Video Cue Cropping Quartz Composition

[yellow...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

For a recent live-streaming show, I created a simple 4-blade cropping quartz composition (attached). I’m curious if anybody has insight into how to accomplish this effect without using a custom composition, especially since Quartz Composer support may be removed soon.

Any and all thoughts appreciated.

Benjamin A

Crystal Springs Uplands School (Student)

[micpool]

Hi Benjamin

At the moment that is the best way to do it,  and your quartz composition seems well written and good for its intended use.

While the removal of Quartz Composer support may  cause problems for long running shows,  for specific show needs, developing a custom quartz patch is probably still an efficient and effective method,  although I wouldn't spend a great deal of time developing new quartz compositions  unless there was an actual need in a show for them.

Mic

[Sam Kusnetz]

Hello Folks

To be clear: we have no intention of removing support for custom Quartz compositions from QLab 4. While it’s possible that custom Quartz compositions will themselves stop working in a future version of macOS, there is no reason to believe they’d stop working wherever they’re working now.

Best
Sam

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Sam Kusnetz [he/him/his] (what is this?)
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[yellow...@gmail.com]

Ah, thanks for the clarification, Sam! Do you have a preferred way to crop video or is a quartz composition the easiest way in Qlab right now?

[Sam Kusnetz]

On Nov 8, 2020, 8:44 PM -0500, ql...@googlegroups.com, wrote:

Ah, thanks for the clarification, Sam! Do you have a preferred way to crop video or is a quartz composition the easiest way in Qlab right now?

Speaking for myself, personally, I do this by using 1px square black images, typically following this method:

1. I put the Video cue with my actual image or movie on, say, layer 100.
2. I create four Video cues targeting my 1px black image on layer 101.
3. For those four cues on layer 101, I set them to custom geometry mode, and unlock x and y scales.
4. I start all five cues, then position and scale each “shutter” cue as needed to mask the “content” cue.

Best
Sam

[Tim Reid]

Speaking for myself, personally, I do this by using 1px square black images...

That's my approach too, although a question occurs to me...

- is there a big performance saving by using a 1px image instead of - for example - a 1920x1080 black png file?

I tend to use a "screenful" of black as my shutter - and that also allows me to make a graphic with a soft edge to it if that's needed.

But where I'm just using a hard edged cropping shutter it'd be good to know if there's a significant reduction in graphical overhead to use a 1px square as Sam describes.

Best wishes all

Tim

(I'm hearing Tony Hancock now... "1920 pixels? That's very nearly a screenful!")

Tim Reid

he/him/his

www.timreidvideodesign.com

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[Sam Kusnetz]

Speaking for myself, personally, I do this by using 1px square black images...

That's my approach too, although a question occurs to me...

- is there a big performance saving by using a 1px image instead of - for example - a 1920x1080 black png file?

Not really, but by using a single 1px square image, I can create “shutters” of any size by scaling. Plus, I can see the size of a shutter by consulting the scale. No arithmetic needed.

Sam