Introduction to Quartz Composer

From QuartzCompositions.com the central source for Quartz Composer :: wiki

Table of contents

Intro

Quartz Composer is a development tool for processing and rendering graphical data introduced in Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger at version 2.0 and updated in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard (http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/).

Quartz Composer is a OS level technology for motion graphics designed around OpenGL for real-time performances and high visual quality. It includes support for MIDI, QuickTime playback through Core Video, real-time Core Image filters, audio & video capture, external data sources like RSS feeds, XML, or Spotlight, simple JavaScripts and much more... It comes complete with a full-featured graphical editor:

QuartzComposer integrates OpenGL, CoreImage, CoreVideo, and other technologies into an API and a developer tool built around a simple visual programming paradigm for creating autonomous or interactive visual animations and explore the power of Tiger's graphic APIs without having to write a single line of code.

The most visible example of Quartz Composer creation is the RSS Visualizer screen saver, which some of you have may seen featured on Engadget.com (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000807035571/)

Quartz Composer compositions can be used in several ways:

as screen savers,
in QuickTime aware applications through native QuickTime support (drag & drop composition files in iMovie, Keynote presentations...),
in your own applications using the Interface Builder palette and Cocoa bindings or lower-level APIs.
in any application that queries "/Library/Compositions", "/System/Library/Compositions", or "~/Library/Compositions" for a QC Composition that conforms to one of the standard protocols (10.5 Leopard only)

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