Project Feasibility

mediameindl's icon

Hey All,

So it’s been a few years since I’ve interacted with Max and that was primarily doing more robotics kind of stuff. However, a colleague of mine just approached me about an interactive video installation she wants to revamp and I thought that Max might fit the bill, but wanted to query y’all and see if what she/I would want to do is possible (or if it’s possible but we’d need to use a specific OS (i.e. Windows or Mac).

Situation 1 (Ideal)
Three Screens
One Screen is the backend screen with the patches open.
One Screen would only play videos in fullscreen.
One Screen would be a touchscreen that would control the videos playing on the 2nd screen (basically there would be a type of menu on that screen and by pressing an area on there you activate a different video).

Situation 2 (We can live with)
Two Screens
One Screen for only videos in fullscreen.
One Screen would act as the input screen basically the same menu showing as above, but would be over the patches (would want to hide the patches and make sure no one can touch those but us while the project is running.) It doesn’t have to be a touchscreen, but would be nice.

I appreciate any thoughts y’all have.

mediameindl

Andro's icon

A matrox triple head to go gives you 2 or 3 extra screen outputs. Render one big jit.window object. say 3 screens wide, the matrox will then split them up.
All you then have to do is put your 3 screens of content on 1 plane each within the wide jit.window.
Easily achieved.

Matt Romein's icon

I'd use a Mac Mini which would give you a two screen output for the back end and the video in fullscreen. I'd then use an Ipad for touchscreen capabilities and create the interface using TouchOSC http://hexler.net/software/touchosc. There's also Mira which is the Cycling '74 supported way to create a touchscreen interface with an Ipad but I haven't used it yet so can't comment too heavily on it. The way I've described would obviously be a Mac way of doing it.

Within Max there's more than a few ways to achieve what you want to do based on budget and preferred OS though so to answer your general question I think this project would definitely be achievable in Max.