Manufacturer
Website	Onadime Composer
Platform	OSX
Price	£
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Onadime Composer is a realtime multimedia authoring system, used to create so called compositions, that can later be played back with Onadime Composer itself or one of the Onadime Players. There is the Free Player and the Player Plus. At this point of time all products by Onadime are for noncommercial use only! Player Pro will be coming soon and may be used for commercial purposes also. The fact that all files belonging to a composition (e.g. movies) may be wrapped into a single composition's file makes it easy to distribute a composition and play it back on any computer using the Player only.
Onadime takes input from various sources via sensors, and the corresponding sensor data can feed parameters of graphical objects (pictures, movies, live video).

The possible Live Sensor Data Inputs are:
- Mouse/Trackball
- Computer Keyboard
- Graphics Tablets
- Audio CD's
- MP3
- Audio Input (Mic, LineIn)
- MIDI Controllers
- A/V Controllers
- Magnetic Resonance

The way to interact with Onadime Composer is OVALL, Onadime's visual programming language, which originally was designed as a media construction kit for children. So the concept is easy, but things can get complicated with large compositions. Everything is built by using Forms and Leads. A Form is an atomic unit, which consits of several "Leads". Forms are connected to each other by connecting the "Hot Leads" (red color) of a Form to the "Cold Leads" (blue color) of another Form, defining a data flow. So the Hot Leads can produce values to control the values of the Cold Leads.

A simple example would be to control the size of a picture by the intensity of the bass frequency coming from an audio input. One would place a form called "Sound Input" on the workspace, then another one called "Basic Picture". The Hot Lead "Booms" of the Form "Sound Input" can be connected to the Cold Lead "Size" of the Form "Basic Picture" then, et voila - watch the picure bumping to the live music.

The user interface is devided in to 2 windows, one to place all the forms for a composition and their connections, and the other to place several control items, as there are:
- Preview of output
- MP3 Player
- AudioCD Player
- Live Audio In control
- Live Video In Control
- Composition Chooser
- think i forgot one ...

The visual performance itself is displayed in the "Graphics Window", which replaces the Preview, when turned on, and can be placed on any connected monitor/TV/projector. It's possible to work with the user interface and have the Graphics Window display the output on a projector at the same time, while the performance is running. Pressing enters Performance Mode, where only the Graphics Window is displayed, saving CPU resources for higher frame rates. The size of the Graphics Window can be customized to fit the resolution of the external monitor or any other resolution.

I always use the S-video out (Powerbook or G4/733 with ATI Radeon 8500) at 640x480 and millions of colors. The compression I use for movies is Cinepak 640x480, pictures shouldn't exceed 1024x768. For live video in i've experimented with firewire and usb, having better results with usb - you always have a delay. In a normal composition I use 2 layers at the same time only, combining 2 pitures, 2 movies or picture/movie. The performance is quite OK with my G4/733 (without L3 cache).

The most used inputs:
- Audio:
audio analysis is done by several Forms, each doing a different kind of analysis. I often use the Form "Slow Sound", which doesn't have that nervous peaks. You get the normal EQ-bands and things like "Booms" or "Sparkles". Everyone will find his favourite Form for audio, depending on how freaky he want's his
output. I you don't want the whole spectrum of - say - the bass, you can filter it through a compressor (another Form) to only ouput the values in a given range.

- MIDI:
works fabulous. Use it with Roland PC180A and Doepfer Pocket Dial or with IAC Bus and Cubase. There are multiple Forms for MIDI Input (and Output!). NoteIn, predefined controllers (PitchBend, Volume, ...) and controllers you define via controller#. And you get various transformers, e.g. PitchShifters, all available as Forms.

Once you have got that modular concept of Onadime using forms, and worked out kind of template to start with every new composition, it's just fun. Someone said: "Onadime is the LEGO for the VJs" - yes it is.

I've created a template i start each new composition with. It contains all availabe input forms of my interest in a column on the left side of the workspace, and some basic forms for displaying graphics on the right side of the workspace. So the complete input mechanism is already set up and i can immediately start bringing in the footage for the composition.

In Onadime you have to organize the footage you use in special folders within the application folder.
There are 2 folders for different usage:
- "Composer Media" is the folder where all your footage should rest. It has subfolders for movies/pictures/text and mp3 i think. Within the subfolders you can place your files/folders directly or
(what everyone will do) place aliases (shortcuts) to your library files. Everything in there will be scanned by Onadime when opening a composition or refreshing media content. So you should be aware of not placing too many files here, as scanning takes time. It's very handy, that you can put folders you don't
wanna use in brackets, so that Onadime ignores them - rather than removing and adding folders always. Also take care if you created a self contained composition for distribution: all files in this folder will be wrapped into the file! When Onadime finds subfolders here, it considers the folder to be a category, which can be adressed seperatly later, to switch "banks" of pictures/movies.

- "DropIn Media" can be used for this scenario: you distribute a composition, let's say for a club that want's to play it with the Onadime Player. Your composition has been wrapped into one file containing all the footage from the "Composer Media" folder. But you designed the composition to also use footage from the "DropIn Media" folder. So the club can place the additional footage he want's in the DropIn folder an play that single composition again and again, with different content each time - and you have never ever been there.

As composition layout (forms) can get rather complex, there is a great way to keep things clean on the worksheet: Macroforms. They can contain any number of simple forms plus their connections and representations of their inputs. And all in only *one* representation on the worksheet. you can zoom in and get the complete layout within that macrofrom on a new screen. I think you even can put macroforms within a macroform and zoom again. I use them to create kind of "scenes" of my composition. The advantage is, that you open a composition, look at the worksheet and see the list of scenes of your performance rather than a "wood of squares and lines". Another advantage is, that you only use special sensors (which eat CPU) only within scenes, that use those sensors. If you switch the scene off, Onadime doesn't need to compute sensor data. If you have sensors, that are used for most of your scenes, you will put them outside the macroforms and only define them once rather than in every scene. Btw, all forms (including macroforms) can be exported and sent via email to someone else.

In my current composition setup i use a form which accepts midi note in and translates each not into a on/off switch (Hot Lead). Each on/off switch is used to switch one or more scenes on and off (Cold Lead). This way, i walk through the scenes simply by pressing one key after the other, additionaly tweaking knobs as the specific scene accepts that.

The forms for displaying graphics (movies/pictures/video) all have a similar layout of leads. Let's take a "Basic Movie" form. Here some of the leads:
- movie category (subfolder in the media folder)
- movie file (movie within that category)
- left/right
- down/up
- size
- shape (square, circle, ...)
- front/back
- rotation
- opacity (0%-100%)
- mode (copy, add, difference, and, or, add warp, substract warp, ...)
- mask (chroma, luma, none)
- chroma key tolerance
- ...

All these are Cold Leads, that can be controlled via *any* Hot Lead. So you can:
- change pictures with the bass level, produces very fast changing pictures
- additional changing picture category every bar or via note in
- make picture shining through a movie going with the mids of the eq
- let a movie rotate once with each bar
- let a midi controller zoom a picture
- making a pic series appear in the left top, while 2 movies occupating different places on the screen
- change mode with booms of the music - freaky
- well, imagine yourself

In Onadime you can use the complete set of quicktime effects. Additionaly there a some forms for graphic effects. Or you can put the "Flame" form on top of a movie and let it burn ...

Rendering is also possible. In a first step you do recordings vie hotkey start/stop, afterwards the recordings may be exported to a movie with the compression you like. The problem is, Onadime has to do recordings "online", while performing - so depending on the intensity of the performance and the speed of your computer, the recordings may by at low frame rates. You better print out to DV tape and capture all via firewire to use parts of the performance in a music video or something.

Well, there is much more - but i don't want to write a book now, and I simply can't remember all the available forms and so an, as i'm not writing this from my computer at home (where Onadime is
installed).

I use Onadime for "clean" visuals, when i simply want to show the pictures as they are, not messing around with strange effects: use Videodelic for that These 2 make a great combination for me.

Just download the demo of Onadime Composer and try yourself - you can do everything except saving compositions.