ShowTime is a software architecture for generating displays for vision research. It is based on the QuickTime architecture developed by Apple Computer.

The general idea of ShowTime is to create vision research stimuli as QuickTime movies, and to build small, calibrated display functions which can be called from various high level (Mathematica, MatLab, Visual Basic) or low level languages.

At present, we have developed several key elements of the ShowTime system: a set of c-functions that perform some basic operations involved in movie creation and display, a set of Mathematica functions that access the c-functions, and a set of MatLab functions that do the same. The Download page shows how to get these items.

To illustrate the simplicity of ShowTime, here is an example of a complete Mathematica program to create and display a drifting grating.

QTOpen[];
rows = 64;
frames = 16;
frequency = 8; (* cycles/image *)
grating = Round[128 + 127 Table[Cos[2 Pi y frequency/rows] , {y, rows}, {rows}]];
gratingmovie = Table[RotateRight[grating, y], {y, frames}];
QTWrite["grating.mov", gratingmovie];
QTShow["grating.mov"];
QTClose[];

For a more complete description of the system, take a look at the Mathematica notebook ShowTime.nb under the Download link above, or go to the Publications link above which includes a recent presentation.

If you would like to be notified of new ShowTime developments, and take part in user discussions, go to the Mailing List link above.

Showtime was developed by Andrew Watson, James Hu, Cesar Ramirez, and Denis Pelli.