OMIRI com VIXID from mspinky23 on Vimeo. (Warning: Contains some NSFW imagery. Jaymis.)
CDM’s Jaymis has just gotten his Vixid VJX16-4 mixer, but we continue getting other hands-on reports from VJs. This one comes from Tiago Pereira, who’s posted a video of him having some healthy play time. Thanks, Tiago — looks like you’re having a blast. Keep them coming, with this or your other favorite gear.
As digital musicians have realized for some time, working with computers is all about physical control. It’s the difference between feeling like you’re operating software and playing an instrument. So it’s no accident that Jay Smith is quick to call the Ohm, a new hardware controller for visuals and music, an “instrument.” I got to hang out at the Hoboken, New Jersey office of Livid and play with the Ohm a bit. Hands-on experience is everything: as you can see, you’ve got a nicely-crafted wooden crossfader piece, for starters. Here are some first impressions.
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.
We’re planning an in-depth test of the new visual vinyl plug-in for Serato’s Scratch LIVE, VIDEO-SL, but in the meantime, one beta tester has already got his hands on it. DJ Steel puts together a pretty clear demonstration of what VIDEO-SL does and what makes it special, particularly in regards to comparing something like Virtual DJ (another DJ product with control vinyl support for video). The demo video isn’t perfect — he calls the product “SLV” instead of its correct name, VIDEO-SL, misses out on effects, and says “H.264 files are less CPU intensive to decode than “ordinary .MP4″ files.” (For the record, that’s basically the same format; MPEG-4 video generally refers to MPEG-4 Part 10, the video compression standard.) But he does give a good overview of some of VIDEO-SL’s capabilities, why the integration with the Rane mixer makes sense, and how this might be used in a “DVJ” (hybrid DJ-VJ) setup.
VIDEO-SL I think is very important, and could yield different VJ styles, for those who like working with vinyl. Stay tuned for our closer look soon. And if you’ve got one on test yourself, let us know your impressions!
Previously:
Serato Video Scratch Software, Now in Beta; Break Out the Turntable!
Since my last little slow motion test I’ve had plenty of quality time with my HVR-V1P, and while I wish it had a slightly more memorable model name - or even that it was printed somewhere on the unit, so I can tell people what it is when asked - I’m having a great time with this camera, enjoying the capabilities HD resolution gives me, and still loving Sony’s Smooth Slow Record feature.
With the last batch of slow-mo clips I had some requests to further slow down the motion in post-processing. I don’t currently have any 3rd party retiming plugins, but it turns out that the 200FPS (240 for NTSC regions) is shot interlaced, so my previous tests were only displaying 100FPS progressive. To get the full motion from 200FPS on a progressive monitor I needed to slow the footage to 50% speed and de-interlace, a trivial task in any editor.
Even this low-tech retiming gives you an idea of how powerful 200FPS can be. I actually had an ND filter in place to keep the shutter speed relatively low and keep a bit of a dreamy look for this shoot (the minimum allowed, of course, being faster than 1/200). With full sunlight you’d have no trouble getting up past 1/1000, which would result in very little motion blur and allow very accurate motion tracking, and some exciting retiming opportunities.
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.
200 frames per second: that’s the “smooth slow motion capture” speed of Sony’s rather affordable HVR-V1P HDV camera. It really makes slow-motion capture accessible to the rest of us. Jaymis has been testing this mode on his new camera. Here are some early results (all the more impressive if you watch through to the full-motion versions at the end):
Sony Smooth Slow Motion test from Jaymis and Vimeo.
Of course, I’m ready to go even slower, and see what happens if you edit the footage in Final Cut Studio 2 using the new slow motion options. Starting with 200 frames should help.
More on the HVR-V1P soon; consider this a teaser.
Previously: First Impressions: Sony HVR-V1P HDV Camera
Since receiving my Arduino I’ve found myself looking at technology a little differently. As your post-production skills increase you tend to watch videos thinking: “I could do that”, or “I could do that if someone gave me lots of money and got out of my way”. In my post-Arduino life I now look at technology and think either, “I wonder how I could interface my arduino with that,” or “I wonder if anyone will mind if I pull that apart.”
Nobody will mind if you pull an old Inkjet printer apart. Every house has at least one in a cupboard somewhere, kept because it cost good money back in the day, but now replaced by all in one devices which cost less than their own replacement ink cartridges. My household had 6 mothballed inkjets. Now there’s only 5, and my parts box is filled with cool bits and pieces.
Laptops are wonderful things. But they’re not always the best tool for the job, particularly when it comes to visuals. Notebook computers with even basic video cards command a huge price premium, and they’re not upgradeable. Desktop computers offer cheap, fast, upgradeable components, from the processor to storage to the video card. I didn’t want to sacrifice either: I wanted a powerful machine that I could take with me on a subway. Think fragbox for live visualists. In this series, I’ll set up, configure, and then gig with a Small Form Factor (SFF) PC running live visuals and audio.
First up: assembling the custom PC. For a little twist, you get to watch me do it comic book form, courtesy the fun Mac app Comic Life from plasq. If you’ve never built a PC before, or never an SFF machine, this will show you what it’s about. (Hey, I was a mostly-Mac person from 96 through ‘04 before returning to a cross-platform setup!) If you’re an old pro at custom machine building, you can laugh heartily at my mistakes.
Before we get into the how-to comic, though, a word about the Shuttle SN26P and why I’m so excited to be using it as a portable visual powerhouse.
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