Webcast!

Project:

Broadcast live video and audio from the MSU Composition Department Premieres Concert on Tuesday, October 20th, hopefully with titles and fades and a physical interface.

Things we need:

Software mixing of two video sources, fading in and out
Processing things to learn:

• alpha mixing of two video sources, black screen
• multiple outputs, so you can monitor everything and send a separate feed out
  
• dynamic text stuff (typing, displaying)
• MIDI input from knobs on MIDI controller to do fading, crossfading
• outputting video to something Justin Tv or Ustream can take
  (manycam?)

Alternatively, doing it in Pd with Gem, I feel would look less nice, but the list of things to learn may be shorter.

• multiple video sources
• nice looking transitions
• nice looking text, in strict 2D

*shrug * more?

Processing... oh yeah...

This post is mostly for the button project. So, this software Processing can record audio, do stuff with mp3s (I know it can open them and stream ones from online, hopefully write them too) and generate code / communicate with other software/scripts for posting, and it's best at communicating with Arduinos serially, as they use almost the same language for programming and communicating and whatever. It can also look sweet for the web-side stuff. And, it's free (not like Flash) so we wouldn't have to buy it. Should we go this way, here are more things to learn:

• how to do file creation/manipulation for the mp3 files and rss feed creation stuff
• communicating to something like Flex or Ruby on Rails to update the podcast info and update files on the server
• and, I suppose, learning to do all the audio recording stuff in Processing, but that shouldn't be too bad
• maybe how to make a sweet web-side front-end for the whole project. It may load way too slowly, but we'll see

eh? this could consolidate the Audacity-Scripting process we had talked about earlier, if it's possible to save mp3 files out of Processing.

I also want to try making a website that is flashy and fun, either with Processing or Flex using Degrafa. More on that later.