Magic.X

7th February 2002 10:29 UTC

UVS - Creating our own AVS!
As there are so many peopel who would like to have some Features or Funktions added in AVS, what shall we do? Wait until AVS 2.6 is out??? It could take ages until it happens and it's likely that will mostly contain Bugfixes but no major changes. :(
The Solution is that we should create our own AVS, let's call it UVS -the User's Visualization Studio.
We should copy the functions of our beloved AVS but create the UVS API as an open system, so that everyone can add plugins. Besides it should contain main functions that ar actually missing in AVS, such as interactive control, or optional 3D support to accelerate the Movements, Dynamic Movements, DDF and Dynamic Shift Features.
I know this means a hard piece of work, but take it as a challenge. Programmers, Plugin - Writers and AVS'ers give your best to let our Dreams come true!
I hope that this Discussion will be flooded by the ideas and proposals the whole community - let's stick together and do it!!! :D

Yathosho

7th February 2002 13:53 UTC

hehe, would be nice. opensource and optimized for various graphic chips =)

dont expecting it to become reality, but if i can contribute, let me know =)

liquidmotion

7th February 2002 21:51 UTC

i dont mean to naysay, but come on! this has taken justin frankel such a long time to produce, and he is one of the best programmers in the world (not to mention the people who helped with it).

why not just ask justin to add these features? get an "official" list of functions that the majority of users want.

don't reinvent the wheel, just ask its creator to modify it :)

Yathosho

8th February 2002 02:31 UTC

you're right. but i don't think anybody was about to disrespect justin, i burn a dose of incense for him daily.

but especially for avs it would be nice to get more influence. it's not the main-feature of winamp, so opening it's source won't harm anybody. instead it'd improve a lot. justin could still be the one judging what feature will make it to the official code.

although avs isn't a professional visualisation tool as used on music-events and in clubs, it got a lot of potential. everybody can easily put together his own effects and have some fancy effects on his party. opening its source could bring so many improvements (optimization for gfx-chips > higher resolutions).

jan

liquidmotion

8th February 2002 04:56 UTC

open sourcing a program like avs would only make it that much easier for people to pass of a copy of it as their own work.

and making it better for graphics cards wouldn't really improve performance, since it is all processing power, if that's what you mean.

Magic.X

8th February 2002 11:16 UTC

Liquid Motion, you're completely wrong. I use AVS to make Veideo sets and nobody can take my presets and say it was his work.
Why? I simply don't publish them! I think anyone who uploads his presets knows very well that there are some bad guys out there that 'll probably claim them as their own work.

And 3D acceleration could be easyly used to simulize our Movements. In fact they allready look like 3D, so why don't handle them as 3D Features?! It could nearly double the framerate!

An opensourced AVS is also the only possibility, because everyone of us has specific whishes and expectations. If we could add our own plugins to AVS, according to our needs, all would be pleased.
Even if Justin really wanted (and i think he does) to make all users happy, he could never start programming because there would be an endless list of whishes waiting for him to be read...

Well and as i don't like to sit and wait until there's an opensourced AVS (maybe in 10 years or later...) i prefer asking for help in the community as i'm sure outa there are some experienced plugin writers that can handle this problem. So anyone who feels fit enouh to try it out, place a reply here and everyone will support you!! :D

flatmatt

9th February 2002 01:28 UTC

You can. They're called APE's. Though I don't know how limited they are. My programming experience is limited to QBASIC.

dirkdeftly

9th February 2002 19:36 UTC

I hope you're joking, Magic.X. If you aren't, then you obviously just want an easy way to do AVS (you're working hard at being lazy). You CAN write your own effects, they're called APEs! If you know how to do the coding for an entire new vis studio, then you should be able to write some APE files.

*sighs*
But I have had some wishes for AVS of my own, so I'll post them again here:
A "dynamic" color manipulator (something that you can specifically change the RGB values, in a Dynamic Movement form)
Particle simulation
A refinement of the "line width" function, so that the lines aren't made into crosses, but have actual thickness (the lines are extended perpendicularly to themselves - you might want to read that sentence again in a quiet corner)
FIX THE BUG WHERE EFFECTS AREN'T ALWAYS DISPLAYED IN THE SAME SPOT THAT THEY ARE PROCESSED!
And add some help files.

UnConeD

10th February 2002 19:36 UTC

While APE's allow you to code your own effects, they're not ideal because:

- You can't access the internal AVS variables (dot size, blend mode, line width)

- You can't access the internal AVS buffers (buffer save)

- You can't use the expression evaluator for a scriptable APE (I'm coding my own expression evaluator now as a replacement, but it's still a bit buggy).

Open-source AVS isn't needed though. We just need a better APE-API (funny acronym: AVS Plugin Effect - Application Programming Interface).

Magic.X

16th February 2002 13:22 UTC

Originally posted by UnConeD
...We just need a better APE-API...