D

uration – OpenFrameworks Timeline for Creative Code

Created by James George and co-developed by YCAMInterLab during the Guest Research Project v.2, Duration is an open source and completely free timeline application built using openFrameworks which integrates with Processing, Cinder, vvvv, Unity3d, Quartz, and any otherOSC enabled environment.

A Duration project, available as an example, is a collection of track data and interface configuration settings. It’s all saved to a folder with .xml files and a special .durationproj file containing the track names and settings. Duration has six built in track types. Each track has keyframes which specify values or behaviour at specific moments. Between keyframes tracks can define ways of interpolating values to create smooth changes. Duration also comes packaged with a simple application called “DurationRemote”, which can be used to test control messages. Finally Duration also has an experimental feature for recording OSC data as keyframes in Curves or Bang tracks. This comes in the shape of RecordingDataGenerator which is part of the download.

All the communication between applications is managed by OSC. Whenever a value changes it well send an update (whether you are just editing the track or it’s playing back). From there your host application can be designed to make use of the bangs generated by Duration. Create live performances, interactive installations, and music visualizations by synchronously composing servos, lighting, and projection.