Harold's Home

VJ Tools for Apple Macintosh

This page lists some of the tools we use in our performances or use to make images, movies etc. Most of these are freeware applications we found by scrounging around the corners of the net. If you know of or make an application that you feel is worthy to be included on this page contact us. We're always looking for cool, inexpensive stuff.
All of these programs run under Mac OS 9. Some have been updated for OS X.

VideoDelic	Not free but definitely cool stuff here. We betatested this and you should definitely check it out. From the makers of such notorious products as Artmatic and MetaSynth. Reacts to sound input, midi, keyboard. Works best in 512x512 mode but can do more on faster machines. Has a montageroom, realtimeroom, modifyable gradients, transition modes and other nifty stuff like video-input. Only problem is that it seems to have some slight issues with the FUSE cards we are using.
Bomb	Utility which reacts to sound input to create screensaverlike flowing images. Only gripe I have with this is that it is rather limited in outputresolution (320x200). New version 1.26 will add QuickTime output though, so that's megacool, hopefully we won't have to wait long for the Macintosh port. Also available for Linux, BeOS, a Max plug-in, Windows and RPM (you know what that is if you can use it).
MaCthugha	Selfproclaimed "Oscilloscope on Acid". Similar to Bomb but perhaps more versatile. Multiple monitor aware, full screen and fast. Reacts to sound input.
G-Force	Cool app that is available as a plug-in for macamp and soundjam but also as standalone, the way we like it. Creates quite stunning visuals but perhaps a bit on the "thin" side so YMMV when projecting your screen. We'll have to play some more with this as we've only just found this. Features lots of presets and the ability to roll your own. Version 2 will be in public beta soon.
Whitecap	By the same maker as G-Force. Also available as a plug-in for various MP3 players and standalone. Lots of presets included and the ability to make your own. Reacts to sound input and has the ability to save to disk in QuickTime format.
Gerbils!	Appears to have disappeared from the Apple Developer site. Replaced by Rollercoaster. It is based heavily on the orginial Gerbils code by Brian Greenstone. The program builds a simple track using the mesh geometry and then moves the camera location along the track to simulate a "ride". Cool stuff, especially if you have a QD3D accelerating videocard. Gerbils! features customisable roller coaster tracks and different shading modes. Extremely cool to lay over other videosources.
Liquid Light	NEW! Appeared to have disappeared from the face of the earth, but a kind reader located it for us. Full screen plasma colour cycler, includes some cheesy fractals, but the deafult plasma screen is stunning. Reacts to mouse input to change the frequency and colour modulation.
Matt's Fract	Weird application that generates terrains in a variety of colour themes, allows one to fly over them by steering with the mouse. Pretty fast, though low in detail, always cool for a minute or two. Link n/a.
PowerFrax	Demo application that came with the second processor cards for one of our Supermac S900's. Real cool fractal colour cycler that surprisingly enough even works on 68k macs (though not as fast). Different fractals can be generated, zoomed into etc. Pretty standard cheesy fractal stuff really but still seems to go well with the crowd. And who are we to argue?
TextureEyes	Small QuickDraw3D application allows you to map live video input onto 3D primitives like cubes, torussus (tori?), planes etc.
Strata 3D	Not really a VJ tool but more a content creation tool. Cool stuff here. Has one of the best raytracers in the galaxy and the texture engine is phenomenal. Also has particle effects and smoke and stuff. Processor power not included for those hefty metaball fountains, bring your own.
Graphic Converter	Definitely the best piece of shareware we ever bought. Open just about any graphics file you could imagine, provides batch functions to convert, scale, resize, what have you. Updates are frequent and the stuff gets better every time.
MoviePlayer	The old MoviePlayer from QuickTime 3, hacked to work as default mediaplayer for QuickTime 4 as the new QuickTime Player has severely reduced functionality in the area of scrubbing. Look here for the hack featured on ResExcellence.