iTunes visual plug-in development?

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DrLex
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2017 6:01 pm
Location: Belgium

iTunes visual plug-in development?

Post by DrLex »

Hello everyone,

In short:
Can anyone give me some pointers for updating the source code of an OpenGL-based iTunes visual plug-in, such that it works in iTunes 12.7?

The long story:
Very, very long ago I used MacAMP and it had this great visualizer called WhiteCap. I even wrote some configs for it, but eventually MacAMP died and I forgot about it. Recently I found out that WhiteCap still exists, and that it is even available as an iTunes plug-in, and even more surprisingly, that this plug-in works in iTunes 12.7 (if run under Sierra or newer).

I used to develop a somewhat popular [url=https://w w w.dr-lex.be/software/spectrograph.html]visual plug-in[/url] for iTunes and I had already given up on it. I firmly believed Apple had silently killed visual plug-ins since 12.6, but it seems I am wrong. However, it seems as if SoundSpectrum is currently the only company that still knows how to make a working visual plug-in. The lack of support from Apple's side is appalling. There is no documentation, let alone an example of a simple plug-in as there used to be.

Given this new information that plug-ins do work in Sierra, I tried running a new build of my plug-in, and indeed it is available in the menu. The window stays entirely black though. What makes things worse is that I never properly upgraded the project to 64-bit. What I've just built, is a half-assed conversion made by someone else. This did work in 64-bit iTunes 12.5 however, now it only renders pure blackness. Without any documentation or examples, I am pretty much clueless how to fix this.

If someone could tell me any steps required to get an OpenGL-based visual plug-in to work, or point me towards a bare-bones XCode project that just renders a simple shape in the visualizer window, then perhaps we could send out a signal to Apple that visual plug-in development is not in its last throes of death.

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