Zoom.

The Isadora Patch

To start, open the example patch attached to the bottom of this post.

To make sure the patch will work, choose Input > Live Capture Settings and make sure you have a web cam selected under Video Input, and that you have a microphone selected under Sound Input. Then click Start Live Capture and make sure you can see the video thumbnail, and that the VU meters underneath it are moving.

In terms of how the patch works, it's pretty simple.

Using the Video Delay actor, I combine the live feed and the delayed feed using a Effect Mixer set to 'addovr'. I then use a Video Fader actor to dim the image a bit, and send that to the Stage with a projector.Then there is a Stage Background actor to do the feedback. As you can see, the 'fb scale h', 'fb scale v', and 'fb rotation' being modulated by some Wave Generators so they are constantly changing.Finally, the Sound Level Watcher actor modulates the 'fb intensity' input of the Stage Background actor. (You may need to reduce the value of the 'limit max' input of the Limit Scale Value actor if your music is soft; I was playing the music pretty load for the party.)

So that's the patch. But the key thing here is that the "Syphon" output is checked for the Stage in the Stage Setup editor. With my example patch open, choose Output > Stage Setup to see this setting.

That's how we'll get our video output to Zoom.

Get the Video Ready for Zoom using Syphon Virtual Webcam

Now, to get the signal to Zoom, you need our free tool Syphon Virtual Webcam, which you can download from our plugins page. Follow the instructions there and within the program to install it on your computer. Once it's installed, start it up and you should automatically see the feed from Isadora in the Syphon Virtual Webcam window.

Bring the Image Into Zoom Using the Zoom Preferences

Finally, start up Zoom. Once it's open, go to the Zoom Preferences, click on the Video tab, and choose OBS Virtual Camera for the live input.

 

That's it! You now have Isadora's stage as a the "camera" in Zoom.

Hopefully that's a complete enough description for you all to follow. Let me know if anything here doesn't work out for you.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Example Patch: isadora-to-zoom-example.izz

Apparently, a multi-institution push led by Yale University has resulting in Zoom offering a "high quality" audio mode in version 5.2.2. 

This CDM article by Peter Kirn tells you how to take advantage of this new feature which may be important to Isadora users.

Best Wishes,
Mark

One Isadora's most innovative (and enthusiastic users) is the Associate Professor of Dance/Theatre Design and Production at the University of Maryland, Jared Mezzocchi.

During the month of August he spearheaded the creation of numerous short experiments using Zoom, Isadora, and other tools that explored the possibilities of remote performance. In these experiments you'll see that he was not only able to bring together performers in remote locations, but to use Isadora to manipulate the video from those remote sources in groundbreaking ways. Moreover, he even developed a method to allow a Stage Manager in a remote location call cues!

We are excited to share a list of all his Zoom/Isadora experiments below.

Some of you are going to immediately ask: "how did he do that?" or "Is there an example patch?" Jared didn't go into those sorts of details whilst creating these little playgrounds. But it's clear that following up on his ideas and showing you ho to accomplish some of the techniques he explored would benefit the entire community.

So, in our next, live "guru" session, we'll go one-on-one with Jared so that you can ask questions about how he accomplished these amazing feats. Based on your questions during that live session, we'll post a make "how to" posts in the forum  that will help you accomplish similar real-time feats. We are working with Jared to arrange the date for this special guru session, and will let you know as soon as it is set.

In the meantime, we've accumulated all of his experiments here for you to see. They are on Facebook, but the posts are public so you don't need a Facebook account to view them.

September 6 - A List of Virtual Performance DiscoveriesAugust 25 - Portrait Cross FadeAugust 24 - Turning a Teacher into a LIVE Line Drawing So Others Can Mimic Their MovementAugust 20 - 4 Video Decays Filtered Through Line Drawings.August 15 - Pushing Each Other Zoom Frames AroundAugust 13 - Using Movement and Color in One Zoom Feed to Reveal Another Zoom FeedAugust 13 - Video Feedback Loop into HELLAugust 12 - Passing a Shape from one Zoom Frame to AnotherAugust 9 - Combining Zoom feeds / Rack Focusing Between Subjects / Cued by a Stage Manager from a Different LocationAugust 7 - Overlaying (Ghosting) A Performer Onto ThemselvesAugust 5 - Superimposing One Performer Onto AnotherAugust 3 - Triggered Crossfade

Dear All,

I just published Syphon Virtual Webcam v0.9.5. The following fixes have been implemented:

Ensured that the OBS Virtual Camera Is Inactive screen would not appear when the Syphon source had a very slow frame rate.Ensured that “App Nap” was disabled for Syphon Virtual Camera.Fixed a bug where a scrambled image would be shown if the Syphon source width was not divisible by 4.Fixed a few small memory leaksAdded "Download the Latest Version" to the Help Menu

To get the latest version, please jump to our plugins page.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Dear All,

Please post your bug reports and feedback in the thread dedicated to that purpose.

Thank you,
Mark

I made a little screen recording to show you what this looks like.

Dear All,

In preparing for today's guru session I wanted to make use of this python script hosted on GitHub to allow me to switch scenes in OBS using OSC. Kudos to Carlo Cattano for creating it.

However, I discovered two issues:

1) macOS does not support python scripts 😞 The workaround is to run the script in a terminal window.

2) The script itself does not seem to work as one might expect. The description indicates that the single numeric parameter sent after the /Scenes address should select the scene at that index, i.e., 0 selects the first scene, 1 selects the second, etc. But it doesn't seem to work that way. So I made some improvement and fixes to the script as given below. This code below should be replace the code in the ObSC.py file.

ObSC.py.zip

Best Wishes,
Mark

import sys,time,argparse,math from pythonosc import dispatcher from pythonosc import osc_server import logging logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO) sys.path.append('../') from obswebsocket import obsws, requests  # noqa: E402 host = "localhost" port = 4444 password = "put_your_password_here" ws = obsws(host, port, password) ws.connect() ScenesNames = [] SceneSources = [] def sourceSwitch(source_name,scene,switch):     ws.call(requests.SetSceneItemProperties(source_name,scene,visible=switch))  def is_integer(v):     try:         int(v)         return True;     except ValueError:         return False; def scene_switch(unused_addr, args, oscValue):

try:
        if (is_integer(oscValue)):
            print("CMD = '{0}' INDEX = {1} OBS SCENE NAME = '{2}'".format(args[0], oscValue, ScenesNames[int(oscValue)]))
            ws.call(requests.SetCurrentScene(ScenesNames[int(oscValue)]))
            # control sources by using sourceSwitch("source_Name","Scene_name", bool)
            # sourceSwitch("screen1","Scene1",False)
        else:
            print("OSC Value '{0}' cannot be converted to an integer.".format(oscValue))
    except:
        pass
if name == "main":
    try:
        scenes = ws.call(requests.GetSceneList())
        for s in scenes.getScenes():
            name = s['name']
            print("Adding Scene = '{0}".format(name))
            ScenesNames.append(name)                        # Add every scene to a list of scenes
        print("CURRENT SCENES IN OBS:\n", ScenesNames)
       
        ### OSC SETTINGS
        parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
        parser.add_argument("--ip", default="127.0.0.1", help="The ip to listen on")
        parser.add_argument("--port", type=int, default=5005, help="The port to listen on")
        args = parser.parse_args()                           # parser for --ip --port arguments
        dispatcher = dispatcher.Dispatcher()
        dispatcher.map("/Scene", scene_switch, "Scene")      # OSC LISTENER
        server = osc_server.ThreadingOSCUDPServer((args.ip, args.port), dispatcher)  
        print("Serving on {}".format(server.server_address))
        
        server.serve_forever()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass
    ws.disconnect()
  

Dear Community,

I put together a knowledge base article on how to send Skype's output into Isadora using NDI. (This requires the Skype v8.25.)

You can see the the full article here.

You can also watch NDI's tutorial on this topic.

Right now, there is not a cross platform solution to allow Isadora's output to go into Skype. This can be done on Windows by installing NDI tools which includes a 'virtual webcam' that can receive NDI input. I will update the article to show how to use this virtual webcam sometime this week.

Best Wishes,
Mark

@mark

NOTE: the previou upload of the JSON Parser v0.9.1 did not have the Windows plugin. I have re-uploaded a corrected version on April 8, 2020 at 11:30 CEST. If you're missing the windows plugin, just download it again.

json-parser-v0.9.1.zip

Best Wishes,
Mark

Dear All,

This is for my class in NYC.

Best Wishes,
Mark

enttec-user-actor-demo v3.0.7.izz

Dear Community,

We are ready to enter the public beta phase of our OpenNI Tracker plugin, which allows Isadora to capture a depth map image, and to do body/skeleton tracking, using a Kinect v1, Orbbec Astra, or Intel Realsense D435.

Visit the OpenNI Tracker plugin page to download the plugins for your platform. (Note: because there are separate downloads for Macintosh and Windows, you cannot use the download arrow at the right! Instead use the links provided in the description.)

Like all Isadora actors, this plugin has rollover help to introduce you to the various parameters. But to give you a solid introduction to this exciting new plugin, we have prepared an Isadora file that takes you through the basics so that you can start using bodies to perform interactive control right away. Please visit the OpenNI Tracker Tutorial page to download the tutorial file and its accompanying media.

We also have a written tutorial ready. We'll get that published in the next 24 hours.

We're announcing this as a public beta because there are still a few lingering reports of crashes that we have not yet been able to reproduce consistently. If you have crashes, please report them using our ticket system instead of posting that information here.

Please feel free to offer your experience, reactions and feedback here.

Best Wishes,
Mark + The TroikaTronix Team

Somewhat related:

Triggering Isadora with OSC (Open Sound Control) from an ETC Lighting Console
https://community.troikatronix.com/topic/6332/triggering-isadora-3-with-osc-from-an-etc-ion-nomad

Triggering Isadora/QLab/ETC lighting consoles with MSC (MIDI Show Control)
https://community.troikatronix.com/topic/5543/midi-show-control-scene-navigation-cueing-system

Because I don't have one, can someone who does have a Reddit account post the two links above on the reddit thread for me?