Duration is a free timeline application for Windows, OSX, and Linux that can be used to control Painting With Light.
In this tutorial we will set up some basic tracks in Duration to synchronise Painting With Light to an audio file and control the visibility of layers.
Contents
Download and Install Duration
Duration can be downloaded from http://duration.cc
To get it running on Windows, you might need to install this and OpenAL
Read the documentation for Duration
Start a new Duration project
Click on the "Sample Project" text in the top left of the Duration window and choose "new project"
Choose a filename.
Press the "save" button (to the right of the project name)
Loading an audio track
NOTE: Duration only supports one audio track
Click "ADD TRACK" (top left, under the project name)
Choose "AUDIO"
A new track will appear. At the top right of this track, click on "select audio"
Choose a .wav or .ai file (mp3 and other files are not supported)
For performance reasons, click on "send osc" to turn it off
Connect it to Painting With Light
Painting With Light is listening for control messages on port 10001
At the top of the Duration window, where it says "OSC OUT" and "localhost", change the number 12345 to 10001
Adding a time sync track
To synchronise playback between Duration and Painting With Light, we need to create a new "CURVES" track
Change the track name to "timestamp"
We need to manually set the track maximum value to the number of seconds in the audio
Maximum Value = ( Minutes * 60 ) + Seconds + ( Milliseconds / 1000 )
For example, if our audio is 6 minutes, 44 seconds, and 631 milliseconds long, we set the track maximum value to:
Maximum Value = ( 6 * 60 ) + 44 + ( 631 / 1000 )
Maximum Value = 360 + 44 + 0.631
Maximum Value = 404.60 (rounded down)
Now create a control point at the beginning of the track at zero, and a control point at the end of the track at the maximum value (see the screenshot above for how this should all look)
Adding a layer opacity control
Add a new "CURVES" track
Set the name of this track to "layers/Layer 1/opacity"
Add some control points along this track
In Painting With Light, make sure Layer 1 has its "Mixing Mode" set to "Blend" (in the Layers Window) otherwise the opacity won't change