Final Videos - Ian Bell

Here are a few of the final videos we plan to use.

Troubleshooting - Ian Bell

We went in and tried our patch on the mac pro in the 5.1 room, with the aim of finishing and loading it up, ready for the rotunda exhibition. As the mac pro was a lot quicker than my macbook, we hoped that the issues with the jitter objects not running smoothly would be solved. HOWEVER that was not the case at all. Although my patch worked, it did not run smoothly enough - too much processing of the video. I attempted a number of different techniques to try and iron out the problem, such as removing all bar one of the metronomes to run the videos, as well as trying to run jpg images without the need of a metronome. All this was in vain however.

Deciding to cut my losses, I felt the most important thing was to have an up and running system, which was presentable and fully functional for the rotunda exhibition. By doing this, I felt I had to create a new, simplified patch. By the end of our 5 hour stint in the 5.1 room, I had created a brand new patch, but cut out all the processor hungry crossfading and video effects, replacing with simple fade ins. This, although was not our original plan, seemed to work much smoother and the program became a lot more responsive again. We also went about redoing our videos from the feedback we received on monday from the rotunda staff, and compressed them so they were only half the size they were before, or replaced them with static jpg images. The most important thing was having a fully functional, aesthetically pleasing installation, which is what we have tried to focus on delivering. I have uploaded a screenshot of the new working patch.

Final FINAL images!! - Sam Eaton

Feedback and what we done did about it - Sam Eaton

The other day we had a little show and tell with some very nice people from the Rotunda who gave us some advice on things we might change to make our installation more enticing and user friendly for the public. Thankfully they didn't have a large amount of negative feedback to give us so all of our changes were quite manageable. Below is a list of the things they asked us to change and how we changed them:

1. Make the text on menus easier to read - This was done by converting the menu videos back to still images (which besides making them easier to read also saved on system resources, see Mike's post below)

2. Simplify the language - I went through each piece of info we had and changed words here and there to make the text universally understandable (I hope)

3. Define 'witchcraft'. The museum reps asked that we define what we mean by the term witchcraft so as not to confuse visitors in to thinking of it purely as a negative thing - I created a definition page that sits on the other screen to the main menu, telling users what we mean when we use the word.

4. Change the word 'fetish'. We were asked to change the Congo Fetish Image to a different title to avoid putting certain unsavoury images in peoples minds. Some research was done and I found that the term 'Amulet' was appropriate and so all instances were renamed accordingly.

Othere than these things we had a short to-do list involving the finishing of video and audio content and the cleaning up of our patch.

Dude Where's My RAM?!!? - Mike Lamming

My patch seems to be too much of a struggle to run smoothly at the moment (taking up to 30 seconds to even lock/unlock the patch), so I'm cutting out all the unnecessary patchers and objects to cut down on the RAM/CPU usage.

Lemur Interface Update 2 - Mike Lamming

Went into the 5.1 Studio today and sorted out all the lemur interaction, using udpsend to trigger interface changes on the screen. Each button sends a different pitch via midi channel 3 to a notein object in max, which then goes into a select object which outputs bangs to play different audio and videos.

Lemur Interface Update - Mike Lamming

Created all our Lemur interface screens, all ready to be linked up tomorrow in the 5.1 Studio.





Related patching in Max. Each button on the Lemur is assigned a pitch, which is sent via midi channel 3 (our group number), which then sends a bang back to the Lemur via the udpsend object in Max to change to the relevant interface.

(Note that the ip is random until i get to the Lemur tomorrow).