Hello all,

After staring on my monitor like hypnotised for several nights, I thought I might share some thoghts about the cool Visuals feature.

First a word of warning: iTunes Visuals are highly addictive and might turn you into some kind of zombie who stares at the monitor for hours in hope to discover a new beautifull setting. It's just a matter of time until Apple will be forced to display a warning message on the bottom half of the screen, so better be careful right now!

Having said that, turn it on and have a join.. er, I mean, join me in watching all these colours. That must be what our parent's generation found so fascinating in LSD :-)

You're back? OK, if you managed to pull away your eyes from Visuals, you probably don't have the right settings. Let's see if we can fix this.

Of course, you have already pressed "?" while Visuals is on. Doing so disturbs your trip by displaying some keyboard shortcuts. Try "C" to see some strange names describing your current settings. They will look like this:

Radar Sweep
In, Out and Turn again
Wild, Wild West

Unlike LSD, Visuals constantly changes it's recepture, making it hard to detect by sniffer dogs, and giving you an infinite number of unique trips. But what do they mean?

Well, the first line describes the "main" generator. Usually it's some kind of frequency analyser curve, rotating or moving in different ways (but sometimes something completely different)

The second line is a modifier which usually blurs it into the background (i.e. black or another color), but might also do something else.

Lastly, the color scheme which is used in the display. You can randomise the settings at any time by pressing the "R" key (iTunes 1.1 only) - unfortunately, the config display doesn't update automatically, so you have to press "C" again to see the new settings. It also takes a few moments to morph from the current configuration to the new one.

However, these settings are only the smallst part of the parameters iTunes uses to calculate the display. The music seems to influence not only the movement of the generator, but also the speed and to some extend the color animation. And, of course, prevous settings and calculated displays continue to influence the generation of new displays. That's what makes the display so smooth and beautifull.

So the music plays (of course) a majour part in the display - and it seems as if not every kind of music is equally good for creating beautifull images. In my experience, a hard and loud beat tends to distort the display too much. Also, if the music has a clear and distinct rhythm, it influences the effects so much, that the display easily gets boring.

My best experiences were made with Ambient music. Not, however, when the music is "flat", just sounds without a rhythm or at least something to get a hold of. My personal favourite is Stephan Micus: The Garden of Mirrors - but tastes might differ.

Another interesting effect occures when the music is *very* complex. That can make iTunes go wild! Some Free Jazz or the likes could give you a ride to the skies. My favourite here is Frank London's "V'erastikh Li" from "The Shvitz". Wooooaaa...!

Give them a try, and post your own favourites here (and don't swap them, buy the records, yes?)

Greetings

Sascha - The Pusher

[mr100percent]

Horray, just the info I was looking for. I wonder why Apple didn't include this in the documentation?

Maybe because they are afraid to get the Anti-Drug squads on their case? ;-)

/sascha

[mrchin]

Here's a couple more keys. I didn't read the whole message, so if I am repeating any, I appoligize:

q,w Goto previous or next effect
a,s Goto previous or next subcategory within current effect
z,x Goto previous or next color
b Bring up the Apple logo
m Freeze current effect and color (stops cycling)
i Bring up song info
n Toggle High Contrast and Normal colors

You can see that the 1st three that go back and forward one step are all in that left side of the keyboard. So you've got those main controls right together.

I think that's all I can think of for now. I love the fact that with 1.1 you can now set effects with the shift 0-9 keys and play them back.

[This message has been edited by mrchin (edited 02-28-2001).]

[Gee4orce]

I just downloaded version 1.1 last night and noticed that the full screen mode (I mean, really filling the screen right up) is now very watchable on my iMac DV SE 400MHz G3. Version 1 was too choppy, but with version 1.1 I get 15fps on average.

A little tip - I was getting tiny pauses every 2 seconds or so. I found that turning on the 'Battery Saver' option seems to eliminate this (presumably the pauses were disk accesses).

Thanks, Sascha, this wins my price as the best article here in the MacNN forum. Fun to read :-) Hehe, The Pusher ;-)

Ripper

[Brazuca]

Any ideas on how to get frame rates up above 15 or so???