+ = !

presenting Pulsar, by R'alf

Pulsar est une application BeOS qui affiche en temps réel des effets vidéo en suivant une musique. Les effets sont programmables via des add-ons. Plusieurs types d'addons existeront mais pour l'instant seuls les filtres sont disponibles. Dans la terminologie Pulsar, un filtre est un add-on qui analyse le son entrant et produit des effets sympas. Pour arriver à ce résultat, Pulsar est capable d'utiliser le son provenant du CD Audio aussi bien que du micro, d'un module ou d'un player de mp3. Pulsar calcule la FFT (Transformée de Fourrier Rapide) du son etrant et appelle les filtres afin qu'ils génèrent des effets graphiques qui sont ensuite affiché dans une fenêtre de prévisualisation ou sur en plein écran avec le game kit. Une interface graphique relativement élaborée permet à l'utilisateur de paramètrer ses effets. Un sample code fourni permet à n'importe qui de se programmer son effet favori. Pas besoin de connaissances particulières en C ou C++ pour cela ! Pour de plus amples informations, lisez le guide de programmation des addons (en anglais). Pulsar sera présenté officiellement aux Be's Master Awards de la BeDC qui aura (a eu ?) lieu de 4 et 5 Aout 1997 à Boston. Le reste de ce guide est en anglais. Veuillez me contacter si cela vous pose problème.

Pulsar is a BeOS application that ouputs real time video effects by monitoring the music. The effects can be freely programed via external add-ons. Several kind of add-ons will exist but currently only filter add-ons are available. A filter, in the Pulsar's terminology, is a piece of software that filters the incoming sound input and draws neat effects on screen. To achieve this goal, Pulsar let's you use music from the Audio CD (the best source), or from any other audio source on the BeOS (modules, mp3 players or microphones). Basically Pulsar computes FFT (Fast Fourrier Transform) on the music to get its frequency composition and then call the filter add-ons to build up nice video effects and blit them on a preview window or the game kit screen. A sophisticated graphical interface lets the user adapts the effects to its own needs. Some sample code helps you write your favourite effects. No need for extended knowledge in C or C++ for doing this ! For more information about how to create add-ons for Pulsar, please refer to the add-ons programming guide. Pulsar will be presented officially at Be's Master Awards, at the Boston BeDC, 4 and 5 August 1997. This text may contain several grammar and spelling errors. If you feel like you can help me correct these errors, please contact me.

Tutorial

• 1. Installation
• 2. Audio philosophy
• 3. Main interface
• 4. Configuring the tracks
• 5. Working with a preview
• 6. Working with the full screen
• 7. Known bugs and limitations

1. Installation

Unpack

Here is the simpliest way to do this :

• Move the pulsar_06_PR.zip archive to /boot/home.
• Launch a Terminal from the Apps folder.
• Go to the /boot/home directory by typing :
  cd /boot/home
• Unzip the archive by typing :
  unzip pulsar_06_PR.zip
  This also creates a folder called Pulsar in /boot/home.
• Close the terminal.
• Open the Pulsar folder and launch Pulsar.

Directory structure

• ./Pulsar is the main executable.
• ./add-ons/ contains the add-ons that will be loaded at startup.
• ./img/ is the folder where the add-ons will find images to work with.
• ./qt/ is the folder where the add-ons will find movies to work with.
• ./img_pulsar/ is a folder containing images for the Pulsar GUI. Do not touch it. (In future releases, these images will be inserted in a resource file.)
• ./samples/ is a folder containing add-on sample codes.

2. Audio philosophy

In the developement version of Pulsar, you must use the sound panel from the BeOS preferences to select the input (CD, Mic, Mic +20 dB, or Line-In) as well as the input level.

In a future release, you will be able to use the buttons in the main interface to do this. Each track will be associated with an input method, containing its own parameters.

The CD interface will let you directly access to the Audio CD device.
You can (must) select your CD-Rom Audio Device from the main window popup, in the upper right corner. When running in the preview mode or the full screen mode, you can use the following keys to control the CD player :

• P start playing the audio CD,
• S stop playing,
• O toggle the pause,
• N switch to the next track,
• V switch to the previous track,
• E eject the audio CD,

3. Main interface

• the main window, where you configure the tracks and the effects.
• the filter info, which is a popup inspector displaying some info about a particular filter.
• the about and the info window show up some application-specific information.
• the preview window is where you can see a 8 bpp preview of the filter results.
• the fft window shows up the instant fft and the instant raw sound buffers content.

small screenshoot of the main window

Main window

• the upper-left corner contains some usefull buttons : Quit, New, Load and Save.
  • The Quit button quits the application without asking. It first stops running in preview or the game kit mode. (In a future release, Pulsar will ask if any modified documents must be saved first.)
  • The Load and the Save buttons just do nothing for the moment. You can easily figure what they will do real soon now...
  • The New buttons stops all the current effects and resets everything to its initial state. (In the future, it will ask for saving first.)
• the upper-right corner contains the audio input selector and config. Four buttons located at the right of the Quit/New/Load/Save one lets you choose the selected input. (Currently, these buttons do nothing usefull.) The right part shows a summary of the Audio CD interface. You can see the current playing track (which is currently not correctly updated) and you can start, stop, and change the track. You will also find a menu indicating the current Audio CD device.
  Currently, the Audio CD device is fixed as SCSI ID 3. Select your device here if this is not the correct default.
• the lower-left corner contains the filter list. If you double click a filter, you will get its info window. You can change the static parameters of the filter there. You can also drag'n'drop the filter icon onto one of the track's lines.
• the lower part contains the buttons to start pulsing... Use the Preview button to play the audio and show the preview window. Use the start button to jump to the game kit screen. The third button currently does nothing. You can also select the maximum frame rate and the bit depth (which is actually limited to 8 bpp for the preview. For the game kit, 32 bpp is just a bad idea but it won't crash, that's just because nothing is optimized there and it's damn slow.)

The track view lists the filter that will be playing at a given time. Horizontal axis represents the time, in minutes, while the vertical axis lists the filters.
You assign a new filter to a line by dragging it from the filter list, on the left. The blue bars on the track represents when the filter is active and when it is not. The first triangle is the starting time, the second one represents the end of the active time and the third triangle in a line represents the repeat interval. You move a triangle by dragging it to your preferred location.

Ideally, the track view is a bit more complicated. It should be like this in the final release :

• You create tracks by dropping CD tracks or Mod or Mp3 files.
• Each line can be activated or deactivated as a whole by checking or unchecking it.
• A filter line can be in two modes : freehand or repeat. Repeat is what you have currently, freehand means you can have as many keys as you like and move every key as you wish.
• For each key, you may be able to set local parameters for the filter, thus overriding the static filter parameters. For example one of the filter parameters could be its output rectangle, which you may change between two keys and that Pulsar will move smoothly with a linear interpolation. (Things like non-linear interpolation is not planned for the first final release. Call that key controllers, spline controllers, and let's imagine what nice it could be.)

Filter info

4. Configuring the tracks

The track view lists the filter that will be playing at a given time. Horizontal axis represents the time, in minutes, while the vertical axis lists the filters.
You assign a new filter to a line by dragging it from the filter list, on the left. The blue bars on the track represents when the filter is active and when it is not. The first triangle is the starting time, the second one represents the end of the active time and the third triangle in a line represents the repeat interval. You move a triangle by dragging it to your preferred location.

Ideally, the track view is a bit more complicated. It should be like this in the final release :

• You create tracks by dropping CD tracks or Mod or Mp3 files.
• Each line can be activated or deactivated as a whole by checking or unchecking it.
• A filter line can be in two modes : freehand or repeat. Repeat is what you have currently, freehand means you can have as many keys as you like and move every key as you wish.
• For each key, you may be able to set local parameters for the filter, thus overriding the static filter parameters. For example one of the filter parameters could be its output rectangle, which you may change between two keys and that Pulsar will move smoothly with a linear interpolation. (Things like non-linear interpolation is not planned for the first final release. Call that key controllers, spline controllers, and let's imagine what nice it could be.)

5. Working with a preview

6. Working with the full screen

7. Known bugs and limitations

The todo list is quite long...

New, Load, Save : not implemented.
Stuff copy-pasted from pulsar.txt :

6-Latest modifications & bugs vs. features list
-----------------------------------------------

Latest stuff changed that's not referenced in the tutorial html document :
1- CD player stuff:
	- it's plugged in the interface
	- it always assume your CD is stoped and will play the track 1 if any
	- when you press FullScreen or Preview, the CD will play if it's not already doing so.
	- I now correctly find the SCSI CD, at least mine , thanks for cdplay.c source code
	  and for Huber Andreas for illuminating me on the right way :)
	- I didn't test with an IDE Audio CD device.
	- Backdoor : export PULSAR_CD_DEVICE to your Audio CD device if it doesn't show up in the
	interface.
	- In the interface you can switch between several Audio CD devices. This has not been tested
	but it should work !
2- Full Screen:
	- you enter by pushing the button "FullScreen",
	- 8 or 32 bpp mode is IGNORED, Frame Refresh rate is take into account,
	- I've heard that this doesn't work in Full Screen on 603-based PowerMac.
	Don't know why nor if I can rely on this information, but a friend told me it won't
	run on its UMAX bi-180 (Seb' Bouchex, Mailit author, with its Master Awards machine :)
	Too late to go and debug on his machine, sorry ! :(
	- You can exit the FullScreen mode by pressing either X, Q, Z, F or the ESCAPE keys.
	- Pressing ALT-Q won't quit Pulsar. That's a bug but I like to see it as a feature.
3- Filters:
	- I didn't have time to code the filter parameters, even the simpliest ones.
	- the good point is I do have time to insert the rotozoom, the keftale & the qtmovie :)
4- It successfully pass the MALLOC_DEBUG test !
   If you encounter any crash, please enter the debugger and type "sc", then copy paste me
   the result by email.
   You can also run Pulsar from the command line with a line like "Pulsar 1 > foobar.txt"
   then you send me foobar.txt. In fact, inserting *any* command line arguments enters
   the debug mode :)

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Cool stuff

Cool about box :

Feel free to visit the R'alf home page :	http://www.capway.com/moll
as well as the official Pulsar Home Page :	http://www.guerilla.com/ralf/pulsar

Greetings

Greetings go to:

• Guerrilla and Jean-Marc for designing Pulsar icons and hosting the Pulsar Home Page.
• SpH from da clubX for providing me these cool TecKno MuZikS CD, which are essentials for testing & coding Pulsar.
• Hubert for HTMLPreview as well as BIC and for the official FrBUG page (or this link for Net+).
• Benoit for providing me the original FFT code,
• Mathias for providing me an FFT code,
• Marc, Olivier, Geb, Seb, Lolo & Xav, from the FrBUG,
• Pierre, Erich and Adams from Be for the dev support,
• and Chris Herborth for the cool email exchange, the zip stuff and the FrEnglish to English translation...

Aller à la partie privée. Aller au sommaire Adresses tous tes commentaires à R'alf. Page optimisée pour Netpositive.

Made on a BeBox Dual-133

Go to the private part. Go to index. Address your comments to R'alf. Page optimized for Netpositive.

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Last update : 20/11/98