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Hybrid
Includes both a Mac and Windows version of the program.
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In use worldwide for over fifteen years by performers, composers, artists, teachers, and students, Max/MSP is the way to make your computer do things that reflect your individual ideas and dreams. Max/MSP is a true cross-platform system compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows XP. Jitter extends the Max/MSP programming environment to support realtime manipulation of video, 3D graphics and other data sets within a unified processing architecture.
MAX
Max users are people who want to do things that go beyond the limitations of normal software. Max is a visual programming language -- you connect objects together with patch cords to design what you want.
While people have used Max to create a wide variety of applications, it's primarily designed to handle the basic elements of media: time, interactivity, and control.
Time
Working with time is easier in Max than traditional programming because you use objects to create visual "timing machines" whose behavior you can see, hear, and modify as they operate.
In Max, the basic unit of time is milliseconds, but you can also use metrical time (for example, bars and beats). In Max, everything you create runs at the same time, something that is very hard to do in a traditional language. In addition to the metro object shown above, Max features timing objects that delay, quantize, measure time intervals, and perform time-based filtering. Max's unified notion of control based on numbers and events permits you to work with time in an intuitive and consistent way.
Interactivity
Working with interactivity is easier in Max because you can design interfaces visually, and the interfaces are then part of the program itself. For example, controls the timing and transport of the timing example above.
Max contains a rich set of user interface tools, including dials, buttons, menus, and text editors. At a deeper level, it's possible to control the entire user experience with cross-platform support for full-screen interfaces, HI devices, Quicktime video, and an embedded web browser. You can even script Max to construct interfaces dynamically.
Control
In Max everything can be connected to everything, because everything speaks numbers. Another way to say this is that modularity is a core design principle of everything in the software.
Max can control MIDI devices, serial devices, send data over a network, and handle user input devices. Any source of control is easily connected to anything you want to control. Most commonly, however, Max's powerful control features are applied to audio via MSP and visual media with Jitter. And MSP and Jitter offer their own control possibilities, from audio signal analyzers to video tracking and device support.
Extensibility
Max is powerful, but it might not do precisely what you want right out of the box. That hasn't stopped Max users from extending the environment in every possible direction. As a by-product of their work with the software, passionate Max users have contributed thousands of objects written in C, Java, or Javascript back to the user community.
Educational Resources
Even with an environment as interactive as Max, learning programming doesn't necessarily happen instantly. Cycling '74 is committed to making learning their software as rewarding as possible, and they have recently put an enormous amount of effort into integrating their documentation into the software. You'll learn Max, MSP and Jitter using over a hundred step-by-step tutorials, plus a variety of other resources including interactive help files, examples, and reference materials you can access directly within the software.
MSP
MSP gives you the building blocks of a synthesis and DSP language in visual form. But more importantly, MSP permits synthesis and DSP to be controlled in expressive and powerful ways. The fact is there are only so many ways to make sound, but there an unlimited variety of ways to control sound, due the way MSP's audio objects work together with Max's timing, control, and user interface tools.
Building Blocks
At its most basic level, MSP offers the basic building blocks for synthesis and audio processing: oscillators, filters, delays, and envelopes. In Max 5, the ability to specify the time values of envelopes and phasors in tempo-relative units has been added. The ability to combine low- and high-level components is one of the unique aspects of working with MSP.
Sampling, Recording and Playback
MSP provides a group of objects that work together for sampling and sample playback. All use the buffer~ object that manages sample buffers up to four channels. You can play samples out of a buffer in multiple ways, record into a buffer, or use a sample buffer as the impulse response for a filter. Standard audio file formats are supported for both reading and writing sample buffers. MSP provides hard-disk based recording and playback, supporting files of up to eight channels. Your computer's performance is the limit to the number of players and recorders you can use simultaneously. Plus it's easy to capture the sound you're producing to a multi-channel file.
Compatibility
MSP supports up to 512 input and output channels. On the Mac, MSP provides support for Core Audio and on Windows, there is ASIO, DirectSound, and MME support. MSP can be both a ReWire host and client, and it is a highly flexible host for VST plug-ins. Max 5 adds host-based synchronization for VST plug-ins tied to its tempo-based timing system.
User Interface
MSP objects for audio signal display include an oscilloscope, spectral display, level meters, waveform display, and a sonogram. You can use faders with internal smoothing, design multi-band filters graphically and edit functions with arbitrary numbers of breakpoints. Plus, since it's easy to convert between audio signals and scalar values, anything in the rich Max user interface toolkit can be applied to audio control and display. In Max 5, it's easy to find out the levels of any audio signal with the signal probe.
Polyphony
The poly~ object lets you use multiple copies of any patcher you make. It supports output mixing, note allocation and voice stealing. And in Max 5, the MSP poly~ object supports dynamic patch loading and voice allocation, and can run patchers in different threads to support multiple processors.
Advanced Features
MSP includes support for spectral domain processing with FFTs as well as a means to run patchers synchronized with spectral domain processing. A number of examples including a phase vocoder sampler show how to take advantage of this powerful technology. MSP also comes with highly configurable versions of special-purpose processing elements including a multi-band compressor, pitch shifter, and an oscillator bank synthesizer. MSP also combines nicely with Jitter's matrix data processing, so you can apply "visual" signal processing techniques to audio.
Extensibility
If you want to develop your own low-level audio algorithms, Max/MSP provides an ideal platform with its C-based API for new unit generators. There's no need to worry about hardware support, and Max takes care of file I/O and user interface construction as well. Another option for lower-level development is mxj~, a modular Java-based system for audio development.
Learning MSP
The MSP documentation includes a complete set of tutorials that cover both operating the software and the theory behind digital audio synthesis and signal processing. Topics covered include FM synthesis, digital filtering, musical applications of the FFT, and MIDI control.
JITTER
Jitter extends the Max/MSP programming environment to support realtime manipulation of video, 3D graphics and other data sets within a unified processing architecture. And Jitter 1.7 has been updated to work with Max 5, which includes support for "probing" to visually debug your creations, automated inspectors for viewing object attributes, integrated documentation, unicode text, and more.
Because Jitter, like Max/MSP, is generic in nature, it offers unlimited possibilities for creative exploration. Whether you are interested in video processing, interactive art, teaching new media, or data visualization, Jitter offers both high and low level tools for working in exciting new ways.
Jitter abstracts all data as multidimensional matrices, so objects that process images can also process audio, volumetric data, 3d vertices, or any numerical information you can get into the computer. Jitter's common representation simplifies the reinterpretation and transformation of media. And with Jitter, many types of data can be processed on the GPU, leveraging the massively parallel computing power of today's latest graphics cards.
Video
Although the Jitter architecture is general, it is highly optimized for use with video data, and performs with breathtaking speed. A robust set of mathematical operators, keying/compositing, analysis, colorspace conversion and color correction, alpha channel processing, spatial warping, convolution-based filters, and special effects deliver the building blocks for your own custom video treatments.
Jitter includes extensive support for Apple's QuickTime architecture, such as the playback of all QT supported file formats, real- or nonreal-time file creation, editing operations, import/export capabilities, integrated real-time QT effects, video digitizing, QTVR, file format conversion, and more. QuickTime audio may be routed into MSP to exploit MSP's powerful audio processing capabilities. For the production environment, Jitter provides support for digital video (DV) camera control as well as input and output via FireWire, and multiple monitor support for performance situations.
2D/3D Graphics
Jitter's integrated 2D/3D graphics support provides the tools to use hardware accellerated OpenGL graphics together with video, including the ability to texture 3D geometry with video streams in real-time, convert audio and video streams directly into geometry data, and render models, NURBS, 2D/3D text, and other common shapes. There is even low level access to geometry data and the majority of the OpenGL API for those who need to be closer to the machine.
Ease of Use
Jitter is tightly integrated with Cycling '74's Max/MSP graphical programming environment which lets you visually connect data processing objects together with patchcords to create custom applications in a similar manner to analog modular synthesizers.
This visual framework provides the power to build your own unique video effects, realtime video mixers, audio visualizers, image to audio synthesizers, algorithmic image generators, batch converter/processor programs, or whatever your heart desires. You can share the programs you develop with other Max/MSP users and create standalone applications just as is currently possible with Max/MSP. A free Runtime version is available that runs any application created with Max/MSP/Jitter.
Jitter includes interactive help files for each of its objects, detailed documentation, 37 tutorials, and a bounty of useful examples.
Matrices
Jitter's strength and flexibility comes from the use of a single generalized matrix data format when working with video, 3D geometry, audio, text, or any other kind of data. Jitter matrices may be composed of one of four data types: char (8 bit unsigned int), long (32 bit signed int), float32 (32 bit floating point), or float64 (64 bit floating point). Matrices may have up to 32 dimensions, and may have up to 32 planes.
This common representation makes the transcoding of information effortless. You can experiment with interpreting text as an image, converting video images to 3D geometry, turning audio into a particle system, or playing video data as audio. The possibilities are unlimited.
Jitter has all the fundamental mathematical tools required to work with this numerical representation. The jit.op object alone provides over 60 arithmetic, bitwise, exponential, logical, and trigonometric operators. The multitude of operators in jit.op are particularly useful for experimenting with video compositing. And Jitter's support for linear algebra, particle systems, Fourier analysis and resynthesis, string processing, cellular automata, and Lindenmeyer systems allows for even further experimental possibilities.
More Details
Jitter objects also make available many aspects of their internal state in ways which will be new to even the most seasoned Max/MSP veterans. Jitter introduces the notion of attributes, internal variables which may be set and queried, thus permitting easier management of object state. As a means of convenience, Jitter objects can be created with attribute arguments of the form "@ "--greatly reducing the need for excessive use of the loadbang object.
Jitter objects can work with matrices of arbitrary size and are designed so that they can adapt to the type and size of data that they receive. A single program may have many objects working with different types and sizes of data at once, and there are tools to easily convert from one type or size to another.
All matrices that are passed between objects are named entities similar to the buffer~ object in MSP. Referenced by name, a single matrix may be accessed by multiple objects, allowing for creative feedback networks, in-place processing, and memory conservation.
There is a publicly available Jitter SDK with the source code of over 30 objects taken directly from the Jitter object set, so third party developers can extend the already overwhelming possibilities Jitter provides. This kind of extensibility is one of the strength's Max/MSP is already known for.
Performance
- Cross platform architecture for GPU hardware acceleration. This fundamental shift in processing offers a dramatic increase in performance for image processing and general purpose computation, as well as material shaders and other GPU effects.
- Fast YUV 4:2:2 (UYVY) video transfer to the GPU. Using the half bandwidth, half chroma data representation common in many of today's video formats, Jitter is able to more rapidly decompress and transfer YUV 4:2:2 data to the graphics card in real time. Together with GPU processing, this permits processing of up to HD resolution video footage in real time.
- Multiprocessor support. Many CPU based Jitter objects exploit multi-processor and multi-core systems to take advantage of all the resources available to today's systems.
Networking
- Compressed RTSP streams. Jitter 1.7 uses either the cross platform LiveMedia architecture, or the QT Broadcasting architecture on Macintosh to stream a variety of video codecs in real time.
- Uncompressed Jitter matrix streams. For lossless transmission of Jitter matrices of arbitrary type, plane count, and dimensionality, Jitter 1.7 allows direct network communication in a Jitter native matrix format.
Programmability
- Java and JavaScript support. Instantiate and control Jitter objects directly from text based programming languages that offer greater control of complex tasks.
- Expressions. Succinctly define mathematical expressions for calculating matrix data.
Interoperability
- Direct X video input and output support. Native Windows video input and output offers higher performance and more reliable I/O, without the need for third party Quicktime bridges.
- FreeFrame plugin support. An open standard for video processing, FreeFrame plugins provide a rich set of options for building custom networks of effects.
- MSP audio integration. Treat MSP buffer objects as Jitter matrix data, and convert audio vectors to and from Jitter matrices for frame based processing and audio visualization.
Key Features
- Procedural texturing and geometry. Synthesize textures and geometry with a diverse set of noise and pattern basis functions.
- Volume visualization. View volume data sets either as 3d textures or geometry obtained through surface reconstruction.
- High Dynamic Range image support. Read and write floating point images using the industry standard OpenEXR file format.
Jitter in Education
Max/MSP/Jitter is in daily use at hundreds of universities around the world. The software's flexibility means it can be used to teach a wide range of subjects, from gestural interface design to mathematics for artists. Students learn a common visual programming approach which can be applied to any problem or subject area, allowing educators to focus on concepts instead software skills.
Max/MSP/Jitter handles the system-level software and hardware integration necessary for researchers to concentrate on a specific problem of interest. Max/MSP/Jitter is a common framework in which artists and researchers from varied disciplines can collaborate and cross-pollinate, building upon their respective specialties, all within the same flexible architecture. Recent artistic and research projects that have used Max/MSP/Jitter range from evolutionary systems for generating video filters to a computer controlled paint gun printer, and from music driven by the movement of ballet dancers to a robotic labyrinth that changes form as the participant walks through it.
Whether you are driving a cutting-edge project or demonstrating the basic principles of digital image or audio processing, Max/MSP/Jitter has the power and flexibility to let you focus on ideas rather than just technical issues. To top it all off, the open-ended nature of Max/MSP/Jitter has fostered a supportive community of developers and users who are sharing their code and insight on a continual basis.
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PC
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Mac
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- Windows XP/Vista
- 500 Mhz P3 or better processor
- 1 GB RAM
- Full installation of Quicktime for Windows is required for MP3 import, movie playback, and use of image files other than PICT
- ASIO-compatible sound card is recommended for optimum audio performance.
- Quicktime 7.1 or later
- OpenGL-compatible graphics card
- OpenGL 1.4 or later
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- OS X 10.4 or later
- PPC or Intel machine
- 1 GB RAM
- Quicktime 7.1 or later
- OpenGL-compatible graphics card
- OpenGL 1.4 or later
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