I’m going to give you as much information as I have. I’m a computer tech, mostly familiar with PCs but a little mac experience under my belt. I’ve just started working with a non-profit group called Zeum; which has many Emacs, with Isights, running a pretty straightforward version of one of these programs.

Essentially you open up PhotoCapture (max/msp/jitter/whatever it is); and you get a live input of the iSight, with a capture button beneath it. When you click the capture button, next to the live input goes the image you captured, and beneath that is a Save button.
[]… []
cap save

like that; if you follow. There is also a reset button which seems to cycle the camera on and off.

When you click save, two things happen. First it saves the image, and second it opens up Adobe Photoshop Elements (4, i believe) and loads that picture to be toyed with by the kiddys; who filter it, print it, and quit.

Here’s the problem:
I see myself in the video screen and capture it, then i save it, however when Elements opens up, it loads a different picture from the folder and not the one i took. Capturing and saving a different picture will change which image is loaded, however it will still not be the one i’m trying to save.
The quick work-around is to empty the capture folder, but this doesn’t happen all the time, and i don’t have enough evidence yet to tell you under what conditions it does happen.

My hypothesis, is that at some point the counting variable gets reset as far as which image it loads, but not when it saves.

So image 000, 001, 002, and 003.jpg are all in the folder from yesterday/day before/whatever, and the new image i’ve just taken is image 004.jpg and gets saved. But immediately after saving, it proceeds to load 000.jpg into elements.
After taking picture 005, it will load 001. After hitting reset, it will load 002.

I hope someone here can follow what i’m talking about, and i can provide a video or something if need be as well.
This software was written a long time back, and they do not own/cannot afford a copy of MAX/MSP/Jitter.
But i see there is a free trial available; so i’m going to see if i can modify or re-write the program and solve this bug.

Normally it wouldn’t be too big a problem, as most people understand being told “just dump the folder and it’ll fix it”; but this is an exhibit for children, with 15 computers and only 1, and sometimes 0 techs on site to help them out.

Thanks for reading all this, i guess what I’m really looking for is some guidance, slash an understanding of how all this works and where i would go about trying to fix it. Can i edit the program as it is? or do i need to find the original working copy the program was built from? If i need to restart from scratch its not a problem; as i learn pretty fast and have coding/scripting experience, and there are other tweaks as well; i’m just trying to be the most efficient and not go in blind.

I Appreciate your time!

-Cal

If however the application is “complied” as a standalone, you won’t have
access to the patch code and would probably have to start from scratch.
Jitter and Max come with a very extensive set of tutorials, so that should
be your starting point. As far as Jitter goes it sounds really basic, but
you’ll have to learn the Max basics of patching.

I would start by looking for applescripts or something, because this file
naming/loading thing sounds like it might be scripted completely or
partially outside of the Max application, in which case you might not even
need Max to fix it:)

Cheers,
Thijs

PS: You’re question is more a generic Max problem. You’re better off posting
to the MaxMSP forum/list, since it has a bigger user base.

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 8:22 PM, Cal wrote:

>
> ^ so i’m starting with this forum!
>
> I’m going to give you as much information as I have. I’m a computer tech,
> mostly familiar with PCs but a little mac experience under my belt. I’ve
> just started working with a non-profit group called Zeum; which has many
> Emacs, with Isights, running a pretty straightforward version of one of
> these programs.
>
> Essentially you open up PhotoCapture (max/msp/jitter/whatever it is); and
> you get a live input of the iSight, with a capture button beneath it. When
> you click the capture button, next to the live input goes the image you
> captured, and beneath that is a Save button.
> []… []
> cap save
>
> like that; if you follow. There is also a reset button which seems to cycle
> the camera on and off.
>
> When you click save, two things happen. First it saves the image, and
> second it opens up Adobe Photoshop Elements (4, i believe) and loads that
> picture to be toyed with by the kiddys; who filter it, print it, and quit.
>
> Here’s the problem:
> I see myself in the video screen and capture it, then i save it, however
> when Elements opens up, it loads a different picture from the folder and not
> the one i took. Capturing and saving a different picture will change which
> image is loaded, however it will still not be the one i’m trying to save.
> The quick work-around is to empty the capture folder, but this doesn’t
> happen all the time, and i don’t have enough evidence yet to tell you under
> what conditions it does happen.
>
> My hypothesis, is that at some point the counting variable gets reset as
> far as which image it loads, but not when it saves.
>
> So image 000, 001, 002, and 003.jpg are all in the folder from
> yesterday/day before/whatever, and the new image i’ve just taken is image
> 004.jpg and gets saved. But immediately after saving, it proceeds to load
> 000.jpg into elements.
> After taking picture 005, it will load 001. After hitting reset, it will
> load 002.
>
> I hope someone here can follow what i’m talking about, and i can provide a
> video or something if need be as well.
> This software was written a long time back, and they do not own/cannot
> afford a copy of MAX/MSP/Jitter.
> But i see there is a free trial available; so i’m going to see if i can
> modify or re-write the program and solve this bug.
>
> Normally it wouldn’t be too big a problem, as most people understand being
> told “just dump the folder and it’ll fix it”; but this is an exhibit for
> children, with 15 computers and only 1, and sometimes 0 techs on site to
> help them out.
>
> Thanks for reading all this, i guess what I’m really looking for is some
> guidance, slash an understanding of how all this works and where i would go
> about trying to fix it. Can i edit the program as it is? or do i need to
> find the original working copy the program was built from? If i need to
> restart from scratch its not a problem; as i learn pretty fast and have
> coding/scripting experience, and there are other tweaks as well; i’m just
> trying to be the most efficient and not go in blind.
>
> I Appreciate your time!
>
> -Cal
>