Support

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and answers to common questions.

We have a separate DVD Technical Help page.

Will there be an Animusic 3 DVD?

Yes! The team is working on new animations. We're not quite ready to announce a release date, but when we do, we'll be sure to let everyone know via this website and our email newsletter. We're gradually adding content to the Animusic 3 preview page.

Can I upload videos from your DVDs onto YouTube or other web sites?

Not from the DVDs, but you can share specially formatted video clips found on our downloads page, these have titles and copyright notices that are not on the DVD versions. See our full online video policy.

Do you have sheet music or MIDI files available?

Unfortunately we do not have either sheet music or MIDI files available for purchase.

Are you aware of the hoax email referring to a "Farm Music Machine" that is actually your Pipe Dream animation?

Yes, people keeping telling us about it.  It seems to have been circulating for quite some time now.

You guys launched that hoax email, didn't you?

No, we really didn’t, but we certainly appreciate it.  And find the whole thing pretty amusing.  You can read more about it on snopes.com.  (In fact, if you’re the person who did launch it, drop us an email.   You’re not in trouble – in fact we’d like to thank you.  We’ll keep your identity confidencial if you’d like, but it would be fun to do a News Item about it if you don’t mind.)

Can I buy your stuff in stores?

Yes - Best Buy and Sam's Club are two national chains that often carry our DVDs. Some locations might not have discs in stock all the time, and if you can't find our DVDS, please ask a sales person when they expect more discs. Fry's Electronics stores also carry our DVDs, their locations are mainly on the west coast and in some southern states. The t-shirts, CDs, and mousepads are only available from our web site.

I need to send DVDs to different addresses, how can I do this on one order?

Our online store is set up for shipping to one address. We incur additional costs when shipping to multiple addresses, so the discount for buying multiple DVDs applies to shipping to one address. Each shipping address will require a different order.

Do you have PAL video format DVDs?

Our DVDs have NTSC video only, but many DVD players in Europe can convert NTSC to PAL. The DVDs are set to Region code 0 so they will play in all countries around the world.

Do you have HD or high definition video clips or DVDs?

Starship Groove and Resonant Chamber are availble as 720p HD video, see details on our downloads page. We have produced HD versions of several of our animations, initially for use by corporate clients at trade shows such as CES and CEDIA. We do plan to release either a Blu-ray disc at some point, but our primary focus for now is on producing Animusic 3!

What does "not optimized for computers" mean? Will the DVDs play on my computer?

The DVDs are indented for use in set-top DVD players. Just about all dedicated DVD players are up to spec and will play back full rate MPEG even at the very high encoding quality we use (about 50% higher than your average Hollywood movie. . . . just about the absolute limit). A few cheaper/free software DVD players are not up to spec. They cannot always handle the full bandwidth required by DVD. The image may freeze once in a while, then continue playing a second later. These things really aren't issues with dedicated DVD players of even minimal quality, so we recommend playing the DVD in that context. Finally, certain computer-based DVD playback software sometimes exhibit audio abnormalities with our content. Several people have reported hearing the volume fluctuate between normal and soft levels and at random times. This can be fixed in the DVD playback software settings.

What software do you guys use?

Our animation is created procedurally using our proprietary program ANIMUSIC|studio and MIDImotion, learn more on our software page. For other applications see our gear info page.

Don't you create everything on Mac's? I heard you did.

Sorry about this - I (Wayne) made a comment in some interview footage about doing all our animation with "off the shelf 3D Max", and I think a few people heard it as "off the shelf 3D Mac's" (perhaps thinking Mac's with fast 3D cards?). For the original Animusic-1, we used Mac's for the music production, and painting maps, etc. The other work was all done on Windows machines. Choice of platform is not a religious issue for us - we say "work on whatever platform makes you most comfortable and productive".

Even though you're not selling MIDImotion yet, can I get it anyway?

We appreciate hearing so many people express interest in our software, even though we've said it's proprietary. Please note that currently the only situations where our software goes out is where it's been specially licensed by a company, and appropriate NDA's have been signed, etc. But, see below:

Have you thought of marketing your software?

Absolutely. This has been discussed for (literally) years. A commercial version may be released at some point, although currently this is undecided. When we're at the point of looking for beta testers, we will announce that on the site, and through our newsletter.

Will you come give a talk at my institution?

We feel a little guilty continuing to say "no thanks, not right now" to this offer, and we really do appreciate being asked. Production is top priority, and right now we're keeping travel to an absolute minimum.

What advice do you have for young animators just starting out? What software should I get to start doing animation?

There's a trend towards making learning versions of computer animation software free of charge for those interested in experimenting. That's a great way to get your feet wet, although you'll need a fairly powerful machine to run these pro-level programs. Use your favorite search engine to find trial versions of animation software.

Have you ever thought of animating a [insert name of instrument, object, or other entity]?

Over the last twelve years we've thought about animating all kinds of things. If we'd actually animated every instrument we'd thought about or had suggested, we'd have 50 DVD's out instead of one! We have reference books on musical instruments of the world with literally thousands of instruments depicted, and we've studied them, and hope to integrate ideas into our instruments in the future. We prefer to combine ideas from different areas rather than attempt to accurately imitate a real instrument, either visually or sonically.

Have you ever thought of animating someone else's music, such as Dream Theater, Chip Davis, [insert artist name here], or perhaps some classical music?

Yes. In fact we've animated about two minutes of Kansas music which can be seen on their DVD (details in this news story). Our personal preference is for instrumental music, and it happens to work best with our style of animation (since we don't do traditional characters). Since most bands feature singers quite a bit, often these bands aren't a great match. But instrumental sections of songs, or full instrumental pieces could lend themselves to being animated. For now, though, we have enough original music to keep us quite busy. And we are animating a well-known piece of classical music for the Animusic 2 DVD.

Can you animate actual instruments and bands, or does it have to be MIDI?

We can animate actual instruments and bands as long as each part to be animated has been transcribed into MIDI format. This is the approach we've taken with performances played on non-MIDI instruments. A MIDI track is provided along with the audio mix. The MIDI data matches the performance. The better it matches, the more tightly the animation is synchronized, since the animation follows the MIDI data only, and is entirely unaware of the audio.

Can you animate my music?

Perhaps. We spend the vast majority of our time working on our own material. See our custom content page for more details.

Where are you located?

Our production facility is in New York state. We also have a business office in Texas and another satellite office in California.

Can I get a job at Animusic?

Thanks for your interest! Feel free to check out Work with Us.

How can I obtain scientific visualizations Wayne Lytle produced while at the Cornell Theory Center in the 1990's?

Please contact Cornell University directly - the Theory Center is now part of the Center for Advanced Computing http://www.cac.cornell.edu/