VJ Software for OS X

Posted by pookzilla on July 19, 2009

I’ve enjoyed dorking around with Quartz for some time now (as I’ve already documented) but  I’ve considered broadening the scope of my dorking by doing some live video performance. Previously there were efforts to create a VJ application in entirely in Quartz Composer (Quartonian) that were pretty neat but limited by the awkward Quartz interface.  In the end, development of this application was abandoned due the existence of VDMX which was capable of integrating Quartz compositions into video mixes. Today I decided to give VDMX 5 a spin and my first impression is very positive. The interface is entirely customizable (in fact you could make the claim that the whole application is essentially an interface builder for VJ applications) and any particular kind of layout/control tie in seems possible. Built in features for Quartz/text/movie integration seem quite rich and it also includes it’s own plug-in framework (with Quartz being one of the mechanisms used to craft plugins). I’d be willing to buy it but the price tag ($355 CAD) is a bit steep for someone who just wants to dabble.  I’ll stick with the demo until someone actually wants me to perform with them.