WARNING: **Dumb n00b Question** (How do I make a Random Video Sampling patch?)
Hey fellow MAXerz! Sorry for the n00b question, I'm kind of intimidated asking because I see a lot of you don't have patience for us n00bies, but that's what I am.
I'm new to Max6/Jitter and have been tasked with making a jitter patch that quite simply plays a video from one single file source, and randomly jumps around in the file. I've now spent hours watching tutorials and trying to make-sense of the jitter recipes available online. I'm still struggling to make sense of the data flow charts I'm reading. If anyone has any simple instructions/advice they'd like to politely share with me I'd love to hear it. (Basically, the chain of data flow & specific objects needed to accomplish it.)
I've looked over quite a few fast-cuts recipes and they all seem a bit more complex than what I even need to do here. As far as functionality is concerned, I'm simply making a jitter patch that that will play a given .mov file, and randomly jump around inside the file. Anyway, if you have any advice on helping me get started I'd love to hear it, or if you know any sources that I may find helpful please please please share. If you're just gonna tell me to RTFM, spare me. I've searched the help files til my eyes glossed over. If that worked I wouldn't be here.
K.I.S.S.
If you look at the Jitter Tutorial 4: Controlling Movie Playback, it provides an excellent place to start creating the patch you want. The tutorial will show you how to get the number of frames in the film. Once you have that info you can use a random object with the range being the number of frames in the film. Use the randomly generated number with the frame message and send it to the jit.qt.movie object playing the movie file. Each time you bang the random object it will cause the movie to jump to a random frame.
Thanks Matt! That was helpful. I'm still kind of stuck but it got me going.
I was able to read along, is there somewhere to download the actual patch/lesson tutorials? Thank you.
They're installed with the version of Max you're running. To see them using Max's menus....
Help > Jitter Tutorials. The tutorials have a link at the beginning to open the tutorial patcher.
Actually, spending a little time with those tutorials might help you out a little bit.
You're awesome. Thank you!
