Saturday, July 19, 2008

Back Once Again With the Ill Behavior

To paraphrase Jake and Elwood...I'm putting VideoJammer back together.

VideoJammer is a program I wrote my senior year for an independent study in the music department; it was:
  • A video sampler. You could "play" samples of video using a MIDI keyboard. Both the audio and video from clips were sampled and triggered.
  • A digital video mixer. You could combine video (from multiple samplers and loops) using real-time effects.
  • A virtual studio. You could combine various video processing elements (samplers, loops, effects) in any configuration desired.
VideoJammer has been in cold storage for perhaps six years; I've started work to restore and rebuild it.

Don't Quit Yer Day Job

Work on VideoJammer won't supersede my regular work on X-Plane...I'm poking at VideoJammer in my copious spare time (that is to say, about 4 hours a week). By professional programming standards, 1/10th of a developer isn't much, so I am trying to keep the project goals as limited as possible.

The current goal is to get a "tech demo" prepared in August for some friends in NYC with:
  • Audio and video playback.
  • At least one trivial effect.
  • Basic sampling.
  • MIDI input.
(Note that user interface isn't on this list! The tech demo will require me to build the demo files by hand.)

The Future of VideoJammer Is...

I have no idea. Let's see where the tech demo leads.