Livid’s Union VJ software has been steadily adding features. The latest upgrade may be a “point-five” release, but it’s got some pretty significant additions, mostly along the lines of “stuff Union lovers were asking for.”

Among what’s new:

• Audio-responsive tools: audio filters, audio-aware effects, and an audio waveform generator
• Video captioning
• FreeFrame plug-in support for the popular, open standard for video plug-ins (see also: support in Resolume, vvvv, etc.)
• Video layers for easier compositing
• Performance enhancements
• “Advanced MIDI integration” which works with Livid’s lovely, optionally-wooden Ohm controller, which created quite a stir (lovers and haters alike) over on Create Digital Music

Windows + Mac, US$75 upgrade or US$299 new.

And yeah, you can add this to the 2008 visualist software fever. It’s like all the visual developers are kicking into high gear. I’ll have what they’re having. (Actually, I may need to have what they’re having for breakfast just to be able to read the user interfaces some of them are designing.)

I’ll be hanging out soon with Jay Smith from Livid to take a look at the new Ohm controller, pictured below, and he’ll be joining us for a special party at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin next month — more on that soon, as well.

Pioneer have broken new ground in overstatement with the announcement of their upcoming Video/Audio mixer, the US$6000 SVM-1000.

World’s first mixer for 4-channel audio and video.

I guess they completely missed the AVM02 then? I’m not sure how, it’s rather big and heavy.

Does anybody actually believe marketing people? Do they even believe themselves when they open their mouths? A conversation between two marketing people must be like facing two TVs towards each other, tuning one to MTV and the other to MTV Europe. But I digress. Specifications can’t lie (much), so:

Roger Bolton - Quartz Composer/Core Melt programmer, Quartonian developer and all around motion graphics whiz was kind enough to let us know he has released some free plugins for Motion and Final Cut Studio. VeeYou is a set of audio plugins that animate EQs and AUs. For those of you who VJ with Motion, these might be quite handy. For those that dont, they can be a huge timesaver for making baked animations.

You can read more and download the free plugins at the Core Melt Website.

Dedicated audio + video mixers, or all-in-one?

Jaymis examined the Numark AVM02 last month. It’s an innovative concept: one mixer for audio, video, and video FX. But it’s not without its shortcomings; most notably, there’s no MIDI, and some of the FX capabilities are lacking. And that raises a question: is it better to get one piece of gear that does everything, or mix and match?

Enter the Korg KM-202 and 402 audio mixers, previewed today on Create Digital Music. They look fantastic as audio mixers: simple mixing functions, plus lots of audio effects via an integrated KAOSS Pad — even vocoding, a little synthesis, and loop sampling are included, and everything can be beat-matched.

That’s the good news. The bad news: like the AVM02, there’s no MIDI input — all the more annoying, given it does have beat-driven capabilities. For MIDI, you have to upgrade to the pricier ZERO4/ZERO8, but those would be wild overkill for live visualists. Still, I still think, depending on the pricing of the KM-202, I might prefer a KM-202 for audio and (sorry, Korg) Edirol V4 video mixer to Numark’s all-in-one deal. Mixing simultaneous audio and visuals is a new area, of course. But it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

This, of course, brings me to a more important question:

Why the heck doesn’t the KORG KrossFour have a KAOSS Pad?

The KrossFour is Korg’s entry into the video mixing market. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s because it’s been somewhat overshadowed by Edirol’s wildly-popular V4. I’m sure the KrossFour sells, but there’s not much to say about it, other than it does have the plus of coming with a crossfader onboard. (Edirol makes you buy an accessory to replace their T-bar; which you prefer is a matter of taste.) I tried one, and it’s a decent piece of kit. It just lacks that extra something to make people notice it, like, oh, something really out-there with an X/Y pad and effects. (Now, where would Korg find something like that … not in the form of their KAOSS Pad Entrancer video effects unit, by any chance?)

Korg helpfully suggests you pair the KrossFour with their KAOSS Pad Entrancer for effects and KAOSS Pad mixing. Most VJs I know with Entrancers do just that — only they use the Edirol V4, not the Korg KrossFour. Besides, whatever mixer you use, this immediately creates a problem: where do you put the effects unit? Before the mixer? After the mixer? Either way, you can’t assign the effect to a mixer channel. If Korg would just meld the two, problem solved — and the KAOSSFour would become the instant, de facto tool for VJs.

Now, I need someone to translate that into Japanese and send a nice card to the Korg office there. Here’s a subtle hint, in case they’re reading; perhaps our Japanese blogger friends (thanks for the links; we do read them!) can start posting this on their VJ blogs:

Polling all readers: who’s with me?

I’ve had a bit more time now with my (still shiny, still new) Numark AVM02 - or “Avmo” as it’s been dubbed by my bandmates - and have some more thoughts to offer, if you will hear them. If you haven’t heard the original thoughts or seen the unboxing photos you may like to check out my “First Impressions” review.

Obviously the biggest question I’m going to get is “how does it compare to the Edirol V4″, so I’ll come out straight away and disappoint those who are looking for that comparison: This article will focus mostly on the AVM02’s own strengths and weaknesses, and while some comparisons to the V4 and other video mixers may be drawn, you’ll have to make your own conclusions at this stage. I will be doing a full head to head features-and-quality shootout vodcast in the coming weeks, so I’ll save the serious V4 comparisons until then.

Unit Specs

The AVM02 combines a basic DJ mixer with what I guess could be described as a “DJ Style” video mixer, and is able to combine 4 Video channels and 4 Stereo Audio channels, mixing with independant (but linkable) Video and Audio crossfaders.

I have just received and unwrapped my shiny new Numark AVM02 mixer. Unfortunately way too late for the 3 gigs I had over the weekend, so it will be a week or so until I have a hands-on, performance review. In the meantime though, I have plenty of first impressions.

It’s shiny. It’s big (19″ rack standard). Build quality is very solid - no surprises there - and all faders, knobs and buttons feel like they’re attached to a professional mixer. The crossfaders are a little slow, needing to be pushed all the way across rather than travelling there with a flick, and the lack of ”transform” buttons rules out some fun mixing tricks which can be performed with the V4, but perhaps this will encourage me to develop better crossfader technique.

It has many inputs and outputs. Ignoring the audio stuff for now (which is so passe darlings) we have 4 S-Video and 4 Composite in (not switchable, not sure how it selects between them). 2 S-Video and 2 Composite out, and 4 composite monitor outs.

Put it next to the V4 and one thing is instantly apparent: You’re getting a lot of mixer for your money.

Adobe keeps churning out apps and betas; the latest is a new lightweight audio editor called Soundbooth. I’ve done a detailed look at the beta for Create Digital Music, but here’s why visualists should be excited. First, of course, Adobe is building the app to try to court the Photoshop and Flash crowd to audio editing, for people who are intimidated by Adobe Audition or simply find it overkill for what they’re doing. (Honestly, it’s overkill for some musicians, too.) For that function, it fits the bill, and is worth keeping around even if you just want to speed up the process of normalizing and adding fades to audio. The second reason, though, is that even in this early beta, Adobe is building new integration with Flash. You can place markers in a recording (even as you record, if you’re recording into Soundbooth), then export the marker list via XML to Flash. That means you can cue animations to sound; hopefully in future you’ll also be able to cue sounds to animation and access this functionality via ActionScript, minus the use of the Flash app. I’d love to use this for interactive design work I’m doing that involves sound. Adobe has promised more of this kind of integration in the future, so I expect the upcoming revision of Creative Suite will give us more of this kind of stuff. In the meantime, if you work with sound at all, Soundbooth could be a useful download on Mac and PC:

Adobe Soundbooth beta [Adobe Labs]
Adobe Soundbooth Beta First Look: Simplified Audio Editor for Quick Sound Editing (Windows, Mac) [Create Digital Music]