I don't get an audio signal any more after the upgrade to OSX 10.6.2

After the Mac OS X update to 10.6.2, audio devices with 3rd party drivers don't seem to work any more in OS X at all. Like this BoinxTV doesn't receive the audio as well. These sources still show up in the BoinxTV sources panel as well as in the OS X system preferences.

So if you rely on audio devices like these (e.g. Firewire/USB Mixers or audio interfaces) please hold back to upgrade to 10.6.2 until either a fix from Apple or the hardware manufaturer is released. On our systems we were able to get the audio back to normal after a few reboots, but we can't guarantee that this applies to all devices.

Note: Seems to be fixed in 10.6.6. If you have problems with it, please contact our support stuff.

How can I get the sound of application XYZ or the entire System into BoinxTV?

To get audio in from the system or another application, please use either Soundflower or Wiretap Anywhere. Sounflower lets you select it (Soundflower 2ch) as an output device in an application or the entire system and then you can add the same device in BoinxTV to an audio source. Like this, the video is fed through. In Wiretap Anywhere, you can select the application or the entire system inside Wiretap Anywhere and create a virtual device that can also be accessed in BoinxTV.

How can I loop a video in BoinxTV?

To loop a video in BoinxTV, just set the loop flag in Quicktime Player (View > Loop, then save the movie). This will loop the video also in BoinxTV.

How can I incorporate a Keynote presentation into my show without a secondary computer?

To get a presentation into BoinxTV without using a secondary machine, there a two ways.

1. Open the presentation and play it on a secondary screen. Using a Screen capture source makes it possible to get the image in.
2. Get Keynote viewer from http://btvgear.x10.mx/ and install it. If you export your slideshow from keynote as a movie, you can use it with this viewer and advance through the slides.

Can I create my own templates?

Creating a template for your show is very easy. Set up a document with the layers you typically need and configure it for the look and feel of your show. Add common media like intro movies and logos.

Once you are done select File > Save As Template... from the menu bar. A dialog will allow you to enter a name, description and preview image for your template. As soon as you hit Save your own template will always appear in the upper part of the New Document window.

Can I share my documents with other BoinxTV users?

Yes, of course. Per default BoinxTV documents are self-contained and contain everything necessary to play back on another computer. In addition, BoinxTV tries to cope with different hardware setups. You should be able to seamlessly cooperate with others on the same document and move it between different computers.

Can I use media files with video and audio muxed?

Muxed media files (e.g. movies with suffix .mpg) currently can not be used in BoinxTV. To work around this convert the movie to a QuickTime Movie in Apple Intermediate Format or to a MPEG-4 file (e.g. using QuickTime Player Pro).

Can I use DRM protected files, e.g. songs and movies purchased on iTunes?

Media files protected by DRM (e.g. protected Audio or Video files bought through iTunes) cannot be used inside BoinxTV. There is no (legal) way around this.

Why is the last line of text cut off below the base line in certain layers?

In certain occasions text gets truncated on the last line in layers, such as the Static Text 3D. This is an issue of the underlying Apple frameworks that will hopefully be fixed soon. As a workaround add an empty line or a few space characters at the end of the text.

BoinxTV shows black boxes instead of transparent sections. Why?

We found that an older version of the Third Party Kineme Quartz Composer Patch "GLTools", that you installed manually, causes areas that are supposed to be transparent to come up as solid black.. Please remove all Kineme Patches from /Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ and ~/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches/ (where ~is your users home folder) and make sure you completely restart BoinxTV. If needed, you can re-download and install the current version of these patches from Kineme, as we couldn't find any issues with the up to date version. Please be aware that we can't guarantee that any of these patches will not interfere with BoinxTV in the future. We generally recommend to not install arbitrary Quartz Composer patches/plug-ins, as they can severely influence performance and stability of BoinxTV.

How can I set BoinxTV to output the video to the secondary display as default?

This information is stored in the document. To save the video output (fullscreen) to the secondary display for the next time BoinxTV is used just save the document/template while the fullscreen video output is set to the secondary display. It will then be saved for the next time you use this document/template.

How to achieve best performance for livestreams

- Recording: If you just want to stream or your streaming provider records your session anyway, you may want to disable the "Record to disk" option in the document settings (on the left side of the timer display) to increase the performance of BoinxTV.

- Streaming resolution: If you are just streaming (no recording), there is no need to use a higher resolution than the stream will deliver. In this case consider to set up the document in the stream's resolution.

- Video Playback: Please keep in mind that different codecs can have a variable impact on CPU performance and memory usage. Currently we recommend the Apple Intermediate Codec because of the least memory footprint. BoinxTV is a 32-bit application (and currently can't be made 64-bit because of technical limitations) therefor it only can use 4 GB of RAM.

- Active Layers: The more layers are active the more rendering time they will consume. You can see the render load in percentage displayed in the timer display. If it goes over 100% BoinxTV will have to drop frames. Disabling layers or reducing the number of layers will save you performance.

- Streaming process: You can bring the secondary monitor output from BoinxTV to another machine where your streaming server or stream encoder is running to free your production machine. This will also increase performance significantly.

For some reason I lost BoinxTV, purchased from the Mac App Store. Is there a way to get it back?

If you accidentally deleted BoinxTV or have to re-install your Mac, please follow these steps to install an application already purchased in the Mac App Store again:

Open the Mac Appstore. If you are not signed in already, click "Store" in the menubar and then select "Sign in". After signing in, select the "Purchased" tab. Here you will find all the applications you bought using this account. Find the Boinx app in question and click the "Install" button next to it. The Mac Appstore will re-download it and install it for you free of charge. Make sure you remove demo versions you might have downloaded manually before from your applications folder, just to avoid confusing duplicates.

I downloaded BoinxTV from the Mac App Store but haven't received a license - Why?

You don't have to register a license. After purchase the Mac App Store downloads the application automatically to your Mac and won't ask for a license.

If you are still prompted for a license despite purchase from the Mac App Store it is likely that you still have a trial version from our website installed. In this case please remove it.

What is the difference between BoinxTV Home and BoinxTV?

BoinxTV Home has been designed for creating video messages, for example, a report of current affairs for your family and friends far away, a tutorial on how to tie your shoes really fast or how to apply make-up to achieve a certain look, and post them to video services such as YouTube.

BoinxTV is a TV truck without a truck, used for multi-camera recording or live streaming of presentations, lectures, video podcasts, sports, concerts, sermons and more. (Read more...)

This is how BoinxTV compares to BoinxTV Home:

• BoinxTV Home supports one camera at a time. BoinxTV supports multiple cameras.
• BoinxTV Home records at a maximum resolution of 960 x 540, BoinxTV has no resolution limit.
• BoinxTV Home allows the use of a maximum of 15 layers simultaneously. BoinxTV allows unlimited simultaneous layers.

All the other features of BoinxTV are also present in BoinxTV Home.

Can I run BoinxTV on a MacMini?

Yes, you can. But with the MacMini being the lower end Mac it doesn't have enough graphics power to handle BoinxTV well. After all, the newer MacMini is better due to the improved graphics card. So it will handle BoinxTV but don't expect too much of it. BoinxTV relies almost entirely on the graphics card and we recommend at least a 15" MacBook Pro.

Can I run BoinxTV on a MacBook?

Yes, you can. But with the MacBook being the "smallest" Mac laptop it doesn't have enough graphics power to handle BoinxTV well. It will handle BoinxTV but don't expect too much of it. BoinxTV relies almost entirely on the graphics card and we recommend at least a 15" MacBook Pro.

I have a powerful NVIDIA graphics card but the performance could be better. Why?

Due to a driver issue with the NVidia cards, these graphic cards run way slower than the ATI models. With the next operating system we hope that this issue will be worked out.

I use multiple graphics cards, why do I not have better performance?

With multiple graphics cards we run into the issue that textures need to be copied from one card to another and this has a rather drastic performance impact.

Unfortunately OS X doesn't allow for the graphics cards to communicate directly with each other (SLI, Crossfire) so we can't recommend using two graphics cards at the moment.

Safari 4 Pre-Release crashes BoinxTV

Safari 4 Pre-Release versions will rather sooner than later crash BoinxTV. This has been reported to Apple.

Why does the video sometimes stutter during slow pans?

BoinxTV processs the video in progressive mode only (no interlaced frames) like this you "only" get 25 or 30 full frames per second from your camera. This is perfectly enough as 24 frames are enough to make a fluid image.Then there is another technical fact that then can cause stuttering sometimes.

To explain this, we need to explain how BoinxTV handles cameras:

Other than other solutions we don't wait until a camera delivers a video frame but just let the camera "pour" its frames into a "framebucket" and we just pick a frame out of that bucket the moment we need it. This technique enables BoinxTV to mix different types of cameras without even thinking about framerates and timecode-sync.

It might now happen that a camera needs a little longer for a frame and BoinxTV grabs the last frame out of the bucket, but in fact it is the same frame as before, then the next frame is in sync again. Like this we received one double frame and missed one. Like this is might stutter a bit from time to time. This is indeed inevitable as we had to make the choice of either mixing all sorts of cameras or frame accuracy.

If you want to make this better, you can increase the framerate inside of BoinxTV

How can I improve the performance and reliability of the audio engine?

Use "Audio MIDI Setup" found in Applications > Utilities to unify the format of all devices you use. Most important is the sampling frequency. Depending on availability use "44100,0 Hz" or "48000,0 Hz". When working with DV cameras: those typically can be switched between 48 kHz and 32 kHz from the camera's menu. Use 48 kHz (48000,0 Hz) if possible and then adjust all other devices to this setting.

Can I record HD video with BoinxTV?

In BoinxTV Home the output resolution is limited to 960 x 540 pixels.

BoinxTV Full Edition currently limits the maximum allowed resolution to Full HD (1920x1200 square pixels). However, rendering HD graphics and video requires lots of processing power. Most Macs, including current standard models, will not be able to deliver decent results at such a resolution. Future hardware and operating system software will allow a reasonable HD workflow with BoinxTV.

What is Apple Intermediate Codec and why do I need it?

Short answer: It is a piece of software that for a number of reasons is required by BoinxTV for recording videos. If you care about good recording quality with the least possible CPU usage you should install the Apple Intermediate Codec.

To install it, grab the Installer disk that came with your Mac and follow the instructions to install iLife. You need iLife '05 or later, but Macs that came with earlier versions are most likely to not meet the system requirements of BoinxTV anyway.

Longer explanation: When recording a show with BoinxTV a huge amount of data needs to be written to disk. Unless you have a very fast hard disk like a RAID system or a SSD, that data needs to be compressed before it can be stored on disk. We found that the Apple Intermediate Codec requires the least resources while providing fairly good image quality. Unfortunately this piece of software (that extends QuickTime) does not come with QuickTime by default. It will be installed automatically by a number of Apple products, including iLife '05 or later, which comes with every Mac.

Note: Even though you may be able to find a download of Apple Intermediate Codec on the Apple web site, we found that this version is very outdated and don't recommend installing it.

Why does Audio drop or stop when I launch an application while recording?

Launching certain Audio Software (e.g. Apple GarageBand) causes strange things to happen in Core Audio. BoinxTV (and other apps) can not handle this well and may drop or even stop audio output. As a workaround never launch any of those applications while recording in BoinxTV.

At what frame rate does BoinxTV record movies?

Each document in BoinxTV can have it's own frame rate for recording. All templates are set to record at 24 FPS per default. Unless you change that value you will most probably record 24 frames per second.

To change the recording frame rate select Show > Recording Frame Rate from the main menu and choose your desired frame rate from the submenu. If you now save the your document or save the document as a template, all future recording based on that document/template will use the new frame rate.

Video and audio is out of sync when opening a recording in Final Cut Pro

Due to the nature of the underlying technologies the recording frame rate in BoinxTV is not 100% accurate, it slightly varies around the frame rate you have chosen. This is not a big deal unless you want to use Final Cut Pro for additional post-processing. Final Cut Pro requires movies that have an absolutely fixed frame rate.

After recording a show that needs to be processed in Final Cut Pro, select the Transcode to QuickTime Format option in the export dialog and select Final Cut Pro 29.97FPS or Final Cut Pro 25FPS as format, depending whether your destination is NTSC or PAL. Select a suitable File Destination and hit Start to begin the export.

If you want to prepare recordings for Final Cut Pro that you already have recorded previously, select File > Export Recording from the main menu. Click the Choose button in the dialog that appears and select the recording file to prepare. As described above choose your settings and export the recording.

Why does the aspect ratio of my camera video keep changing quickly?

BoinxTV always tries to automatically detect the pixel aspect ratio of your camera. Sometimes the information, sent by the camera, we rely on is corrupted. That leads to the video image changing aspect ratios quickly. To make it stop, please got to the sources tab on the bottom left. Then select the source with the camera that delivers the "shaky" video. Now click the small gear in the right hand column. In the "Pixel Aspect Ratio" menu choose the appropriate aspect ratio for the camera instead of "Automatic".

Why is the mouse cursor not recorded when using a screen source?

At the moment this impossible with the technology used. Using e.g. Mouseposé can at least help highlight the area where the cursor is supposed to be. We are very aware of this and continue trying to find a soluition.

I have a flash memory based camcroder with a USB connection, can I use it in BoinxTV?

Flash memory based camcorders do not provide live output of their video stream, so unfortunately there is no possibility to grab their signal and get it into BoinxTV.

How to connect more FireWire cameras?

As a rule of thumb you can use at least one camera per FireWire port you have on your Mac. If you have a MacBook Pro with both a FireWire 400 and a FireWire 800 connector you should be able to work with two cameras, one by using a FireWire 400-to-800 adaptor, see the Studio Equipment page for details.

There are a couple of options to extend the number of FireWire ports on your Mac. See the Video Input section of the Studio Equipment page for examples.

• MacBook Pros can be extended using Express cards.
• Mac Pros can be extended using PCI cards.
• The use of FireWire hubs is not encouraged as a hub only increases the number of connectors but not the throughput of the port. Depending on make and model you may be able to use two DV cameras on a single FireWire port connected through a FireWire hub.

Note: BoinxTV Home is limited to one camera source per document.

I plugged in an additional camera, why does it not show up?

An important concept to understand is the difference between a device and a source. In BoinxTV, devices are physical objects like cameras, microphones, sound inputs, ... whereas sources are virtual entities that provide images or sound.

Devices are application wide and automatically appear in the device preferences as they become available, sources have to be created manually and separately for each document. One of the reasons is that a source can combine video and audio from two different devices. This enables you to use a dedicated microphone in combination with the video output of a FireWire camera to record a person.

• BoinxTV Full Edition: After you have plugged in a camera, select Source > Add Camera Source from the main menu. A new source, per default named "Camera 2" appears in the Source Library at the bottom of the document window. In the Preview & Settings area on the right select the video and/or sound device that source should use. You can also rename the source to match it's use, like the name of the person being filmed. Now you are ready to use that source in any number of layers.
• BoinxTV Home: With BoinxTV Home you can only have one video source for your production. Find this source in the Source Library at the bottom of the document window. In the Preview & Settings area on the right select the video and/or sound device that source should use. You can also rename the source to match it's use, like the name of the person being filmed. Now you are ready to use that source in any number of layers.

Are HDV cameras supported?

Mostly yes. The short answer is that you probably want to switch a HDV camera into DV mode. A lot of cameras provide that and then act as common DV cameras that can be de-interlaced and work nicely with BoinxTV.

The complete answer depends on a number of factors:

• First of all, you probably do not want to use HDV through FireWire. Due to it's nature, HDV over FireWire has a delay of at least two seconds before the video is decoded inside the Mac and can be used by applications like BoinxTV. For most use cases this renders the camera useless.
• In addition, Final Cut Pro needs to be installed for HDV capture to work. Components required to decode the HDV signal come only with Final Cut Studio (or Logic Studio).
• A good alternative that solves the two problems above is to connect a HDV camera though an HDMI connection to a grabber card like the Intensity (Pro) from Blackmagic. Please check the Video Input section of our Studio Equipment Page so see your options.
• De-interlacing of video from HDV cameras does not work. This is a limitation of QuickTime and we hope that a future version will provide de-interlacing. Please check if your HDV camera has a progressive mode - at least some Canon models are able to do progressive HDV and work fine with BoinxTV.
• Anyways you should use a Mac Pro if you plan to work in HD resulutions.