soulcatalyst

21st May 2002 16:32 UTC

AVS Tutorials
Hello, all. I've been working to put up a site with Winamp AVS tutorials as an independent study for my high school. The intent of this site (at least for now) is to provide the basics of the Winamp AVS (with an emphasis on the math of the Superscope, currently). I hope to make this site a good starting point for those interested in the AVS, but without any idea how to go about making presets (a good grasp on high school level math is also recommended). It's currently online at http://www.xoasis.com/~soulcatalyst/ .

So, for those interested in the basics, please check out the site. And for those who know more than that (especially those who know more than me), please check out the site, and recommend changes or additions that you would like to see. Thanks.

dirkdeftly

21st May 2002 18:58 UTC

There's mine, and UnConeD's (in the AVS forum), but I don't think I want mine being distributed off of Winamp.com yet. You'll have to talk to UnConeD about his stuff.

soulcatalyst

21st May 2002 21:06 UTC

Atero's Primer
I'll check those out, Atero. I just dl'ed your primer from your forum post this morning. It's looking great, and should be very helpful. I was going to ask you about putting it on my site, but you've mentioned that you'd rather not have it distributed elsewhere, so I will certainly respect that.

dirkdeftly

21st May 2002 21:23 UTC

I'm still working out some kinks, but when I'm done I'll tell you.

cmountford

22nd May 2002 02:23 UTC

cool
So there's more people than I thought working on tutorials (and interestingly enough, you're all using different methods). Sigh--I don't forsee that I'll be able to put my tutorial on my own website; the best I was hoping for was to have a zipped word document explaining primarily different ideas on how to use the different objects in AVS. My primary theme is just different uses of objects, like superscopes, so that the person reading it gets a more comprehensive understanding of how to use the different objects. Whenever you get your website ready, I'll check it out. BTW: I'm in high-school, too. For my Algebra class project, I did Winamp AVS-and it was really cool.

Peace everyone!!!
--C. Mountford--Don't forget my AVS preview pack! You can download it & review it in the thread availale at http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....threadid=87661

Atmo

22nd May 2002 04:06 UTC

I couldnt get your link to work. :(

It sounds interesting though.

cmountford: Why dont you make those threads as links in your sig?

Something like this:

<URL=http://forums.winamp.com/showthread...&threadid=87661>AVS Preview Pack</URL>

Just replace the < & > with [ & ] and it'll look like this.

AVS Preview Pack

You could do the same thing with the LOTR link too. :)

cmountford

22nd May 2002 04:45 UTC

how's this?
I'll see if the hyperlinks work in my sig now.

P.S. I had the same problem as Atmo The Freak with the hyperlink

I guess I'll see how my hyperlinks work now

Atmo

22nd May 2002 04:50 UTC

The LOTR link works fine, but the preview pack one gets an error message.

[edit]It's working now :up: [/edit]

cmountford

22nd May 2002 04:57 UTC

I figured out what was wrong (took me a while, though-because I figured out immediately that the > in the [____>] wouldn't work, but I fixed that, and it still messed up. Somehow it did _____/newreply...&action_______ instead of _____/newreply.php?s=&action=__________
I assume your edit means I fixed it...so I was just explaining why it took me so long to fix it :D

darrentheturkey

24th May 2002 03:19 UTC

I think a simple glossary would be great for such a site. You could explain what stuff does like "Trans>Bump", "Trans>Interleave" & "Trans>Roto Blitter". I believe this would greatly accelerate the learning curve. I am still working on what they do right now.

soulcatalyst

24th May 2002 03:31 UTC

glossary
Thanks for the suggestion darren. I hadn't thought of that, but I like that idea. I'll add it to the list of things that I'm working on for the site.

Sadarqii

29th May 2002 13:19 UTC

Ssup, soulcatalyst. I accidentaly happened to read this thread. Looks like we have another person trying to create a site about AVS. Same with me. Linus wrote a tutorial last summer and I created a site where it was placed. Maybe you'll get some ideas for your project. Address: www.geocities.com/avsdiscussion . Just don't steal anything:) .

soulcatalyst

29th May 2002 21:26 UTC

Thanks for the link, Sadarqii. Looks like you've got some solid tutorials and a good glossary/index up. Nice site design, too. I'm thinking of making a links section for my page. Would it be alright with you if I linked to your site?

dirkdeftly

30th May 2002 03:07 UTC

umm...there has been a glossary done...avs primer

soulcatalyst

31st May 2002 21:00 UTC

new location
My AVS Tutorial site is now accessible at http://www.xoasis.com/~soulcatalyst (Sometimes unreliable server), and at a new location: http://soulcatalyst.***********/main.html (Faster server, but forces banner ads).

This should help anyone who's had problems with the Xoasis site.

3dino

1st June 2002 23:57 UTC

;) I am looking for a german avs superscope and movement tutorial!
do you know some helpful links?
i don't understand the superscopoe and movement functions yet (3d etc.), but i like to use superscope for visuals with linked tetraeder bodys.
here you'll find my latest avs presets!

3dino

4th June 2002 16:23 UTC

Example for linked tetraeder bodys:
http://www.pure-underground.de/apboa...0000000050.gif
I don't know how to create a teraeder with the superscope :igor:
I need help with this :(

Jaheckelsafar

4th June 2002 17:56 UTC

Looks like you know your way around an AVS window. :up: If you do use someone else's work though, be sure to give them credit.

Anyway, I don't think you'll find any superscope specific 3d tutorials. Just find a regular one and apply it to the superscope. The math doesn't change.

The hard part of 3D is figuring out the equation to make your scope look the way you want.

Here's a page I found and referenced.

http://www.sbdev.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/intro.htm

3dino

4th June 2002 23:06 UTC

aw nice, thank ya!
give me some time to dig this! ;)

>>If you do use someone else's work though,<<
>>be sure to give them credit. <<

Yes, i will respect this in my next AVS-Pacs! those AVS are a selectetion of my experiments since the last two jears!

YaPoNDeeZzZzz..

5th June 2002 00:06 UTC

hey Sadar
i went to ur avs tutorial site its koo but b4 u get there u have to go thru geocities who has that stupid banner on the side u noe u can get rid of that...just by adding <noembed> to the end of ur code:)

soulcatalyst

10th June 2002 16:35 UTC

Thanks for the link, Jaheckelsafar. That should be helpful for increasing my understanding of 3-D in the AVS. And I'll be sure to give credit where credit's due.

Sadarqii

10th June 2002 21:31 UTC

Hey Soulcatalyst!
Nice site you've got going. That add is a pain though. We all suffer from them. I'll try YaPoNDeeZzZzz..'s advice to get rid of mine (thanks man but could you please be more specific: just <noembed>? And where exactly in the code?) Help appreciated. Soulcatalyst, go ahead and put up the link to my site. Can I do the same with your's? Maybe it'll be e start of a tutorial site community...:rolleyes:

dirkdeftly

11th June 2002 03:52 UTC

I checked out your site again...I think the functions page needs to be a bit more in depth. Just saying that "sin(x)" calculates the sine of x doesn't really help to understand what it does. That goes for the logarithmic functions as well. And e and pi DO go on infinitely - they're called irrational numbers.

Now, as for the functions:
sign(a) - returns 1 if a is positive or -1 if a is negative
min(a,b) - returns the lesser of a and b
max(a,b) - returns the greater of a and b
sigmoid(a,b) - not sure exactly how this is derived, but it helps to graph it
rand(a) - returns a random integer between a and 0, including 0 and a
band(a,b) - returns 1 if both a and b != 0
bor(a,b) - returns 1 if either a or b != 0
bnot(a) - returns 1 if a == 0 and 0 otherwise
if(a,b,c) - returns c if a == 0 and b otherwise
equal(a,b) - returns 1 if a == b and 0 otherwise
above(a,b) - returns 1 if a > b and 0 otherwise
below(a,b) - returns 1 if a < b and 0 otherwise
getosc(a,b,c) - returns the oscilloscope data at a band centered at a of width b from channel c - picture a regular oscilloscope going from 0 to 1 taking data from channel c; put a vertical line at x = a, then make it b wide: the average of the points within the band is the data returned
getspec(a,b,c) - returns the spectrum analyzer data in the same way as getosc

And...none of your other links work.

soulcatalyst

11th June 2002 04:51 UTC

Atero
Thanks for the suggestion about the periodic and logarithmic functions, Atero. And thanks for the info about the other functions. Those'll help me out some. A couple quick questions, though:

What do the notations of "==" and "!=" mean? I am unfamiliar with these symbols.

Also:

And...none of your other links work.

soulcatalyst

11th June 2002 05:04 UTC

Sandarqii
Thanks for the link permission, Sandarqii. And yes, feel free to link to my site as well. It would be very cool if we could find some more people with sites similiar to ours and get a community of sites going.:D

I'm not so sure about that <noembed> idea, though. I'm pretty certain something like that violates the use agreement that most users have to agree with to sign up with most free web space providers (mandatory advertising in exchange for your web space), so that might be risky.

Jaheckelsafar

11th June 2002 06:44 UTC

"==" and "!=" both come from real programming languages. (C, Java, perl, not COBOL (stupid COBOL))

"a==b" means "is a equal to b"
"a!=b" means "is a not equal to b"

UnConeD

11th June 2002 12:12 UTC

Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language? :)

soulcatalyst

11th June 2002 16:19 UTC

Thanks, Jaheckelsafar. I don't have much programming knowledge...well, make that no programming knowledge;) ...so that was helpful.

I've done plenty of scripting (HTML, DHTML, and some CSS and JavaScript), but haven't looked much into real programming languages yet...I should probably start learning at least a little of these languages (C, Java, Perl).

Jaheckelsafar

11th June 2002 17:19 UTC

Had to use it for 8 months man. Never again.

Just so you don't get get completely lost, you might want to start with PHP. It goes hand in hand with the web languages. It's not as complex and C and Java where you can quickly become lost, but it does do flow control and arrays and all that good stuff.

dirkdeftly

11th June 2002 19:08 UTC

All of the links except for the one from Main to Basics are broken.

And isn't it kinda up to the webmaster (aka you) to find this stuff?

UnConeD

11th June 2002 19:39 UTC

PHP has the string-processing and hash-table power of Perl combined with the clear syntax of C/C++. Very yummy.

I even use it as a shell scripting language. Using some registry hacks and such you can make it so .php files execute directly from the CMD like an exe or bat.

soulcatalyst

11th June 2002 20:59 UTC

Atero-
Your problems with the links on my page is strange. I haven't had any problems with these links on any of the several computers I've accessed the site from. Downloads doesn't work because I haven't made a downloads page yet. Aside from that, all the other links seem to work (I just checked them).

Jahecklesafar and UnConeD-
Sounds like some solid advice. I'll check out PHP this summer...I'll have plenty of free time once school gets out on Friday.

peepingdan

30th June 2002 08:41 UTC

my own tutorial
I was going to make a tutorial, but I just dont know enough. I am so confused by AVS math... I know that d=atan(d) pulls the outside of the image towards you... but WHY? I can never figure that out. Why does the arc tangent of the D variable make things distorted like that?
Oh, and UnconeD, you are my god. (ignore the sig though, we arent all a peice of you :D )

cmountford

1st July 2002 04:26 UTC

you can start now
Start writing your guide now; whenever you figure something out, write it down to put it in your guide. That's the best guide...write down the problem, and make some notes as you figure it out. Then write everything down & explain it right after the light bulb comes on. Do it before the light bulb goes out!

That's the best way to explain how to figure stuff out...figure it out yourself & then write it down.

Matt_W74656

29th July 2002 05:28 UTC

I've Expermented ...
I been expermenting with the scope and stuff for over a year now hopeing to draw even a line but with no sussess. I don't know when im gunna finaly understand what the hell sin is or what cos and the rest of the confuseing math is i dont even know why none of my stuff appears even starter scopes i end up totaly destroyingi have no clue what make things go up or down or in and out if anyone know what the hell im talking about or has enough time to tell me exactly what the sin and x ext. does to the avs tell me it really been hard createing static images know theres much greater potential for avs.

P.S. For a hint on what i need to know even the basics of this could be helpful cuz like i said before i cant even make anything show up on the screen

Sadarqii

29th July 2002 08:26 UTC

Do not worry, Matt_W74656
We were all here once. I remember me experimenting with the SSC and getting nothing but mess.

To draw a line with the SSC:
In the Point field of the SSC write: x=i. Isn't that a pretty line? Well, it all starts from here...

What you need is to:
1) Search the forums. There is plenty of stuff on this topic there.
2) Read the FAQ.
3) Get loaded with tutorials (try searching for "AVS Primer" and other in the forums)
4) Go to sites like mine (AVS Discussion) or soulcatalyst's (http://soulcatalyst.***********/main.html)
5) Experiment a lot (you'll get the hang of it eventually)

cmountford

30th July 2002 18:10 UTC

here's something
I just realized I need a little more of a transition from Algebra I graphing to get to where this part of my guide starts. I'll work on getting basic line graphing a little later, but I hope the Microsoft Word document is a help for now. It's really the same principle in my current guide...it just changes the line (simple equation such as y=.5x+2) based on the sound input

soulcatalyst

5th August 2002 00:36 UTC

The Latest
I've finally gone back and started working on SoulCatalyst's Domain again. It's been about a month and a half since the last page update, but i hope to keep future updates closer together.

The main site is now the Tripod one (http://soulcatalyst.***********/), and the Xoasis site will be for experimenting with page design, and thus may not be the most up to date. This also makes it so I only have to update one site instead of two to add something new, which should help to make updates faster.

The links and downloads pages are finally up, and there's now a guestbook for SoulCatalyst's Domain (at the tripod site), and I'll be working on more tutorials for the basics of AVS.

UnConeD

5th August 2002 11:33 UTC

The explanation of d=atan(d) is pretty simple... first of all you need to know how movements work:

The formulas you enter specify the *source* pixel in function of the *target*. When AVS applies the movement, it looks up the source pixels for every target pixel and copies the colour from source to target.

So when you specify d=d*2, you're saying that pixels halfway to the edge (d=0.5) should get the colour that is at the edge (d=0.5*2=1). This means that the image will be zoomed *out*: the area (-1...1) gets squised into (-0.5...0.5).

Now if this makes sense, you'll understand why atan(d) makes a tunnel movement. Open this in a new window:
http://acko.net/dump/datand.png

The red line is the plot of f(x)=x, a 45° angled line. This is 'no movement', every point gets projected onto itself.

The blue curve is an approximation of the plot of f(x)=atan(x). I exaggerated the curving to make it easier to illustrate.

We take a point at a certain distance (the leftmost fat ellipse on the bottom axis) and we're going to apply the movement d=atan(d). We trace its location on the graph upwards (gray line). We need to draw a horizontal line and intersect with the blue curve. This is where this point would end up after one step of movement. Again, this is not how AVS works, but this is how it works intuitively.

We trace down again and find the target distance as the second point from the left on the axis. You can see the point moved ******ds.

Now we keep applying this: trace up, trace horizontal, intersect with blue, trace down to find out where it will end after several frames (and repeated movement). You can see that because the distance between the red line and the blue line increases, the point will move ******ds faster and faster.

What we're doing is actually a kind of source map now. AVS looks at the graph 90° rotated. You can understand that, if the blue curve doesn't cover the entire vertical range, that some points on the red line might not have a target horizontally of them. This is why a source-map can leave holes in the image.

Now what this example doesn't show is that there can be a huge difference is resulting movement from two slightly different curves, because the shape of the movement is the result of repeatedly following the points, rather than just once.