I've just publicly released the first available output from the Synesthesizer — a side-project, executed in Flash, that translates pictures into music. The Synesthesizer is the first tangible product of Project Ludi, an internal skunkworks project here at Almer/Blank, the goal of which is to translate any type of media into any other type of media.
The Synesthesizer is a Flash 10 musical synthesizer that relies on synesthesia-inspired translation metaphors.
So after getting my hands on the new Hype framework, I wanted to put together a simple demo together that utilizes a combination of the SoundAnalyzer class and some 3D eye candy (via Papervision3D).
First off, I can say that I really like being able to play around with the sound spectrum using only a couple lines of code. I also used the Rythm class to run an enter frame method, which is very convenient in that I didn't need to manually set up an event and listener.
Lastly, I wanted to also utilize a tweening engine to smooth out the particle movement, but doing so cut the framerate by about 80% (a little better with TweenMax/TweenLite, but still not good enough). I also briefly played around with the Flint particle emitter, but I'm not familiar enough with Papervision/Flint to get it working how I wanted.
UPDATE - I decided to give a tween engine one more shot, and was able to use TweenMax while keeping the framerate at an acceptable level.
UPDATE 11/06/2009 - Updated code sample to reflect demo swf.
UPDATE 3/29/2010 - It's come to my attention that Wordpress tends to be a bit moody when it comes to code formatting in posts, especially in the case of vectors (which use the greater than/less than characters). That said, I've posted a couple pastebin examples:
Roughly one year ago, I decided to sit down and write up some notes, and draft some wires, of where I thought the Flash IDE GUI could be improved to support improved workflow. As I'm sure any power-user of any tool feels, I have my own special beefs with the Flash IDE — some of which I know are silly, and some of which I assume would actually be valuable to a broader audience. But, as CTO/COO of a Flash Platform development shop, where my guys excel in the use of basically every SWF-generating tool there is, I have several opinions based on how I feel, from an operations perspective, the cross-tool Flash workflow should be supported by Adobe's own software.
After thinking over these ideas for a year, one of the suggestions in particular keeps coming back to me. The Library. …read more…
My fiancee and I were watching 'TV' last night. (I say 'TV' in quotes because, since getting FiOS, we don't actually watch TV anymore -- opting instead to consume most of our media through Hulu, Netflix -- and, of course, South Park Studios).
But last night, she had a hankering for Medium or Ghost Whisperer, and searching Hulu we discovered that Hulu links to CBS.com to watch these shows.
We *also* discovered that we dislike the CBS video player a great deal. ...read more...
