VJ-U has posted a wonderful livecast on Operator 11 featuring the restoration of 3 Rutt-Etra raster analog video synthesizers. I was fortunate enough to be invited to check the machines out in person and have some time to try and help out. Mathew Schlanger and Benton C Bainbridge help explain the history and unique capability of the Rutt-Etra. Certainly worth a watch for those interested in the art form and unique hardware.
For those unaware of what a Rutt-Etra is, be sure and check out Audio Visualizers page on the subject. There is a lot of history with these machines, and they are still quite competent tools with a very unique look and feel.
great video and thanks for sharing. would have loved to have seen the machine and process as well in person.
Thanks for posting this! It inspired me to write a Rutt-Etra simulator this weekend which is getting added as a new MSG Processor in MSG Evolver and Studio Artist. Feel free to post more information on classic analog video effects that would be fun to digitally simulate. There are probably a lot of interesting processing ideas that have been explored in analog video synthesizer history that may have been forgotten.
Im glad it was inspirational. Id love to see some examples of your digital Rutt Etra. I've been meaning to work on a better version of my Jitter based Rutt Etra effect.
Let me know how yours turns out 🙂
As for previous Analog effects, thats a good question. Some research might be in order.
Since you asked, here's 2 simple examples from playing around this weekend with my Rutt Etra simulator.
http://studioartist.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=…
http://studioartist.ning.com/video/video/show?id=…
You definitely got me going on a Rutt Etra simulation groove. i wrote another MSG simulator this morning that takes some of the Rutt Etra ideas and reworks them as an black and white engraving style effect.
http://studioartist.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=…
Oh, that last one is particularly nice. Very very cool. Are you doing that on the CPU or on the GPU? I attempted a shader pipeline with a GLSL fragment program, but ran into some issues with high displacement amounts and discontinuity.
Anyway, really cool, and im glad the Rutt Etras inspire others 🙂
It's done using code that runs on the cpu. thanks.
[…] Create Digital Motion has some background. […]
[…] is remarkably similar in actual visual effect to the Rutt-Etra video synth (see also stories on Rutt-Etra restoration, Bill Etra restrospective). The process is entirely different: the Rutt-Etra processed the image […]