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).

Lighting designers rely on DMX in a similar way that electronic musicians use MIDI; it’s the glue which binds their performance together. Many older (as in age, not experience) VJs I meet have come to live video performance through a profession in lighting. Younger visualists tend to have been attracted to the artform through work or study in film and TV, or a love of electronic music and culture. These people (like myself) may know that DMX exists, but have no real experience with the protocol, or the gear it controls.

So when artificialeyes demoed the VMS system for Peter and I at ByteMeFest in Perth last year, I was struck by how simple this step into the lighting world could be. Todd and Michael were using off-the-shelf VMS projection units and controlling them with a clever little open source USB DMX controller called the uDMX, which includes software to translate midi messages into DMX.

So when it came time to plan for the 2008 album launch tour with Bobby Flynn, my desire to expand the impact of our show (while keeping to an extremely restrictive budget and baggage allowance) put a moving video system right on top of my list of possibilities. In the end we didn’t have the cash to invest in VMS, but taking Peter’s previously tried route of mating an inexpensive Rosco iCue robotic mirror with the projectors we already had in our rig was a simple backup plan. For around AU$1000 each (around $600 in the US), plus a trip to the hardware store, we now have two functional (if currently rather ugly) DMX controllable video moving systems.

It’s not the lumens that count; it’s how you use them. But it’s easy to forget that when your projections just got blown out by lights, which someone used because they can move and your projection can’t. And it’s easy to get frustrated with the limitations of projection when you’re again looking at a static 4:3 rectangle on another flat wall.

Unfortunately, the art of using mirrors and other techniques to make projection more dynamic aren’t nearly as well known as they could be. Alternative projection techniques have also tended not to be productized. One significant exception is VMS or VideoMovingSystem. It’s the rare case of a hardware product made specifically for creative, live, performative projection. VMS is similar to the iCue moving mirror and some other tools, but it takes the kind of tools previously customized for lighting and specially adapts them to projection. You can actually buy a VMS unit with a projector already attached, or buy a unit that will fit a standard projector, making these more effective and easier to mount and use than lighting-specific instruments. It’s not a cheap solution for an independent VJ, but it is cheaper than competing custom lighting solutions. And if you read this site, you should already know that digital, computer-powered projection can do all kinds of things boring motorized lights can’t.

artificialeyes’ Michael Parenti and Todd Thille have taken a unique role in both championing the VMS tool and developing custom applications for it, as well as rocking Istanbul with the results. Michael said repeatedly that it saved the whole act of VJing for him. We got to talk to Michael and Todd about VMS and why it’s important — and, better yet, we got to play with these units, remote-controlled by artificialeyes’ 3L software and Michael’s iPhone. Even if you don’t plan on picking up VMS yourself (or I should say, convincing a club to buy them for you), you can tell from the interview how much of a difference changing a projection technique can make — not lumens, and not content, the two things we often get hung up on.

Jaymis: I have plenty more video from the ae guys waiting to be edited, both long-form looks into Thrill, and quick tips as well. That said, video is a bit of a new step for CDMo. This past year we’ve been talking about being a visualist mostly through the written word, so it would be great to get some feedback. Do you find video reviews and articles useful? Like the editing style? Think Peter should do voiceovers for software training videos? Hit the comments.

I talked a bit last month about my woes trying to use a Rosco iCue “intelligent mirror.” The short version: skip the lighting board and the lighting op / designer, and do what Jamie Jewett suggests here, via comments:

I am also using a hacked I-cue with projection and am quite happy with it -

for folks interested in DMX you might also look into the LANbox products - depending on what product you get you can send it DMX, MIDI, USB, ethernet as well as digital and analog sensor data - it’s pretty sweet - it also comes with a piece of free (download-able) software which functions as a light desk on your laptop…

It also has preprogrammed objects for connecting directly to both the Max/MSP/Jitter world (which I am using) and to Isadora (which I have used and would recommend highly - the learning cure is no where near as steep as with jitter…)

my main issue with the I-cue has to do with the difference between the x and y range and the transation between the ‘Cartesian’ world of my 2d desktop and the quasi 3d/polar world of the I-cue - I am finding moving video in a straight line to be quite a pain in the back side…

but between the I-cue and the Lanbox there has been no issues at all…

Sounds like someone needs to build a patch that translates to the iCue … maybe even via joystick input.

Working on digital visuals for choreographer Grisha Coleman’s echo::system, I got to try some new techniques for running visuals. These were necessary experiments, so naturally we had some things that worked well, and some that didn’t. (For more on the piece, see the project site; warning: auto-playing audio via Flash!)

Two particular pieces of gear involved re-purposing lighting equipment for projection use. At the suggestion of video advisor Maya Ciarrocchi, we used Rosco iCue “intelligent mirrors” for positioning the projections. And because we had easy access to the equipment, we used color scrollers in place of dowsers for darkening projectors.

Now having spent some time with each piece of gear, and having gotten some mixed results, I’m happy to share my experience.

Just under 2 months since the 2.4 Public Beta, Resolume have released v2.4 Final.

New Features since 2.4 Beta:

• Added new overlay mode called Alpha Luma
• Midi start/stop configuration
• Hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key when using bpm up/down controls and you will be able to jump by 4 beats at the time instead of only 1
• Removed continue/start_over in effects

With the AlphaLuma overlay mode the luminance of a pixel determines it’s alpha value. In other words, if you would make the video grayscale then the dark parts would become more transparent then the light part in the image. Compared to a normal alpha blend that has a tendency to make the result a bit gray and dull this keeps the overall image nice and bright.

Plenty of bugfixes, of course, and a free upgrade, unlike some apps we could name.

Resolume have just released Beta 2.4 for public consumption. My favourite addition so far is BPM sync for clips and effects, but this version also includes DMX control for lighting equipment, opening up a whole new level of possibility for staging events.

New in version 2.4 beta:
BPM Clock
With the BPM clock in Resolume it is very easy so synchronise video clips to the tempo (Beats Per Minute) of the music. By setting the the video clips in BPM mode the speed of the clips is automatically adjusted to fit in any number of beats. The BPM clock can be set manually or can be linked to an external Midi clock.

With this function your visuals are so easily synchronised to the beat of the music! The BPM clock can also be used to drive effect parameters and to have them play synchronised to the music.

DMX
DMX can be used to control Resolume but also to send DMX signals from flash movies playing in Resolume. This enables you to integrate your visuals and video with lights, strobes, lasers, moving heads, LED pannels and any other device that is DMX compatible. DMX signals can be send via Artnet over a computer network or via USB with the Enttec DMX USB Pro Interface.

Speed improvements
We took some extra time to totally dissect the Resolume engine and Edwin was able to improve the playback speed dramatically, with one layer playback framerates can be up to 80% faster and running multiple layers can be up to 10-20% faster. So if you were thinking about switching from 320×240 to 640×480 now is the time to try it out.