NOTE: Mixxa 2013 is superceded by Mixxa 2014.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.