Mixxa Mar 2013 Mixer and FX Processor

NOTE: Mixxa 2013 is superceded by Mixxa 2014.

Here is the next installment of Mixxa, MixxaMar2013 - the prior one was in December 2012. It’s a highly visual tool for playing, mixing, processing and generating HD video.

Since then, it’s had many fixes and refinements, but given the underwheming response to the December incarnation, I don’t think anyone would have noticed, so I won’t bother going into the list here - just assume Mixxa was always perfect.

There are some new features added since then, such as OSC input support that can drive almost any control, better audio playback. But if you haven’t used Mixxa and have a good PC with a decent graphics card, it’s best to just download it, add some of your videos into a bin and go through the Mixxa2013 wiki page Mixxa2013 here.

The main parts of Mixxa are video playback, a 9x9 matrix of user-defined effects and mixers, 1-3 monitor output assignment, movie audio mixing, control inputs from MIDI, OSC + LFOs, presets, plus session capture and record.

Get MixxaMar2013 here on the same Mixxa2013 wiki page.

To help you, here is the quick-startup tutorial made by sunspider - (Ivan DelSol – thanks a lot Ivan!) Mixxa Tutorial here Mixxa Tutorial here.

Mixxa is structured as a matrix of 9x9 cells, each cell outputting a video stream. A column (channel) of cells usually feed video from one cell into the cell below it, kinda like an audio mixing board. But you can rewire it any way you want (press Wire). And each cell can contain any effect from a palette of 30+ effects listed here, so it becomes very flexible without going inside a TouchDesigner network. It currently allows for up to 3 independent HD video outs.

A preset in Mixxa is a mapping of all 9x9 cells of effects and their controls. A powerful feature is the ability to gradually step from one of your presets toward another and mix presets.

MixxaMar2013 is authored in TouchDesigner 077, and runs in both 077 and in 088. Make sure you have installed TouchDesigner 077 build 18660 or later, or the latest 088. MixxaMar2013 will be the last (I said this before, but this time I mean it) Mixxa authored in 077.

Underneath it all is the equally-obscure uiser-interface gadget library located in /uig that I call UIg, the g maybe referring to my first name, or maybe it means gadgets. It contains all the gadgets types you see in Mixxa. Ands there’s a whole wiki page deficated to uig here UIg wiki page, where you can also find a teriffic, long dead-pan video explaining it all.

Given Mixxa is very visual and is doing lots of compositing and effects for both for the user interface and for your video outs, it needs a good graphics card, and certainly it will be a lot better at video playback if your videos are on an SSD (solid state disk drive).

MixxaMar2013 needs at least 1Gb GPU memory to run comfortably while compositing lots of effects at 1280x720. It will run on 512 Mb at lower resolutions.

Mixxa also likes lots of GPU cores (over 192) In comparison, the latest $500 (that’s cheap y’all) Geforce 680 GTX has 1500 cores, and the latest $1300 ASUS gamer laptops have over 386 cores.) Even the new Apple MacBook Pros have that many cores, so you Bootcampers have no excuse.

At some point, I’ll explain Mixxa’s internals, but now you can, at any time, press Esc and see Mixxa’s networks inside, or better, press the F10 or F9 key with your mouse over any panel, and that panel’s specific network will pop up (this is true of TouchDesigner in general). It’s a good way to explore the insides of the application.

Looking at other TouchDesigner performance tools, it’s good to see the many other emerging TouchDesigner applications that play movies, make generative imagery, mix and apply effects. Mixxa is just one of them. I recommend you download and give feedback to the authors of the other tools, like itaru’s mixer: [url=http://www.derivative.ca/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4371touchMixer II[/url].

Mixxa is not an official product, nor is it officially supported, but please put your questions here and I’ll answer them as soon as I can.

Thanks for the update!

The spectrum analyzer (SPECTRUM in Router) was internally switched off. It’s now functioning properly again. Either download the latest Mixxa on the 077 or 088 Mixxa wiki page, or simply replace the component /mixxa/router/spectrum with the spectrum.tox attached.
spectrum.tox (26 KB)

There is a video showing a walk-through of Peter Mettler’s setup of Mixxa on Facebook:

facebook.com/photo.php?v=10 … =2&theater

and a design background on Mixxa’s evolution at the end of:

derivative.ca/Events/2013/PeterMettler/

Hey ze0time thanks for your awesome work. ive been using Mixxa on occasion and it served an awesome value when initially learning touchdesigner by exploring your network.

Anyway I have a question I hope you can help me with:
I am able to select my clip from the clipbin using my APC40 and simple python, but how can I send this clip to column A,B,C, or D?

Even just a pointer to the area of the network I should be looking at should be all I need to get started. I assumed it was in mixxa/bins/assign_mv but I am not having luck manipulating that section.

Thanks!
Eric

Hi Eric,

To assign, for example, Movie 4 in Bin 1 to the third Movie Play cell, your quick script for this is:

cc $BINS
run mvlayer 3 $BINDO/bin1/movies/mv4

or if you are first clicking movies in the UI by hand, you can use the HEREMVPATH variable:

cc $BINS
run mvlayer 3 $HEREMVPATH

Let me know if I can help further.

Hi Greg, noticed the clip assignment (to A-E) doesn’t work on the latest experimental build but still works fine with the latest regular build. Any plans to release a new Mixxa version?

I was wondering the same thing on the clip assignment situation, noticed some scripts throwing some errors… and was wondering if this was related, I am new to touch, not to programming, I will see if I can’t find out what’s going on assignment wise… am curious tho, thanks.

I will post a new mixxa in the next 2 days with numerous improvements and fixes.

NOTE: Mixxa 2013 is superceded by Mixxa 2014.

( OK, I posted a new Mixxa Dec2014 - search for Mixxa on the wiki. I’ll keep an ear for feedback and do a few more updates over the next few weeks. )

Great stuff Greg. Like the refined UI.

On the Combine panel, the two bottom sliders don’t seem to work - Main Fader and Display Fullscreen Fader