Quartz TV

Quartz TV is a simple application designed to quickly and cheaply produce live video. Inspired by the "WWDC_QCTV" demonstration given at WWDC 2005, this app goes to the next level. QCTV demonstrated that is was possible to simulate a TV System using Quartz Composer technology; Quartz TV makes it a reality. Quartz composer compositions, quicktime movies, and still images can be added, edited, and removed from a feed in real-time.

Gustavus Adolphus College (The school in which I'm enrolled), is currently using Quartz TV to produce a 'news bulletin' type feed for on-campus displays and kiosks. This 'news bulletin' is based on Apple's RSS screensaver, and only took about a week to develop using Quartz TV. [Download a video of it in action]

In the future, Quartz TV will also be used for live video presentations (i.e. conferences and ceremonies). In particular, using its built-in support for both luminance and chrominance keying, it can be used either in-line with a camera, or as a standalone video source.

For instance, to produce your own professional live broadcast, your setup could be as simple as:

Camera---->Mac running Quartz TV---->Scan Converter---->Video Out

For conferences, we don't need to process the video, so we just use Quartz TV to add titles, logos, and computer graphics. In this case, we use a Sony Anycast Station for keying and transitions.

Camera 1-----------------|^^^^^^^^|      /--Projector 1
Camera 2-----------------|  Sony  |______|
Camera 3-----------------|Anycast |----------Web Streaming Server
Camera 4-----------------|Station |______
Mac Mini running QTV-----|________|      \--Projector 2