iTunes Effects

[Foaly]

Hi everybody.
I have a question. The other day I looked at the iTunes Effects, which you can play while music plays (by pressing CTRL + T). They look really cool, but I wondered how they work. I couldn't figure any pattern or anything like that out. Does anybody have an idea how something like that is realized/done?
Thanks in advance,
Foaly

[eXpl0it3r]

I give you a hint, it's not called anything like 'iTunes Effects'. The more or less official name is 'music visualizer' (try to google it).

You can quickly get a result but for more sofisticated visualisations it can get quite complex.

[Jove]

One option would be to head over to the Llamasoft forums. Jeff Minter pretty much invented this sort of effect and it was ultimately used in the Xbox360's visualizer.

The forum has a programming section you could ask some questions in.  Who knows, maybe the man himself might answer.

[eXpl0it3r]

I wonder what makes you think one guy 'invented' music visualization?

Even a oscilator is some sort of music visualisation and those existed before any pc existed...

[Walker]

Yes, you're best served to look for "music visualisation" and "beat detection". Check out MilkDrop (plugin for Winamp) for a very sophisticated and scriptable example (and open-source - DirectX though, I believe).

I wonder what makes you think one guy 'invented' music visualization?

Even a oscilator is some sort of music visualisation and those existed before any pc existed...

Jeff Minter pretty much invented

No one was talking about "some sort of music visualisation", this thread was always concerned with software. You also seem to have confused an oscilliscope (which was not developed to make pretties, anyway) with an oscillator.

Jeff Minter is often credited as the "inventor" of music visualisation software as he created some of the earliest music visualisation software and a lot of more recent work was based on concepts he pioneered. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Light_Machine

[eXpl0it3r]

No one was talking about "some sort of music visualisation", this thread was always concerned with software. You also seem to have confused an oscilliscope (which was not developed to make pretties, anyway) with an oscillator.

Jeff Minter is often credited as the "inventor" of music visualisation software as he created some of the earliest music visualisation software and a lot of more recent work was based on concepts he pioneered. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Light_Machine

Yes I meant an oscilloscope.

Okay I see Jeff Minter did create some software for visualizing music, although I wouldn't call him invertor or 'pretty much' inventor of music visualization. There are infinite possibilities for display music. It's also possible to write a software based oscilloscope which in fact visualizes music in a less abstract way.
That many people uses the LVM is imho just because most of them are too lazy to be creative on their own or they're time and/or budget doesn't allow tempering with such things.

So the idea of displaying what you hear isn't something you'd just invent because it's somehow human to do so. Jeff Minter certaintly was a pioneer in music visualisation we're used to but it's only a certain area and for a simple effect there are way easier possibilities.