After yesterday’s doubts about the nature of the video content I have, I have decided to set aside this issue and focus instead on learning more about what Jitter can actually do with the video once I have it in there. Given that I’m kind of making this up as I go along and don’t really yet have much of an idea of what the programme can do with whatever I give it, it seems very early to decide whether or not the video I have will work.

So this evening I’ve been poking about the internet for Jitter examples and tutorials. I’m finding watching video tutorials to be a bit easier than the official tute stuff within Max/MSP. Probably because watching someone else do stuff really highlights the similarities between how the programme deals with audio and video, whereas the tutorials have been really bogging me down with techy stuff about frame rates and alpha channels and whatnot (hence being on my 3rd go around with them because I kept nodding off. Oops). So I’m collecting various videos of cool Jitter stuff and tutorials that I’m finding helpful in some way into a YouTube playlist called, amazingly enough, Jitter Videos. (Any video I mention here, if not otherwise noted, will be in this playlist.)

Seeing what Kathy Hinde does with creating a simple video mixer and hooking it up to a MIDI controller and making the video go full-screen to output to a projector, has been much more helpful to me. In particular with Hinde’s video, I am intrigued by the tiny glimpse she gives into taking the crossfade values beyond 1 and this is definitely something I’d like to play with. Likewise, although rather peculiar in presentation, Ned Rush’s “New Person’s Guide to Jitter” also offers some great possibilities for poking about in the programme and just seeing what happens.

So my plan at the moment is to build a patch in Max/MSP which does something I want to play with, test it with the video I have, or with other bits of video I have lying around, and see what type of content works best before I decide whether or not to use the paper images. No assumptions, no bogging myself down with finding the right answer – unlike composing with dots, I don’t need my source material to be right before I start work on manipulating it! Also, check out Kathy Hinde’s website. Awesome, awesome work.