Hello !

I would like to play some movies of mine with GEM.
To do so i have done the first patch shown on page 158 of this tutorial :
http://en.flossmanuals.net/PureData/FM_12Apr09.pdf
I have also put the movies to be played in the same directory of PD Extended.
But that does not work. I get the screen but no movie plays on it.
Any help ?

Best regards.

Try sending a message to [pix_movie] in the form: "open /path/to/my_movie" Then make sure that you have another message "auto 1" to it.

I have tried what you said. It's clever but nothing happens...

Best regards.

Try just playing the video from the help patch for [pix_film]. if that does not work, then post the output(text) that appears in the Pd window.

Thanks ! I will try that.

Best regards.

Thanks
The help patch was a real help (Argh ! I really should have known that trick !)
There is now a last little problem.
Ok, i can see the movie.
But my pd patch is on one screen and the movie on another. And when i want to modify my patch, i can't see the movie or when i see the movie i can't modify my patch. Is it possible to see the movie while i modify my patch ? I am sure it's possible. But how ? Any help ?

Best regards.

what do you mean "you can't see it"?

(although it's not reccommended to keep gem rendering, while editing the patch for stability reasons) you can modify the patch in edit mode without ever stopping the rendering and the running patch.

Q : what do you mean "you can't see it"?
A : Let's say i want to modify the balance of colors while i am watching a movie. If i try to modify a color parameter, the movie disappear because its screen close up. I mean i can modify the balance of colors but not while i am watching the movie in order to see in real-time what is the result of my modification.

I am french, so my english is not so good, but i have tried to be clear. Am i clear now ?

I am sure there is a way to see in real-time the result of a modification of a movie while doing this modification. Am i wrong to think so ?

Best regards.

so you can't see the patch because the gemwin is to big? and when you render it covers the patch.... is that what you mean.

i see...well, no you are definitely able to modify your movie/gemwin via the patch, while it is playing.

sounds like you have your movie (or rather your gemwin) filling the whole screen rather than being windowed?

if you send the message [fullscreen 0( to [gemwin], before creating the gemwin, you get a separate window. you can always define position, size and look of this window.

check out examples/Gem/advanced/15.GemWin.pd in the help patches for all the nice things you can do to the gemwin.

A thousand thanks, Flo !
May i ask you another question ? (anyone may answer too)

I know 2 ways to record all the nice things i do already with GEM.

1. a first one is in the Pure Data FLOSS Manual
2. a second one is in the "help" of the "pix_record" GEM object
   I tried both ways, again and again, in vain. I know it's a common problem. Is there a common way to fix it ?

Best regards from France !

I forgot to precise my question.
What i do with GEM is to modify colors parameters or little things like that in movies i make. The format is of my movies is .avi and i want to record .mov files. Nothing really complicated i think. But i can't do it yet...
Any help ?

Best regards.

that is one of the things really bugging me about gem.

i have never managed to get sth recorded properly from within gem since i use it (2004).

pix_write:

• only writes tiffs that would need to be combined to a sequence later to get a vid
• not quick enough to write 720x576@24fps
• only writes from one gemchain (which makes it pretty much useless for me)

pix_record:

• never got it to work properly on xp or osx. only wrote files that were tiny black squares of one second length, no matter, which codec i used (tried various avi and mov compressors) and tended to crash.

my best guess for now is to record with a thrid party screen recorder. if your gemstuff is not too complicated, you get decent framerates. if gem is high on cpu, most screenrecorders lower their recording framerate.

another way is to directly record into a dvd-recorder or dv-recorder.
i have yet to try this with good equipment - using a cheap converter and recording into a cam via composite gives you sort of vhs quality. -- it's ok, if you do lots of "dirty" video stuff, but the crisp lines and edges of 3d objects in gem will look terrible.

Thanks again

Best regards.