Framesync VVVV to external source (fugstream/capture device)

Hi guys,

I´ve been messing around with VVVV a bit and really like it. I come from 2D corner, been using Visual Jockey for many years. Now I found out that VVVV is very strong in 3D, in mapping and all kind of fancy stuff. But when it comes to the point to apply douzends of 2D effects in a variable order onto a video source it quite complicated and get messy.

So I try to find a way to stream from inside Vjo / other FF enabled apps into VVVV.

Basicly it works(!), the results are quite pleasing, but despite that fact that I limited VVVV to 50 FPS and send out 25 FPS the stream does stutter. Not much, but more than I can accept. Its dropping a frame every 1-2 seconds.

So now the question: Is it possible to sync FPS / screen refresh to a freeframe plugin like fugstream? Or maybe to an external input coming from a capture device? If not possible on a low level (detect new image on the source), how would you go on? Detect change between last and actual frame incoming, if difference unequal zero trigger new frame? I would already be happy with a solution that reduces dropped frames to something like every 10-20 seconds.

(In best case VVVV engine would run twice as fast and adapt on an incoming over a certain time to avoid heavy glitches on main out. And continue with the last received FPS on signal loss for a while. But later on this…)

PS:
I would like to keep the sending side stupid, so basicly you can trow the fugstream plugin onto someones machine, whatever VJ soft he uses, tell IP and port and he could take over main FPS for a glitchfree output onto multi surface mapped output. But I could also send out a midi note on each frame, might be received earlier than the fugstream, if that helps.

Ok, I got it wrong with the capture device, sure the chain below will be rendered in sync with the input.

But for Fugstream the question remains. Is this trivial so nobody comments on it, or is there no solution? It would be so nice to stream VJ´s via Gigabit into dedicated VVVV machine without these glitches.

yea, but still you can’t stream image thru the LAN normally only on low res. The only way i’ve thought it possible it’s to use DX shared memory on one machine, but i don’t know what is it and how it’s work.

here http://www.datapath.co.uk/visionsd4plus1.html that’s good one for that ;]
using it for half of the year, just brilliant.

anyways find way to transfer vjo’s CPU power to 4v GPU power would be great straightforward. For now still using pre-rendered comps.

for now http://oonce-oonce.com/

Hello Meierhans,

I recognized your name from the VJo forums (I think my username is fishstyc over there). I also used VJo for a while, then discovered vvvv last year, because I couldn’t do what I needed in VJo for our current theater play (premiere in a week, stressful :)

I can’t help you with your problem, but actually I find the idea very appealing, because it’s true VJo has a lot of good stuff too (and some things I missed when switching to vvvv).

So I’ll keep an eye on this thread, good luck!

I might be going off topic here, but here’s a crazy idea…

Since the last version, writing plugins for vvvv is really pretty easy (I just discovered this a few weeks ago).

What if VJ Jean-Luc could create a vvvv plugin version that writes its output to memory, and throw all this into a plugin that simply produces a texture. From that point, vvvv could do anything you like with it in 3D!

You would have VJo running INSIDE vvvv, with its own interface, with all of its amazing capabilities… It might be worth it, because in my opinion VJo might become obsolete otherwise, since it’s hard to follow all the progress made in things like vvvv. At the same time throwing away all the good stuff from VJo would be such a shame.

Thanks for your replies guys. :)

My main focus is on running 4v and Vjo side by side, doing all the looping and simple 2D operations in Vjo and then blow it out on multiscreen with vvvv.

About streaming via lan: Quite clear that you can´t stream full HD, but a simple calculation tells me that 640*480@25FPS32bit should be around 240 Mbit without overhead. Add another 100 Mbit overhead and we are still way below what gigabit can do. So from hardware side it should be possible, even two of these streams.

About directly writing to RAM of GFX: In fact vjo already knows a way to write video into textures (pdooms stuff). If 4v could grab this directly this would be a much better way than via fugstream. Is it possible to access memory written by other (OpenGL based) apps?

Running Vjo inside 4v is not really an option I guess since the core is too old for that. But I will ask Jean-Luc about that. Maybe a plugin that writes into video ram without locking it would really be the best solution.

How much are these VisionSD4+1 ? What are the advantages over Blackmagic line?

hi Meierhans, sd’s around 700 pounds, and blackmagic just dosn’t work for vjo and v4

http://createdigitalmotion.com/2010/09/inter-app-visuals-on-mac-opens-up-visual-collaboration/ here the strange ting that allows to do that on macos

Yeah, thats exactly what brought me again on the topic because I thought: This should be possible on PC too!