As we strive for more immersive, cohesive shows, DMX is a great tool to have in our visualist kit. Whether a full theatre lighting rig or just a couple of dimmers and a strobe in a club, the ability to plug in and take control of an existing rig means that lighting can now work with your projections, not compete with them.

One very exciting piece of gear brought to Perth last year by artificialeyes was the uDMX USB DMX controller. The uDMX is exciting in a different way to gear such as the VJX16-4 or the VMS, rather than being a new and more VJ-friendly take on existing tech, it very common concept - the DMX controller - distilled down to its tiniest, purest form, and then open-sourced for good measure.

The Anyma guys have managed to fit all of the DMX control circuitry inside a regular XLR jack. This makes the uDMX about as compact as it’s possible for a DMX controller to be. As DMX uses regular 3- or 5-pin XLR jacks for cabling, you can literally grab the uDMX, some spare mic cable, an adapter or two, and then get your DMX on straight away! The uDMX-Midi Interface Software (Mac) is extremely simple, monitoring a MIDI input source and converting (scaling from 0-255 to 0-127) either Note-on or CC messages into DMX messages. These are sent through the uDMX on the same DMX channel as the MIDI message controller or note number. It also has the ability to offset messages, which gives a simple method of scanning around DMX channels to find out where lights and other gear are located without following cables or looking at jumpers. Anyma have also released a Max/MSP external (Mac, Linux and Windows), PD external, and a command line utility (Windows, Mac and Linux).

Its been an opportune few weeks for visualists in Europe, with a spread of three festivals all with their own take on the field. Here’s a quick tour through the eyes and itinerary of one *spark.

• Late at Tate: The AV Social; 4th April
• NODE08: Forum for digital arts; 5-12th April
• Mapping: VJing and Audio-Visual Festival; 10th-20th April
• Vision’r: Festival VJ; 17th-20th April
• Resolume 3 & Freeframe 1.5
• On the horizon: Visual Berlin and Live Performer’s Meeting

I was first introduced to Cornelius in Film School, where the buddy I often shared a dark editing room would play ‘Count Five or Six’ while I attempted to count and mark 16mm frames on the tiny strips running through our moviolas. This January, I jumped on the chance to see him at the awesome Walt Disney Concert Hall with Plaid.

Let’s start off with Plaid. I was very excited to see them, after catching their AV Set with Bob Jaroc at the Natural History Museum last year. The visuals, unfortunately, didn’t do much for me. There were a few sweet moments, but mostly I felt trapped in a semi-monotonous 3d visualizer. As we broke for intermission, I talked with a few other VJs and they agreed. I was skeptical about Cornelius, and figured I’d just have to settle for a rockin’ audio set and not expect much from the visuals.

I’m glad I was wrong.

Cornelius’ set started off with slow-mo footage of a giant bubble floating in a park. I couldn’t tell if it was CG or footage, and it didn’t matter. With the beautiful swells of the music and the rainbow-riffing undulating soap mass onscreen, I was lifted out of my funk and ready for an awesome show.

Each song had its own specific video - and each one looked and felt very different from the last, which does wonders to avoid visual burnout. Ironically, the first visuals set where I was amazed by the variety of visual atmospheres was that first Plaid/Bob Jaroc show.

His LED light rig was simple and spectacular. He had several lighting stands with rows of LEDs, and custom patterns that matched or contrasted the video for each song. There were also strobes mounted on top of each pole which were used sparingly and to great effect to punch up the impact of the hardest-rocking songs. You can see them in the following video:

Cornelius Live 01-17-08 from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

Please note that this footage, taken in video mode with a still camera from the very last row in the hall, does not nearly do justice to the quality and variety of video. That said, it’ll give you a taste of the night, which is better than nothing.

One question that remains after the show - how did they keep it all synced up? I suppose Cornelius could be playing to a click-track, but it all felt very freeform, so I’m inclined to discount that idea. My only guess at this point is a DVJ or something similar that played back the pre-composed videos, with a VJ speeding up or slowing down the playback to stay in sync - like a DJ would do to keep two records from trainwrecking.

If you have any favorite moments from the show, or ideas on how they put together the video, leave your mark in the comments.

Read the full interview with Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada) on Create Digital Music. He tells CDM:

For the live performance, it’s an important part as there’s not only the sound in live shows but the visual aspect. By creating visuals I think it helps to understand more about the music as my songs are in Japanese.

The era of the visualist has come to an exciting point. From a relatively fringe activity, we have seen tools and techniques develop quickly over the last couple of years. The idea of a VJ as a performer is steadily gaining more public mind share. Along with this growth, hardware and software concepts from both new and established developers are helping to further expand the possibilities we have for production and performance.

One of the most exciting groups to enter the VJ consciousness recently is Vixid. They’ve been working on their VJ mixer - the VJX16-4 - for several years, and it finally started hitting the market in 2007.

Unlike the other semi-recent entries to the vision mixer market - Numark’s AVM02 and Pioneer’s Big Expensive Thing - the VJX16-4 isn’t just an incremental upgrade to the basic task of "mixing between two sources of video". Vixid have designed it from the ground up to be a considerably more advanced way of working with live video.

Fortunately, Michael and Todd of artificialeyes were available to guide us through this exciting and slightly confusing new world. We shot many hours of video with the ae guys at ByteMe Festival last December, including plenty of time with the VJX. First up: An intro and overview to this superb piece of kit. The video runs for 10:30. Considerably longer than we’d intended to make these CDMtv videos, however we believe the Vixid is such an important and potentially influential piece of hardware - and such a big investment - that you’d want to get more detailed information rather than a superficial overview. For those who are impatient or feeling texty I’ll follow up the video with some of my first impressions and thoughts.

DJs are spoiled for choice when it comes to melding vinyl turntablism skills with digital mixing. But visualists have had no real mature option. Serato’s VIDEO-SL plug-in promises to change that, when coupled with their Scratch LIVE software and the Rane TTM-57SL mixer. To give the results a real shakedown, we turned to dj rndm and Robotkid, an audio-visual duo out of Boston who had already been frustrated with existing alternatives. Is the VIDEO-SL the breakthrough product visualists have waited for? -PK

Scratch LIVE v1.8 and Video-SL 1.0 boast the ability to not only mix video alongside your digital audio tracks but to give it groundbreaking control via Rane’s TTM-57SL mixer (required). After several anxious months of anticipation, we recently got our hands on the fader of Rane’s newest DJ gear to see how well it lived up to the demo shown at last year’s NAMM event. This progression of audio/ video integration seemed too good to be true, especially for those of us wrangling with the likes of Virtual DJ and Ms. Pinky. 

When the Video-SL plugin ran for the first time, we knew there was no going back.

Video demos

dj rndm takes the full VIDEO-SL setup for a spin, mixing:

… and scratching:

Effects, transitions

The Video-SL interface blends seamlessly into the Scratch LIVE window and functions with the same ease and readability known from previous iterations. The plugin includes over two dozen video effects and sixteen different transitions to layer and transform your video content in real-time. Most of the effects and transitions are fairly standard. While Serato has no immediate plans to allow for user-custom transitions and effects, they did tell us that adding new ones is relatively easy, and they say they hope to add new content based on feedback from the Scratch LIVE forums.

After asking CDMo readers for advice and promising various parties that I’d never buy another Sony product, I walked into my local VideoPro with a definite plan of attack: Compare and contrast the Canon XH-A1 and Panasonic HVX-200, and then buy one of them.

What followed is still a little hazy in my mind, but it seems there was a sales guy who actually knew his stuff, listened to my requirements and was able to suggest an alternative which was not only better suited to my needs, but also considerably cheaper. That this alternative was a Sony - a brand I’d sworn never to purchase again - just adds to the confusion. I’m still trying to figure out what happened.

The XH-A1 and HVX-200 are both great cameras, they look good, feel good, and by most accounts shoot exceptional video, generally on par with each other’s performance. Why, then, did I walk out of there with an HVR-V1P?:

• Physically smaller and lighter
• 200FPS “Smooth Slow Record” slow motion mode
• Uncompressed HDMI output
• Good quality Sony shotgun mic included
• External battery bay (as opposed to the XH-A1’s internal one) which is compatible with Sony’s NP-F range, including the batteries I still have from my 10 year old DCR-TRV9.
• AU$1500-3000 cheaper than the Canon and Panasonic offerings

I haven’t had the time to really get to know this camera, but initial impressions are very positive.

iPhonewhat? Apple’s Pro Apps division unleashed an enormous upgrade to its Final Cut suite in May, and Macworld.com put up the full reviews on its site last week, just before the deluge of coverage of a certain consumer multifunction device. There’s a lot in Final Cut Studio 2: ProRes codec in Final Cut Pro, 3D and painting in Motion, HD in DVD Studio, conforming in Soundtrack, and a “new” (acquired) app called Color.

The reviewers for Macworld are people worth paying attention to. HD consultant and writer of one of our all-time favorite blogs, HD For Indies, Mike Curtis, wrote the review of flagship Final Cut Pro. The Color app was reviewed by none other than the technical chairman for HD Postproduction for the National Association of Broadcasters, Gary Adcock (who’s also a consultant out of Chicago). I’m humbled just to get my byline among people of this caliber. (I did the Motion and Soundtrack Pro reviews). Online is the only place you can read our full, detailed reviews, so while there are still great reasons to pick up the print rag, you’ll definitely want to go online for the Final Cut reviews.

The Reviews

The apps are all reviewed one by one. As of Final Cut Studio 2, you can’t purchase them a la carte, but they’re certainly worth looking through in detail individually, as they retain some standalone character.

Final Cut Pro 6

In terms of bang for the buck, the Final Cut Studio 2 package offers many more features and capabilities than previous versions of the suite … Apple has also made a slew of improvements and fixes to existing features: FCP 6 is better, easier to use, and faster than previous versions. -Mike Curtis

Motion 3

With Motion 3, Apple has focused on the major capabilities previous versions lacked: motion tracking and stabilization, painting tools, and a true 3-D graphical environment to augment speed and easy, improvisational control. Motion may not become your only motion-graphics program, but it could easily become your favorite tool for quickly creating visuals. -Peter Kirn

Color 1.0

Color 1.0 is a solid, best-in-class addition to the Final Cut Studio 2 suite, offering one of the most powerful color-correction tools available in video production … However, its complex, less-than-familiar interface will take some getting used to. And its lack of support for third-party codecs will likely deter some video pros. -Gary Adcock

Soundtrack Pro 2

Sound editors and video editors—the humans, not the software—often seem to live in different worlds. … Soundtrack Pro … seeks to bridge some of those divisions, at least within the suite’s workflows. Enhanced recording tools aid dialogue and Foley recording (which includes sound effects and incidental sound), and a new audio Conform facility promises to make reconciling video and audio edits easier. -Peter Kirn

Click To Play

View video directly on blip.tv

Final Cut Studio 2 HD SmoothCam Tests [blip.tv]

Shoot jittery footage with your HDV/DV cam? While on a taxi ride? On a bumpy street, zoomed in, while being run off the road by the Hungarian mafia?* I know I do. While shooting freehand is great for that “Reality TV” look, sometimes you want to look like a pro while keeping your budget - and this is where Final Cut Studio 2’s new SmoothCam feature comes in.
(*It’s a long story, but yes, this happened. No, this is not that particular footage.)

SmoothCam is a technology borrowed from Apple’s high-end, node-based compositing system Shake that was ported to Final Cut Pro 6.0 as an easy-to-use effect filter. The basic idea is that SmoothCam tracks the motion vectors of the pixels in your footage and tries to make them as stable as possible, resulting in a smooth and bump-free shot. Sounds awesome, and as usual with Apple, it’s hyped to no end. But how good is it in the real world?