[PD] [announce][Gem] well, here it is....

[Dave Phillips]

Greetings:

  I've been playing with the Gem-0.87 alpha for Linux for a while, here
are some random impressions:

    1) pix_film works but it's *very* picky about what formats it will
accept.
    2) When I switch the input to RGBA things slow down quite a bit. I'm
running an 800 MHz Duron with a Voodoo3 AGP card, I realize it's
outdated, but should I expect such a significant slowdown ?
    3) Is it possible to convert an RGB movie to RGBA via a format
converter ? Is there such a thing for Linux ?
    4) Performance seems "brittle", i.e., sometimes certain MPEGs will
load and play nice, at other times the same files will load but not
play.
    5) Often when I destroy the GL rendering window Pd will close with
this output:

	X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range
for operation)
	  Major opcode of failed request:  128 (XFree86-DRI)
	  Minor opcode of failed request:  13 ()
	  Value in failed request:  0x2e00004
	  Serial number of failed request:  36
	  Current serial number in output stream:  36
	[dlphilp at localhost dlphilp]$ pd_gui: pd process exited

Is this a known bug ?
    6) pix_movie doesn't seem to work at all. Pd crashes when I try
lading an MPEG, and the MOV files that work with pix_film don't display
with pix_movie. I get a flickering brownish window during the rendering,
but no video. Also, if I try changing the named file in the pix_movie
object Pd will often crash.


  I realize the release is an alpha-stage version, but I'm already
having some great fun with its possibilities. I apologize for my
ignorance of things video, I'm learning as I go...

Best regards,

== Dave Phillips

	The Book Of Linux Music & Sound at http://www.nostarch.com/lms.htm
	The Linux Soundapps Site at http://sound.condorow.net