August 19th
I am proud to announce that Beatbox360 will be shown at the "Million DJ March," from August 29th - 30th. Thousands of DJ's from all over the United States will march on the Capital Building in Washington D.C. in the name of fair use and compensation from the music industry. Appearing in its HD form, Beatbox360 will be played back on a large format screen and a concert-sized sound system. I'm really excited to see some amazing acts and to hear KRS-One speak about the current state of the DJ.
If you're going to be in the area, come and check it out, along with hundreds of super talented DJs, artists and political activists.
Check out the link for more info.
The Million DJ March
August 18th
I just got back from a great exhibition in Sao Paulo, Brazil at FILE 2008. Beatbox360 was presented at the FIESP/SESI Cultural Center in twelve shows over a one week period as 4K Digital Cinema was publicly showcased for the first time ever in Brazil. The opening week attracted over 9,000 people, with a sold out crowd on Monday, opening night. The week culminated in a Symposium on 4K. I gave a talk entitled "An HD Approach to 4K Workflows: Lessons Learned from Hip Hop Culture," along with talks by Sheldon Brown, Peter Otto and Todd Margolis.
I've also heard that Beatbox360 was featured on the Brazilian TV News show, Journal Nacional, so I'll post that clip once I track it down.
Electronic Language International Festival (FILE)
July 24th
Six new mobile device-friendly video formats of Beatbox360 have been added to the FILES section. For iPhone/iPod and regular cell phone users, I would suggest the .3gp format in 352x198. For other Windows Mobile-based smartphones or PDA devices, the .wmv format in 640x360 should work nicely with Windows Media Player or other applications. Remember to watch the videos in full screen mode for the best quality and size.
A new mobile device-friendly MPEG4 version will arrive shortly, as well as an H.264 encoding of the HD version. There are more shows featuring Beatbox360 in the works, so stay tuned...
Files section
July 20th, 2008
Beatbox360 will be traveling to the SESI Cultural Centre in Sao Paulo, Brazil for the Electronic Language International Festival (FILE) 2008. This will be the first ever 4K Digital Cinema presentation in Brazil! There will be three 4K showings per day from Monday, August 4th through Friday, August 8th. Friday will close with a special Symposium on 4K Digital Cinema, with talks by Sheldon Brown, Peter Otto and Todd Margolis.
I will also be giving a talk entitled "An HD Approach to 4K Workflows: Lessons Learned from Hip Hop." The talk will draw examples of technique and style from DJing, MCing, Breakdancing and Graffiti Art, and apply them to making 4K video with consumer equipment.
Electronic Language International Festival
Jettison High Blog
May 27th, 2008
CALIT2 and the University of California, San Diego, have both released a great news article about Beatbox360, written by senior writer, Tiffany Fox. The article, while primarily written for a "tech" audience, sincerely explores the elements of Hip Hop and remix that the artwork thrives on. The full article is hosted at CALIT2, while the shortened version is at This Week @ UCSD (along with an opening epigraph by KRS-ONE).
Special thanks to Tiffany for not only a fantastic article, but for taking a risk with Hip Hop in the workplace. Check out the article through the links below and leave your comments at the Jettison High blog.
This Week @ UCSD Beatbox360 News Story
CALIT2 Beatbox360 News Story
May 18th, 2008
Beatbox360 has recently been accepted as a feature work in the first 4K Digital Cinema Presentation at the Electronic Language International Festival (FILE)! The Brazilian digital arts festival is huge, attracting over 40,000 attendees including a vast amount of international press. I will be flying down, courtesy of FILE and CALIT2, to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to represent Jettison High and Beatbox360 as it closes out the show.
Official 4K presentation dates have yet to be announced, but I will post them as soon as they're available. FILE will be running from August 5th to the 31st, so if you are going to be in the Sao Paulo area, be sure to come and check out the first 4K Digital Cinema show to hit South America!
FILE: Official Website
May 13th, 2008
I just finished a 7.1 remix of Beatbox360 "in-house" at CALIT2's Main Auditorium. Using a MOTU 828mkII interface, I hooked up my personal computer to the Meyer Sound system and was able to mix and spatialize all 8 channels of audio. The editing experience was excellent! The original mix was done blindly using a stereo mixdown, making this new experience monumentally more satisfying.
This new audio mix is more full, has earth-shaking LFE, and some intriguing spatialization. There are rumors of an upcoming show in Brazil, and this new mixdown may debut there. More news to come...
April 24th, 2008
Two new videos have been added to the video section.
The first is a short clip of a panel discussion from the CineGrid 2007 workshop, where Beatbox360 was discussed as being one of the few 4K works that aims to experiment with the medium of 4K.
The second is a presentation and 4K showing at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) at UCSD given by myself and filmed by Alex Matthews. This talk takes you through the creation of the Beatendo visual beat series, with a focus on Beatbox360. Check out both of these videos by clicking the link below, or by going to the Video section.
Video Section
April 4th, 2008
This coming Tuesday, April 8th, at 7pm, I will be giving a talk to two of UCSD's Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM) classes about Beatbox360 in CALIT2's Main Auditorium. Being an ICAM alumnus myself, I thought this would be a great opportunity to share my experience in developing an undergraduate art project with UCSD's resources and cutting-edge technology. Hopefully, this will inspire other students to take advantage of all of the new mediums being developed around them.
The talk will consist of a presentation of my work as an artist from Beatendo to Beatbox360, followed by a short 4K demonstration with surround sound.
UCSD's ICAM Program
March 17th, 2008
The time has come, the walrus said, to release the HD version of Beatbox360 to the web-going public! The bandwidth-friendly version is compressed to 1920x1080p with stereo 48kHz 24-bit audio. Viewers can either watch the resolution-ransacked YouTube version here, or you can download the 1080p version directly here. The only way to see it in full 1080p HD with 48kHz 24-bit 5.1 audio will be through a future Blu-ray release. If you wish to see Beatbox360 in all its 4K glory with 7.1 surround sound, I would be happy to screen it for you at CALIT2.
If you enjoy it, please leave your comments either at YouTube or at the Jettison High blog. Thanks!
Watch Beatbox360 at YouTube
Download Beatbox360 - 1080p.wmv
December 6th, 2007
CineGrid 2007 was another great success for Beatbox360. CALIT2 upgraded their sound system for this event with a total of 12 Meyer Sound speakers, including a whopping five subwoofers! Three CQ-1 speakers were installed for front Left, Right and Center, nine UPJ-1P speakers were used for side and back surrounds, and five X-800 subwoofers were installed for LFE. In short, the sound was incredible and shook the house.
In fact, the sound was so great that it prompted me to return to the original audio and perform an in-depth remix of Beatbox360's 7.1 audio mixdown. Peter Otto, renowned professor and audio researcher at UCSD, offered to host the remix in CALIT2's revamped auditorium.
Peter Otto Bio
CineGrid.org
November 20th, 2007
Supercomputing 2007 was a long, long week. I have never given so many 4K demonstrations in my life! I did, however, get some great feedback for Beatbox360 and also got accepted into a huge 4K exhibit at the annual CineGrid workshop from December 3-5.
CineGrid is an organization that lives to perpetuate 4K technology by bringing together members of industry, research and academia. Visit their website for more information and to become a member.
CineGrid.org
November 4th, 2007
The showing was very successful and Beatbox360 received a really strong response from the crowd. More 4K showings will come so watch out for 'em.
Beatbox360 is also going to Reno, Nevada for the annual Supercomputing conference. CALIT2 will be sharing a booth with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. We will be demonstrating 4K cinema using a prototype JVC projector and stereo sound with Genelec speakers.
Supercomputing 2007: Reno, Nevada
Mediated Animation: 4K Digital Cinema
October 29th, 2007
Beatbox360 will debut in its 4K form at "Mediated Animation" at CALIT2, which will showcase other 4K and HD animation works. The doors open at 7pm with showings at 8pm and 9pm in CALIT2's Main Auditorium. Come check it out!
Mediated Animation: 4K Digital Cinema
October 28th, 2007
I just watched the complete version of Beatbox360, and the 4K resolution is definitely something to behold. The CALIT2 Main Auditorium, where the 4K projector is located, boasts 24 channel surround sound and a screen that has about a 50 foot diagonal. The sheer size of the video is staggering and really prooves the concept of an "active" cinematic viewing as you really can't help but choose different points of interest on screen at any given moment.
October 25th, 2007
The 5.1 audio mix is more or less finished, and I have also remastered the footage back into its native HD source so the overall frame is now 4K resolution! The 4K TIFF sequence is being rendered and compressed using JPEG2000 compression and should be ready to play in a few days. Special thanks to Kunitake Kaneko from Keio University in Japan for rendering the TIFF sequence!
October 11th, 2007
After about a month of video editing, the HD version of Beatbox360 is now finished. I've started a rough 5.1 audio mixdown, but at the moment I don't have a 5.1 playback system, so I'll be doing some blind (or deaf?) edits until I can get into CALIT2 to listen to it. I probably won't release the HD version until after the 4K version is complete. Stay tuned.
September 4th, 2007
I've just finished my first editing session! I created two sequences and the transition between them. The final HD output has a bitrate of 1536 Mbits/sec and was tested on using a Dell XPS and a Sony SXRD 4K Projector. The projector used a single HD input and scaled it to 4K size. The image quality looked pretty incredible. I will post some standard and hopefully high-definition video and stand-alone audio on the site pretty soon.
August 26th, 2007
I have finally collected and edited a total of 93 samples from 27 games. Each sample consists of 2-channel 48kHz audio and 1920 x 1080i uncompressed 8-bit HD video. I will start editing next week when a free moment arises.
August 20th, 2007
I'm almost finished collecting samples from the captured video footage and I've posted some new screenshots of the HD source footage from a few of the games. Due to some interlacing issues, some screenshots won't look too great unless they're full screened on an HD display. Check them out below in the screenshots section.
Screenshots section
August 14th, 2007
Siggraph 2007 has just ended in San Diego, and I am finally able to return to this project to begin editing. I'll be uploading some video samples soon.
August 1st, 2007
The Art and Technology festival, known as SIGGRAPH 2007, is coming to San Diego! At CALIT2, we are hosting a satellite event for various performances and demonstrations. The big theme for this year is 4K cinema, and we are featuring two new short films that demonstrate both the DALSA and Red 4K digital cameras. On the more artistic side, we are also showing Sheldon Brown's new 4K movie that documents his experimental video game/artwork called Scalable City. I will be the Tech Lead in the Main Auditorium that will be demonstrating 4K cinema. Check out the link below for more info.
SIGGRAPH 2007 at UC San Diego
July 1st, 2007
I have successfully recorded a terabyte of full-res High-Definition Xbox360 footage. I used my own personal collection of games plus a collection of downloaded demos which included games such as Gears of War, Fight Night Round 3, and Perfect Dark Zero. This footage will be edited down into soundbytes, and then deleted for the next (and last) recording session.
June 29th, 2007
Continued HD to 4K workflow: After capturing the HD source footage as described in my previous post, I will edit the movie in Adobe Premiere CS3 as an HD movie (each clip downsized to a 1/4 their HD size). Once the movie is completed, the clips within the movie will be resized to their native HD resolution and four full HD movies will be exported. Each individual movie will be equal to a single quadrant of the 4K film. These HD films will be composited together to make this 4K film in After Effects CS3, and then exported using a Zaxel 4K Codec for playback on the Zaxel Zaxtar 4K system. In addition, the film will also be exported as a sequence of TIFF files in order to be software rendered for playback on NTT's JPEG2000 4K system.
June 25th, 2007
In order to achieve the finalized HD workflow that I discovered below, I had to build a video "super computer." This machine includes an Intel Quad-Core 2.4Ghz processor, a GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card, 2Gb of DDR2 memory, and a 1Tb SATA Raid array. This system allows for 1920 x 1080i HD capturing at up to 56 fps. I will try to upload more specific info about this computer in the DOC section later.
June 10th, 2007
I've uploaded my first research paper on Beatbox360. Click "DOC" on the left navigation bar to view it.
Beatbox360/documentation.html
May 30th, 2007
I've finally decided on a simple, quick and inexpensive HD workflow to record full 1080p Xbox 360 footage. The Xbox will output 1080p through a component HD cable and a stereo RCA audio cable to a Gefen Converter box, which will then output an HDMI signal with embedded audio. This new digital format will then go directly to a Black Magic Intensity HDMI PCI capture card. These clips will then be encoded using Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0.
Blackmagic Designs - Intensity
May 18th, 2007
The documentation portion of the site is up. It contains various notes for my research paper-in-progress. Check back for more updates by clicking "DOC" on the left navigation bar.
Beatbox360/documentation.html
May 15th, 2007
Beatbox360 website online at www.jettisonhigh.com. This site will document the process and progess of the last installment of the Beatendo visual beat series.
www.jettisonhigh.com
May 7th, 2007
Met with representatives for the Zaxel 4K/HD Recording system at CALIT2.
This system allows for HD-SDI and multi-channel audio recording, allowing
for a full-resolution high-definition capture from an XBOX 360. We were
not able to get the system to fully function yet, so other recording
opportunities are being explored.
www.zaxel.com
April 30th, 2007
Beatendo 64, the second installment of the visual beat series,
is complete. Watch the video, and the original Beatendo, on YouTube, or in the Video section of this site.
www.youtube.com/miketoillion
April 1st, 2007
The original Beatendo gets over 2000 views on YouTube! Watch the video by clicking the link below, or by clicking the Video link on the left.
www.youtube.com/miketoillion
