OSC (Open Sound Control)

Open Sound Control (OSC) is a content format for messaging among computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices that are optimized for modern networking technology. Bringing the benefits of modern networking technology to the world of electronic musical instruments, OSC's advantages include interoperability, accuracy, flexibility, and enhanced organization and documentation.

Often considered to be the successor to MIDI, NI mate supports OSC out of the box. Although well adapted for communication between electronic musical instruments, OSC's versatility as a protocol has insured it's adoption in many other uses as well. All official plugins to NI mate use OSC to transmit tracking data from the Kinect to the host software.

Support for the OSC protocol enables you to use the Kinect as an input tool for a large number of software already implementing the standard, including but not limited to, those programs which have an official plugin for NI mate. These programs include 3D suites, DAW software as well as video editing and DJ'ing software.

Standard protocol: Even if your software is currently not listed as one of the officially supported applications, but you know it offers OSC support either natively or through an existing plugin, we fully encourage you to try out NI mate and report any findings on our forum. Even if things don't work out of the box, you can always make a request to the developers to add support for your favorite software.