We looked at the most important features that needed to be improved and this was clearly video mapping in Arena. Video mapping has taken the world by storm the past few years. We wanted to make this even easier and even more flexible with Resolume Arena 5. With Arena you can take on any size mapping project. Projecting on DJ booths and cars and buildings, as well as pixel mapping giant stages like Ultra. Projection mapping has gone from an artsy curiosity to a requirement in the toolbox of all VJ's.
Zoooooomin
With stages becoming bigger and LED resolutions going up it’s now easier to get everything pixel perfect by zooming in to your slices as far you need to make the final adjustment.
In the advanced output you can now undo (and redo) all your actions. This is incredibly handy because video mapping can become quite complex and is not always an exact science. Sometimes you need to fiddle the sliders until it’s pixel perfect. You can now work on a complex mapping with the ease of mind that you can always go back in time, like Doc & Marty.
This new way of video mapping is so innovative we even had to think of a name for it
We’re calling them Poly Slices. Draw any shape you want and then warp each individual point. Triangles were just the beginning, young grasshopper.Slices and points will jump into place when they get close enough. So you don't need to find that sweet spot twice.
Slice masks
You can now apply a mask to one specific slice by using the new input masking. You can even draw your own shape from scratch.
Lasso your slices like a cowboy and herd them dawgies to the corral in one mighty swoop.
Led There Be Light
You can now start thinking outside the (box) screen because you can now send your pretty little pixels to DMX fixtures. Let them light up in any color, at any time, in sync with your visuals. Better improvised synchronisation between music and visuals is the very first reason why we started on Resolume all those years ago. It’s a very logical step to add the lights to that as well. This way your shows are even more coherent and integrated.
Those fancy BlackMagic capture devices can not only bring images into Resolume. With Arena 5 you can also output via BlackMagic devices. This way you can easily output to another screen on a laptop that might not have multiple outputs. And output to professional SDI connections without having to buy a special expensive videocard that has SDI outputs.
Spout
Spout is the Windows equivalent of the hugely popular Syphon on the Mac. It allows you to output and input visuals from one application to the other, all in real-time. So create a sketch in Processing and send that to Resolume or send the Resolume output to the virtual Spout webcam and stream that to YouTube. Spout opens a lot of possibilities because there is already so much other Spout compatible software. Checkout their website.
Pricing
New Arena 5 license: 799 Euro
Upgrade Arena 4 to 5: 269 euro
Upgrade Avenue to Arena 5: 500 euro
New Avenue 4 license: 299 Euro
Log in to your account to purchase your upgrade today.
Avenue?
Because most of these major new features are media server related and only in Arena there is no major update for Avenue. So you can continue to use Avenue 4 without a paid upgrade.
Grace Period
If you bought Arena 4 after September 1st, just contact us and we'll upgrade you to Arena 5.
Besides all these major new features we have also fixed many small bugs and made many minor improvements. Read below for the full release notes or hit the download!
NEW - AV set and demo footage
NEW - Fixture editor
NEW - Virtual screen routing
NEW - Drag and drop output presets
NEW - Modifiers galore
NEW - Input slice rotation
NEW - Opacity and Bypass toggles on Layer Router
NEW - Preview available as source for Layer Router and Slices
NEW - Create slices and masks by drawing
NEW - Screen output delay compensation
NEW - Screen output opacity & color correction
NEW - Screen folding
NEW - Slice flipping
NEW - Slice Top & Left coordinates
NEW - Slice color correction
NEW - Slice force black background
NEW - New interface colours: Minty Pinky
NEW - Redesigned toolbar for better read- and click-ability
NEW - Windows large address aware for better memory management
NEW - 8 pixel grid on output
NEW - Improved crosshairs
FIXED - Support more than one webcam of the same type on PC
FIXED - After re-locating a Source, Flash or QC file, any parameter changes are reset to the default value
FIXED - When toggling Mask 1, all other Masks toggle as well
FIXED - BPM Clock pause and resume flips out when using midi clock
FIXED - Audio Clip set to play once and playmode away continue does not restart when finished
FIXED - Multiselect reset param doesn’t work when you click on name
FIXED - Noisy effect: Interpolate does not work until show UV is turned on and off
FIXED - DeckLink device with no inputs causes other devices not to load
FIXED - BPM set audio clip not responding to pause/BPM after deckswitch.
FIXED - BPM Synced parameter also occasionally flashes last 'frame' on Resync
FIXED - Blend Modes are not correctly displayed on Layer Panel
FIXED - Deadlock: Opening preferences with cmd + , while audio is playing and apc40mk2 is turned on
FIXED - DMX Invert no worky on buttons
FIXED - Retrigger and Continue modes are very confused on AV clips
FIXED - A clip set to 'play once and eject' should not eject the incoming clip during a transition
FIXED - Midi Note piano shortcut on slider should respect min value
FIXED - Add Close button to Timeline popup
FIXED - BPM pause doesn’t work for audio clips that are active but in other deck
FIXED - Mask drag, drop and copy not functioning properly
FIXED - A clip set to 'play once and eject' should not eject the incoming clip during a transition
FIXED - When retriggering the incoming clip in a transition, the outgoing clip should not restart
FIXED - Cross-fader position is not saved in composition
FIXED - Mapping ccs to Crossfader
FIXED - Source duration spinner jumps to min and max when dragged
FIXED - Check for illegal characters in savefile name
FIXED - Alpha on a JPEG? What kind of witchcraft is this?
I have a Res Avenue 4 license but there’s no Avenue 5! Do I need to upgrade to Arena 5 to get the new stuff?
No. Avenue 4.5 is a free upgrade for anyone with a Avenue 4.x license. It has all the bug fixes and comes with native Spout support.
I have a Res Arena 4 license but Arena 5 is a paid upgrade. Do I have to pay for bug fixes?
You don’t. If you don’t want to upgrade to Arena 5 just yet, Arena 4.2.2 is a free upgrade for anyone with a Arena 4.x license. It has all the bug fixes of Arena 5, just not the fancy new Advanced Output. Download Arena 4.2.2 for Mac and PC.
I just bought Arena 4 last week and now you bring out an update. This sucks!
Don’t worry. If you bought Arena 4 after September 1st, just contact us and we’ll give you an Arena 5 license, no questions asked. If you feel we’ve treated you unfairly in any other way, just drop us a line and we’ll work something out.
What about feature X ?1?!?!. You said it was coming in Res 5. I really need feature X! I can’t live without feature X!
Yeah, that sucks. We wanted to pack so much more features in this release. As it turns out, putting all of that in and getting it stable, would mean you’d have to wait another 2 years for the next version. And we couldn’t let you wait that long. So just make awesome shows with all the cool new stuff that’s in Arena now, and we’ll continue working on all the other things.
Downloading now.
