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Download iVisualize 1.6 (9MB)

requires Mac OS X 10.4.4, iTunes 4.7,

Quartz Extreme compatible graphics card

New review on iVisualize on  free&Mac (french).

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New in iVisualize 1.6

1. •compatible with iTunes 7
   

2. •realtime composition settings changes
   

3. •support for compoosition‘s copyrights
   

New in iVisualize 1.5

1. •high resolution full screen
   

2. •much less CPU usage (should also reduce iTunes controller interaction crashes)
   

3. •iVisualize is now stereo all inputs are available for the left and right channel
   (e.g. „volumeArtL“, „spectrumR“)
   

4. •updated BeComposed
   

5. •mouse and keyboard interaction support
   

6. •new and more sophisticated clips
   

7. •new template
   

8. •update notification
   

9. •fixed elapsed time problems (thank you Apple)
   

10. •other minor bug fixes
    

The Muting Bug

Some people have the problem that iTunes goes mute for certain Compositions. This bug comes from Apple and typically appears on a few machines if a „Audio Input“ patch ist in the composition.

To resolve this issue I will try to have all future compositions free of that patch. You can solve that problem yourself if you like:

1. •Install the Developer Tools.
   

2. •open the composition‘s .qtz-file with thew Quartz Composer (in /Library/iTunes/iVisualize and ~ /Library/iTunes/iVisualize)
   

3. •in the Quartz Composer double click on the iViBaseData Patch
   

4. •in here click on „Audio Input“
   

5. •press delete
   

About iVisualize ...

If you don‘t like to read, but see what iVisualize is all about go to the iVi-Gallery here you get a video tutorial, sample movies and screenshots else read on ...

With Mac OS X Tiger Apple introduced a convenient way to create your own graphical effects: The Quartz Composer. Sadly by default these could only be used as screen saver or run in Quicktime.

With iVisualize it is finally possible to run these in iTunes, have them react to your music, and display a lot of song information.

iVisualize comes with 5 visualizations and you can download more or create your own it's up to you.

Visualizations that come with iVisualize

The visualizations iVisualize is shipped with are mostly custom made. 

1. •Drift (default) from Jim McKay www.pidog.com
   Calm visualization that runs fast on every machine. Jim was totally new to Quartz Composer when he created this visualization and so can you.
   

2. •BeComposed from Édouard Puginier www.tazintosh.com
   An elegant calm visualization featuring many informations iVisualize has to offer.
   

3. •Cities of the future 2.0 from Roger Bolton www.eskatonia.com
   Even though this looks like the glooming New York Skyline of 2050 it still is your music.
   

4. •iVestream from PCheese www.pcheese.net
   PCheese extended his already famous SoundStream to a real iVisualization plugin.
   

5. •Musical Gears from Christoph Vogelbusch
   This visualization had the highest download rate, so I decided to include it,too.
   

How to make a Quartz Composition

If you have the XCode tools installed, than you have the Quartz Composer already on your hard disk. The XCode developer tools are on your Tiger DVD or you can download the latest version from http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/index.html.

For general information about how to create a quartz composition go here:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/QuartzComposer

If you like to discuss Quartz Composition related things, have questions go to the forum of QuartzCompositions.com. They even have a lot of custom Quartz Compositions to learn from and Wiki to get more informations about Quartz Compositions, too.

Publishable Inputs

To get the data from iTunes into you composition you can publish some of the following inputs:

images: albumArt, volumeArt, spectrumArt, spectrumLineArt, volumeLineArt, volumeArtL, spectrumArtL, spectrumLineArtL, volumeLineArtL, volumeArtR, spectrumArtR, spectrumLineArtR, volumeLineArtR

structure (an array of 12 elements): spectrum, spectrumL, spectrumR

strings: name, artist, album, fileName, genre, kind, comments, composer

numbers: elapsedTime, volumePeak, volumePeakL, volumePeakR, trackNumber, numTracks, year, soundVolumeAdjustment, totalTimeInMS, startTimeInMS, stopTimeInMS, sizeInBytes, sampleRateFixed, fileType, date, userRating,  discNumber, numDiscs, playCount, lastPlayDate, beatsPerMinute, spectrumSum, spectrumAverage, spectrumVariance, spectrumSumL, spectrumAverageL, spectrumVarianceL, spectrumSumR, spectrumAverageR, spectrumVarianceR

boolean: isPlaying,  isCompilationTrack, isFullscreen, isDemoMode (always false)

Stream Infos (all strings): version, streamTitle, streamURL, streamMessage

Link here - Banner

You like iVisualize and want others to know about it?

You can use the following images to link here:

            iVisualize 1.5 Promo                              iVisualize Banner                         iVisualize icon

(Click the images to get a full size version.)

The banner has been made by me on request, but I’m not an artist nor anything close to it, so feel free to send me your version of an iVisualize banner.

Thanks!

Many thanks to Apple for their iTunes, Tiger, the Quartz Composer and for creating Macs.

Many thanks to Bandar Raffa for the iVisualize icon.

Many thanks to Édouard Pugnier for his “no albumArt” image, that is in the template now. And the iVisualize 1.0/1.5 promo graphics. Also for the graphics of the CD Box, the CD itself and his ideas including “lastAlbumArt”.

Many thanks to the author of the eXo Plug In. He helped me get started and gave me the code to handle the QCRender Texture.

Many thanks to Heiko Wichmann for his update to the iTunes API for Mac.

thanks go to all the guys from the first German OS X developer forum, you’ve been a great help for a lot of problems.

Many thanks to my brave beta testers. They are a great help to ensure that iVisualize is tested on more then my one machine.