Macbook Pro Midi touchpad

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
tjwett
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Post by tjwett » Wed Apr 25, 2007 4:59 pm

interceptor wrote:
tjwett wrote:Quartz Composer takes X/Y coordinate info from any input device and you can then connect it to a MIDI out module and send it into Live via the IAC bus. works awesome. i use it (Wacom too) for all sorts of shit.[/i]
That sounds great. I will have to look into that. Would you care to tell me more about how its done?. Does it work with the new macbook pros? Seems apple are changing the trackpad specs all the time now.
works with any mouse, tablet, trackpad, etc. install the XCode developer tools that came with your machine. Quartz Composer is in there. you'll have to do a little programming to make it do what you want. but my "programming" i mean drag and drop modules and connect them with wires. QC is pretty awesome.

interceptor
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Post by interceptor » Wed Apr 25, 2007 9:12 pm

I have pm´ed you

bigbadotis
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Post by bigbadotis » Thu Apr 26, 2007 7:15 am

are you sure there's a MIDI output module in Quartz Composer? I thought it just read input signals to use as control data... I opened it up and couldn't find one.

zs_
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Post by zs_ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:01 am

interceptor wrote:Midimouse doesnt have absolute tracking. Moving your mouse over a resizable window sends midi.
nope.
you can resize the window to fill the entire screen, set the window to transparent and ignore the mouseclicks ("click-through" mode).

tjwett
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Post by tjwett » Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:32 pm

bigbadotis wrote:are you sure there's a MIDI output module in Quartz Composer? I thought it just read input signals to use as control data... I opened it up and couldn't find one.
i use them all the time. when you enter "midi" in the search field does anything show up? i have these:

MIDI Clock
MIDI Controllers
MIDI Notes
MIDI Global In CC
MIDI Global Out CC
MIDI Global In Note
MIDI Global Out Note

you can get more from here: http://fdiv.net/2006/08/20/some-new-qua ... r-patches/

zs_
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Post by zs_ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:37 pm

tjwett wrote:i use them all the time. when you enter "midi" in the search field does anything show up?
you need to install unofficial hacks in order to make that work:
http://softpixel.com/~smokris/widgets/q ... mePlugins/

note that some qc "plugin" developers got warned by apple, that they should remove their plugins. maybe this is due to the fact that leopard might come with a nice plugin-architecture for qc? who knows...

cheers,
michael

tjwett
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Post by tjwett » Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:54 pm

zs_ wrote:
tjwett wrote:i use them all the time. when you enter "midi" in the search field does anything show up?
you need to install unofficial hacks in order to make that work:
http://softpixel.com/~smokris/widgets/q ... mePlugins/

note that some qc "plugin" developers got warned by apple, that they should remove their plugins. maybe this is due to the fact that leopard might come with a nice plugin-architecture for qc? who knows...

cheers,
michael
only the Global ones are from Kineme, and i wouldn't call them hacks. they are legit QC plugins, likely built off the QC plugin project templates that Apple provides in XCode. one minute Apple is encouraging people to develop QC plugins and now they are asking that they don't? sounds weird to me.

zs_
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Post by zs_ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:01 pm

tjwett wrote:and i wouldn't call them hacks. they are legit QC plugins, likely built off the QC plugin project templates that Apple provides in XCode. one minute Apple is encouraging people to develop QC plugins and now they are asking that they don't? sounds weird to me.
Apple provides no templates with Xcode to program plugins for QC. The templates you're talking of are using bindings to interact with QC patches programmatically. Not weired at all. But I guess this is going too far off-topic, so I won't dig deeper into that here.

Regards,
Michael

interceptor
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Post by interceptor » Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:39 pm

Theres no input controller for the trackpad. Just one for mouse. So no hopes for absolute tracking yet.

tjwett
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Post by tjwett » Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:45 pm

interceptor wrote:Theres no input controller for the trackpad. Just one for mouse. So no hopes for absolute tracking yet.
the mouse patch works with the trackpad. whether or not you'll get "absolute" tracking i couldn't say. Wacom tablets are absolute, if i understand what you mean correctly. you might be able to achieve absoluteyness by going full screen with your QC composition window, or by making its dimensions close to those of the trackpad.

zs_
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Post by zs_ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:01 pm

tjwett wrote:
interceptor wrote:you might be able to achieve absoluteyness by going full screen with your QC composition window, or by making its dimensions close to those of the trackpad.
well, then that's exactly what midimouse does :roll:
midimouse has a mode that uses a qc patch to read the mouse values (but does send midi from the program, not a qc plugin) - and besides that it has a simple less-resource-hungry window.


Anyway, if I understand right, you want to use your mouse as mouse *only* and your trackpad *just* to send CCs and *not* controlling the cursor.

So you have to understand, that this is not an easy task! In order to achieve this, you can't just usa a simple program; you got to have specialized drivers!
I know there was such a driver in the past (@sourceforge.net) that used the trackpad to generate MIDI-signals, but I don't think it's been developed further. IIRC dev stopped with old PPC-iBook touchpads and OS X 10.2 or something...
You know, that goes deep into the system and whenever there's a minor system update or new hardware, things like these are most likely broken. It's just not worth all the work and efford for various problems that arise on different OS versions and computer models.

So I'd really recommend:
- get midimouse or controlAid
- or buy a hardware-controller or DIY one
- or go and buy a KAOSS-Pad, it sends also XY-positions by Midi.

Regards,
Michael

tjwett
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Post by tjwett » Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:49 pm

dude, buddy, bro. ok now i think i understand what you're trying to do. you want to use the trackpad as a touch control but WITHOUT having what you're doing send any info to the actual mouse pointer on the screen? ahh, sorry no fuckin idea how to do that. seems like QC is not the answer then. if that other software thing doesn't work you might want to look at hardware as someone else said. two suggestions come to mind on the cheaper side; Novation Remote 25 LE or the new Kaoss Pad mini. i have the Novation and its a decent keyboard with a decent size touch pad.

zs_
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Post by zs_ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 3:32 pm

tjwett wrote:or the new Kaoss Pad mini
woa, cool... didn't know that there's a new one out :-D
(but it might not be what interceptor needs, 'cause as far as I could see the mini has no Midi support)

cheers ;)
michael

tjwett
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Post by tjwett » Thu Apr 26, 2007 3:45 pm

zs_ wrote:
tjwett wrote:or the new Kaoss Pad mini
woa, cool... didn't know that there's a new one out :-D
(but it might not be what interceptor needs, 'cause as far as I could see the mini has no Midi support)

cheers ;)
michael
just looked again at the review in Future Music and indeed, no MIDI and no USB. just an effects box from what i can see. well aren't i just full of bad advice today.

zs_
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Post by zs_ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 3:52 pm

tjwett wrote:well aren't i just full of bad advice today.
yes indeed.
that advice probably costs me 150 bucks :mrgreen:


(just kidding... ;) )

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