Completed project

I have finally been able to complete the main necessities of my project. It is now able to track a person's hands, mask the webcam to that data, record a video of that masking and playback that video straight after. This has taken longer than I expected but also has helped me pick up some very important lessons in programming. Speaking of which, through making this project I can now say I am sufficient at both using Isadora and openFrameworks. This learning has been created through trial and error experiences. While I did try tutorials to learn more about the softwares I would say most of what helped me adapt was the experimentation and work needed to complete my goals.

The next steps are refining the code and fixing any minor glitches. They are:

- The speed difference between the hands being removed from tracking and the recording being rendered is too fast for the program to handle and most likely will lead to crashing the application.
- Resizing the video so the 'canvas' aspect takes up the whole screen.
- Copying the code to the Mac computer.
- Creating two windows so the hands and mini display are displayed on the computer screen while the main display is on the monitor.
- Create a mixer or opacity difference between the masked video and video playback so they intwine better.
- Any other alterations which can make the project cleaner, more intuitive and effective.

Oh and also complete my exegesis.

 
Hand tracking to video masking, recording and video playback from Matt Martin on Vimeo.

Programming update

I have been able to make a more efficient recorder of the live stage. It now records at 5mb/s (or whatever I choose) instead of 970mb/s. I had to search through some old code to find it but was able to get one that allowed me to choose the bitrate for the video encoder. I am pretty sure what I found was the original version of osxVideoRecorderExample which has this feature but I could not find it with the present one. Now my version is a mix of the two and is a lot quicker in frame rate. The last big step is to put the two programs together, let's do this. Video of the demo is below.


openFramworks live mask and video recording loop from Matt Martin on Vimeo.

Software expulsion

Over the past week I have been able to discuss with other programmers and digital artists in Melbourne who also use programming languages to manipulate and mix video. The main point I received from our discussions was by keeping solely to openFrameworks I will be able to use less use out of my computer and generate a more efficient program. I have known sticking to only one program would be better for processing video but never questioned not needing Isadora - which is a video mixing software - and replacing it for basic programming to do the video mixing and recording. The comments I received were of openFrameworks being possible of doing a large amount of anything (from a video jockey). Two weeks ago I would not have even considered this an option but I have been able to adapt to openFrameworks quickly and steadily.

With a 20 minute search looking at replicating the visual aspect of Isadora to openFrmaeworks [1, 2, 3] it appeared possible to achieve that same level of work but without needing the two different softwares playing at once. Within two days I was able to replicate most of what Isadora could do in openFrameworks. This isn't to say that learning from Isadora wasn't invaluable, it gave me the chance for quick programming to construct ideas and concepts in a short amount of time. I have however found using HD video tricky for Isadora to handle.


Video masking and recording in openFrameworks from Matt Martin on Vimeo.

The next step is combining the hand tracking code with live video masking and recording. I am planning to deliver the practical element within the next few days which will allow me more time on completing what is left of the theoretical and presentational elements of my studio project.

References

masking an image with another image - openFrameworks forum. (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://forum.openframeworks.cc/index.php?topic=339.0

ofxFenster addon to handle multiple windows (rewrite) - openFrameworks forum. (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://forum.openframeworks.cc/index.php/topic,6499.0.html

Processor Resources with OF and Video - openFrameworks forum. (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://forum.openframeworks.cc/index.php?topic=12771.0