[ANSWERED] Differences between Windows and Mac versions?

[dbini]

Hi folks. Yesterday I started teaching an Isadora module at the local university. the students are very excited to explore the potential of using Izzy as a creative tool and already made some lovely work in the first practical session.
The group are working on a mixture of Mac and PC. I noticed that on the Windows version the Live Drawing actor does not have facility for fade out of drawing like the Mac version does. Are there many of these differences between actors? Is there a list anywhere? It would be useful to be prepared when setting tasks for the students.

[mark]

@dbini said:

The group are working on a mixture of Mac and PC. I noticed that on the Windows version the Live Drawing actor does not have facility for fade out of drawing like the Mac version does. Are there many of these differences between actors? Is there a list anywhere? It would be useful to be prepared when setting tasks for the students.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PLUGINS

Specifically, the fade out feature you're asking about is not publicly released in either the official Mac os or Windows version (v3.0.2) I added this feature for a demo at the Isadora Werkstatt. Rest assured when 3.0.3 comes out (within a week of the release of macOS Catalina) the fade feature will be in for both Mac and PC.

I don't understand how your students could have the fade out feature unless they had a recent copy of the 3.0.3 beta, one that was built since the Werkstatt. For them to have this version goes against the beta tester agreement that all beta testers entered into. Can you explain to me how they might have this version?

In any case, the general answer is that there should be no difference between the Mac and Windows versions of all internal Isadora plugins. That doesn't mean there are idiosyncracies, e.g., the 'optimize' input of the Movie Player under Windows does not do anything because we can no longer switch between native Windows playback and QuickTime on the 64 bit version of Isadora for Windows, because we QuickTime can't be used by in a 64 bit program.

MAC ONLY PLUGINS

All of the Quartz Composer (QC), Core Image (CI), and Core Audio plugins are Mac only. If you use these plugins in a patch on MacOS, you won't be able to run that patch successfully on Windows.

ISADORA APPLICATION DIFFERENCES

Beyond that, the main place you may encounter some subtle differnences are with the playback of movies. On MacOS, we use AVFoundation for movie playback, with QuickTime as an option. (At least until Catalina comes out.) On Windows, we use Windows Media Foundation for movie playback, which has some severe limitations when it comes to playback speed: speeds < 0.1 or negative speeds are simply not supported. To address this, I "rolled my own" implentation of those missing speeds under Windows, and while they should work for you, they are not as efficient as on MacOS. 

*IMPORTANT* In Isadora 3.0.2, there is a known bug that will cause the Windows version of Isadora to crash if you use a speed greater than 0.0 and less than or equal to 0.1. We have fixed this for 3.0.3.

Because of this distinction, the movie containers you might want to use will be different on the two platforms. You can still play ".mov" files on Windows, but they are nevertheless handled by Windows Media Foundation. That means, even if the movie is ".mov", only codecs that WIndows understands will play. H264 works fine for example, but no flavor of Apple Pro Res codec will play under Windows.

Best Wishes,
Mark

[dbini]

@mark said:

Can you explain to me how they might have this version?

 Hi Mark - they don't have this version - they all downloaded the public release - i have the Beta on my personal machine - which is how i know about the new feature. i'm looking forward to introducing them to things like the OpenNI stuff when it gets a public release.

[Woland]

also worth noting that all CI and QC video actors are Mac Only, as well as the all of the AU Core Audio actors.

[EDIT by Mark for clarity; I've updated my answer above to make this important point]