Introduction: Recording HD (720p) Video in Max 7

So you want to record your Jitter video output from Max 7 patches running on OSX in HD quality. In fact, let me make that more specific: you want your Jitter movies to be editable in a program such as Final Cut Pro X and viewable via QuickView in the OSX Finder. This is quite an understandable requirement if you are making a video art project using max/msp/jitter which needs some editing and post production. In this Instructable we'll edit an existing patch, but this works just as well for your own jitter patches where you need to generate 720p video.

Step 1: Record the Output From an Existing Patch

As an example, let's record the output from the Cycle-delic patch (see image). Open that one in Max 7.

Step 2: Make Sure Everything Generates 720p HD Video

In the example patch, the jitter matrix is restricted to 320 x 240 video. Although we can blow this up to 1280 x 720 HD, it would look quite pixelated. So we need to make sure all the parts that reference this small 320 x 240 format are changed to 1280 x 720. Most of it is in the [p stuff] object. After you've edited that one, it should look as the image in this step.

Step 3: Adjust the Center Pictslider

The second pictslider, labeled "Center", needs some different parameters now that it has to handle HD video. Set the value at Bottom to about 730 and the value at Right side to about 1290.

Step 4: Add Objects to Record Our Output.

The only output of the [p stuff] object is the jitter matrix we want to record. So this goes into a new [jit.record] object with dimensions 1280 and 720. Make sure the engine attribute is set at 'avf' and the codec to 'prores422'. We also need to add two messages: [write 25.] to write a movie at 25 frames per second (or change that to your desired framerate) and a [stop] message to stop recording video.

Step 5: Record Your Video!

By clicking on the [write] message box, a dialog opens where you can tell OSX where to save your new movie and under which name. You may notice that Max gets a bit more sluggish from generating video of this high quality. After the recording is done, you now have a prores422 Quictime movie in 1280 x 720 quality, ready for further editing.

So why the prores422 and not 4444? It appears that the latter can't be viewed via QuickView in OSX (i.e. hitting the space bar on a selected file in the Finder). If this is not a requirement for you, you can of course choose whatever codec you want. However, prores422 is easily good enough for silly art things rendered in jitter. On the last step, I will post the patch in Max clipboard format.

Happy patching!

Step 6: Max Code (File - New From Clipboard)

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-----------end_max5_patcher-----------