#lumenapp

Sustainability and Our Priorities

Sustainability in computing is important to us. That’s why we have always tried to make Lumen compatible with as many computers as is technically possible. For instance, this year we kept Lumen running with nine different OS versions, including the upcoming macOS 12 Monterey. The oldest version we’ve been supporting, macOS 10.9, can run on hardware made in 2007 (before Barack Obama was even elected!). However, the limitations of supporting this large number of OS versions came into sharp focus in the past couple of weeks.

To paraphrase our friend Marc, “developing software means making promises that rely on promises other software developers made to you.” The fact is that Apple typically only supports the most recent two of their own macOS versions, even when it comes to critical security updates. Right now, this means 10.15 Catalina and 11 Big Sur. 10.14 Mojave hasn’t received any updates at all since July. You can imagine how difficult that makes it for small software creators like ourselves to keep our compatibility promises.

You may have heard about the problems caused by the Let’s Encrypt’s root certificate expiring on September 30th. Long story short, this led to services and apps across the internet ceasing to work, particularly on older operating systems. The largest software companies in the world, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, all had to fix issues caused by this problem. The small, independent, third-party service we use to provide license key validation for Lumen also had an issue with it, but only because of a bug in older versions of macOS that Apple no longer supports.

This meant that some new Lumen users found themselves unable to activate Lumen on macOS 10.14 and below. Our licensing service has since released a workaround that we are including in Lumen version 1.1.2. However, as a result of them updating their system requirements recently, we also had to make the difficult decision to change Lumen’s system requirements to include macOS 10.14.

For us, this licensing problem forced us to take a hard look at where we are spending our energy. According to our calculations, at least 15% of all our development time has been spent on compatibility work, which is painful to even think about. We never know when a problem like this one will arise, or when it will be out of our control to fix it. Even when it is in our control, working around older OS versions’ issues can cause incredibly long delays while trying to get a release out the door. Every OS version we support takes time away from what we can do otherwise - we want to be spending that time instead building new features (like HD) and on supporting more platforms (like Windows and Native Apple Silicon), particularly ones that allow for more sustainable computing practices.

Updating Lumen’s Minimum Compatible OS Version to 10.14

We’re releasing Lumen 1.1.2 today, which fixes the activation problems due to the Let’s Encrypt certificate expiration, and also sets the new minimum compatible OS version to 10.14.

Importantly, if you have already activated Lumen on an earlier version of macOS, it will continue to operate as normal. However, you will not be able to receive new updates or deactivate/reactivate the app unless you upgrade your OS. If this will cause issues for you that can’t be avoided, or would like us to remotely deactivate your license so you can move it to a new computer, please reach out to us via email at support (at) paracosm.us.

Coming Soon: External Processing Guide

In the midst of all this, we do have a bit of good news to share this month. The long-awaited External Processing Guide is nearly finished and will be finalized and released in the next couple of weeks! We’ve had many requests for this and are very excited to be able to get it out to the world. Stay tuned and we’ll post again once it’s ready.

Up Next

#1: HD Output - This feature will allow for HD video processing in Lumen along with custom aspect ratios and remains our top priority.

#2: Improving Lumen Guides - We’ll continue improving the guides in step with releases moving forward.

#3: Windows Version - We’ve moved the priority of this up, given everything we outlined above. We don’t have an estimated release date yet, but it’s very important to us. 

#4: Audio Reactivity - We’ll be able to focus on this again after HD is finished and Lumen for Windows is released.

Hey there, we’re back with another bi-monthly dev update!

On The Road to HD

If you’ve been following these posts, you know that our big goal right now is to release a free update that adds HD Output to Lumen. This means either optimizing or re-architecting many of Lumen’s systems. Things are well on their way, and a lot of the core parts, like parameter editing, undo/redo, and MIDI control have already been upgraded!

But several important systems still need to be given the deluxe treatment in order to bring HD video synthesis to life. We’re focused on Video Input currently, which allows Lumen to receive video from Cameras and other apps via Syphon. In addition to being a necessary step on the way to HD, overhauling this code will result in smoother transitions between patches and fewer bugs around cameras. We’re excited!!

Crash Fixes in Beta

We recently fixed a couple crashes that were too important to wait for the Video Input release. For users with a large number of saved patches, you may have seen Lumen crash at startup sometimes. The new Beta version (v1.1.1b) has a fix for this, and a couple others! If all goes well, it should be released to all Lumen users next week.

Up Next

Medium-term, we’ll still be working on our #1 priority: HD Output. We’ll update the Video Input & Output systems in the process, and optimize the Renderer, which is the part of Lumen that simulates video synthesis. Each of these updates will make Lumen a faster, more reliable video synth at any resolution.

You can read more about our long-term roadmap in the previous dev update.

Hello and Happy New Year from Paracosm! We’re back with the first bi-monthly update of 2021.

MIDI Performance Improvements Released

We’re excited to finally be able to release Lumen 1.1.0, with all the MIDI performance and stability improvements we’ve been working on. We were also able to fix a handful of bugs thanks to all the wonderful folks who tested out the beta version and sent us feedback!

To get the new version, select Lumen -> Check for Updates from Lumen's main menu.

New Lumen Guide: MIDI & Remote Control

To go along with this release, we put together a brand new Lumen Guide that goes in depth on MIDI-related topics including:

Managing and editing MIDI mappings

What kinds of MIDI controllers work well with Lumen

Controlling Lumen from other apps, including a walkthrough with Ableton Live

Check out the Guide and let us know what you think!

Up Next

Now that the MIDI Performance Improvements release is out, we’re well on the way to getting HD Output out the door! Our current priorities are:

#1: HD Output. This feature will allow for HD video processing in Lumen along with custom aspect ratios.

#2: Improving Lumen Guides. We’ll continue making improvements to the guides as we go.

#3: Audio Reactivity. We’ll be able to focus on this again after HD is released, so it probably won’t be available until the end of 2021.

#4 Windows Version!! All the code we've been writing is in the direction of Windows-compatibility. We don’t have an estimated release date for Windows, but we get closer with every release!

Hello from Paracosm - we’re back with another bi-monthly development update!

*a couple days post-November so we could announce a new Lumen Beta release! 🚀

MIDI Performance Improvements in Final Beta

First, a huge, huge thank you to everyone who tried the Lumen Beta and tested the MIDI Performance Improvements release! 🙏 With your help, we were able to identify a whole load of bugs. The new beta version, v1.0.7b, fixes almost all of these problems, along with many important stability improvements and long-standing issues that we fixed as we ran across them.

If you are already using the Lumen Beta, you can select Lumen -> Check for Updates from the main menu to get the new version today. After a couple more weeks in testing, we will finally be able to release this update to all Lumen users!

Up Next

Once the MIDI Performance Improvements release is out, we’ll continue working on the (mostly internal) changes and optimizations needed to get HD Output out the door. Our current priorities are:

#1: HD Output. This feature will allow for HD video processing in Lumen along with custom aspect ratios.

#2: Improving Lumen Guides. We’ll be able to prioritize this once we’ve released HD Output.

#3: Audio Reactivity. We’ll be able to focus on this again after HD is released, so it probably won’t be available until the end of 2021.

On the heels of his new music video release, we got a chance to chat with Robin Fisher aka Scar Polish, a 29-year old musician from the UK living in Berlin.

Tell me about Scar Polish!

It was kind of accidental. I had some terrible luck when I first moved to this city. Amongst homelessness and people conflicts, my eventual flat was broken into and instruments were stolen. It was a real bummer and I was basically left with only a little sampler I had just picked up (Korg Volca Sample), but it also allowed me to hyper-focus on making music with just one device.

Before this time I had been mostly songwriting on guitars, so making music like this was pretty new and my first proper entry into electronic music. I posted some videos online and realised that people were digging these strange sounds. Eventually played my first shows and the rest is history.

How did you get started making music and visuals?

I made a bunch of music videos for previous projects. No matter what the content, the aesthetic was always kind of this grainy, analogue film/VHS look. I wasn't really aware of video synthesis but when I began to learn about it recently I knew I'd seen these effects before and that it was something I wanted to explore and play with. Lumen seemed like the easiest way into the club without obliterating my bank account.

Visuals clearly play an important role in your artistic process - could you talk a little about how the concept for the Protein Coated Sadness video came together?

I found a picture of the desert on the street, it's been on my wall for a while. Kind of reminded me of that Dali painting with the clock and somehow those images all made it into the video.

Personally I don't work too well with a scene-by-scene plan but I had some basic visions. I have this green screen permanently set up on my wall and I knew I wanted to do something very sensory with lots of effects and flashes so I started shooting performance footage and processing myself, processing found footage, creating multiple layers of the same thing with different effects, stuff like that.

I guess it's the same way that I'm making music right now in that I just start jamming with whatever medium I'm working with, then redo parts, throw things out, re-edit stuff. The dinosaur-versus-the-asteroid thing kind of happened by accident when I found some green screen stock footage of both objects and just decided to run with it for the center section.

Obviously a lot of effort went into putting this together. What was your technical process like for this video?

I basically shot all the live action footage with my phone. Didn't think it needed a fancy cam as I knew I was going to intensely process everything. Chroma-keyed out the green background, then Syphon-ed  the video through Lumen. I am really a beginner with the video synthesis stuff and I can't tell you exactly what my patches were doing.

The most important thing I found was the ability to smoothly (or violently) move between multiple knob positions with the XY pad. That's really cool. I would play back the music and animate a lot to the beat with that. Then back in Final Cut I layered everything together and master processed with Red Giant VHS.

What did you learn while doing this project?

I learned what video feedback looks like, that's pretty cool! I didn't even know that's what I was doing until the video was released and someone explained it to me. I think next time I want to study the theory a lot more and see how far I can stretch it.

Any dreams about what's next?

I have some ideas now that I've fallen on this style. Make more videos, maybe some that are around 30 seconds long with music and super animated. So I can upload something to YouTube more frequently. I'm also projecting Lumen visuals in my live shows sometimes so I'd like to work more on that, possibly beat sync the animations.

Do you have advice you'd like to give to artists who are making their first music video?

Don't be afraid to experiment and play around and make mistakes. The only way to figure out what you like is to dive in, even if you don't have a clear idea of the end goal.

Thanks Robin! <3