Quartz Compser = Dynamic Signage?

I’ve been testing out a new software that shipped with Apple’s 10.4 Developers tools called Quartz Composer. It is generally the exact type of software I was looking for to power the dynamic signage projects. It can import live data and display it in a motion graphics environment then either animate it live or make a quicktime movie for burning on DVD. There is logic before the rendering so we can adjust our animation depending on length of words or number of events. The interface is very interesting, it’s a visual editor with different “patches” connected with “cords” that you string together for more complex functions. There is simple javascript control but it seems quite slow in my initial experiements. Any one familiar with the older Pixel Shox software will notice that Quartz Composer is very similar. In fact the primary (only?) developer for Pixel Shox was brought in at Apple as the Quartz Composer Architect.

Apple has a great mailing list and Q+A page that have been extremely helpful. The user community seems to be very excited about the technology and they put together some good resources at Quartz Comps and Quatz Wiki.

This is very exciting news unfortunately there are some other considerations. Quartz obviously will only run on Macs. That means our elevator signs could be switched from a DVD player to a Mac with a minimal investment but our WatchOut Sign system all runs and relatively high end PCs and could not be transitioned without a significant expense.

That means our way forward for the large Hennepin Projection would be to use Quartz to render movies and send those quicktime movies over to the Watchout computers to play. That could work fine but I am in the middle of diagnosing some problems where the Watchout software doesn’t always recognize changed content.

There will obviously have to be some more discussion on our part and more testing before we will have a plan to fully drive our signage system from our database.

Note: I learned about Quartz Composer from Justin of the Revolutionary Party whose Workshop at the Walker is going to be great and deserves a plug. Thanks for the tip.