Spectra is an app for creating 3D art from video and audio on iOS and Mac. It stores parameters such as control values, color palettes, and audio samples in settings files. It comes with built-in presets, video and audio samples to generate art quickly. You can customize the art with your own settings, video, and color palettes. Video frames can be used to generate color palettes for drawing, and the audio is used to modulate line or arc length. The colors pane contains a color palette generator and other features.
v1.4 [Nov 16, 2020]
Updated 'More Settings' web view. Use 'More Settings' to load additional settings from the web into the 'My Settings' table.
Previous updates:
Fixed an issue with the 'My Settings' table where the table experienced inadvertent scrolling after selecting a setting.
Improved Performance: Settings data is cached to handle the increased load from incorporating background images and waveform audio files. Most notably the presets table scrolls more smoothly, but other methods that use settings data is faster.
Background Preview in Settings: The background image can be previewed from the user settings table. (Swipe on a row in iOS, right(control)-click on a row in macOS.)
Open Settings Options: Opening settings is more discriminate - if current settings has background, but new settings do not then an alert is presented because the existence of a background could mean the spectra does not look as expected unless you change the background settings.
Play Waveform Audio: The current waveform audio file can be played (if it exists; a waveform graphic only displays the audio samples, and its presence does not mean there is an audio file associated with it.) Select ‘Play Waveform Audio’ from the Audio menu. (Or on Mac use the ‘Play Waveform Audio’ button, and in iOS tap the waveform graphic)
Apply Audio File Option: When opening settings with an audio file contained you have the option to ‘apply’ the audio file. This means that the file is read and stored as the current audio file for the waveform. This way if the settings are changed and saved a copy of the same audio can be included. (Audio is saved so that you can recall the audio by playing it from the user setting table.)
Save Audio Option: Saving settings presents the option to NOT save the current waveform audio file. Saving the audio file is for two purposes:
1. So that you can recall the audio by playing it from the user setting table.
2. So that if you load setting with an audio file you apply it so it may be included when saving a modified version of the settings.
New User Settings Table Row Labels: Labels in the user settings table indicate : contains audio data file, creation date and data size of the file.
New Labels & Colors For Clarity: New terminology adopted: ’Mask the spectra by the background image or vice versa. Implements 'white on alpha' masking, where white is transparent.' This is to emphasize the intended usage of the ‘White’ color in the color pane, and the use of the ‘Invert’ operation for masks.
Mask Inversion: Masks can be inverted. This is intended for use with ‘white on alpha masks’ - namely masks created as white with transparency. Choose the ‘White’ color option for a spectra and then save it as a background for masking. When inverted white pixels becomes transparent and transparent pixels become white.
Masking Background Image By Spectra Fixed: The mask was inadvertenly being applied 2x to the previews in the main view (but saving was properly working).
Screen Recording Catalina: Screen recording fixed for Catalina - access the screen recorder from the File menu
- The current audio data, as well as the processed samples for graphics modulation, is stored in a Spectra settings file enabling playing of the audio within Spectra.
To play the audio: In the 'My Settings' pane of Presets click-right on a row to display the row actions menu: Play, Rename, Delete and select 'Play'.
If there is no audio to play you are told so - for example old settings files will not contain audio.
Note: When loading settings the audio data is not used to replace the current audio being used by Spectra. But since you can now play the audio that was the current audio at the time the settings were saved you can recall what it was.
- Also : new isosceles triangle option, save Spectra to video, mask images by spectra, use images for color, composing spectra via backgrounds
