About Syncronization

videoteque_ · Post by **videoteque_** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 09:31

So many times I read people that want to have implemented Sync in Resolume or other softs. I wonder what do you mean with it or I wonder if you have even thought about it really....

House music goes from 120 to 140 bpm, so every beat takes less than half a second. Do you want Resolume to play a new video every half a second???

Your videos are half a second??? If a loop is 8 seconds long, what should Resolume do??? Play it high speed in half a second or play normal speed until next video???

The solution is to be able to trigger every 4, 8 or 16 beats. But then you need to have all your loops in exact timings. It's impossible to set a feature that can please everybody about sync to sound.

Instead of wanting your app to Sync the music to video, try to make videos that are already synced, maybe it will not be hard sync, every beat something happens. It can be a soft sync, where the music mixes with the video well....

Just my 2 cents

PS: After all the time lost discussing about pink, and the list of "exotic" features some people ask ("I want Resolume to go find a clip in my second computer, and show it to my mum, and then email to my hotmail account. I am sure it is a feature ALL of us need!!!"

)) I start to loose some faith in all those VJs.....

Dan_ · Post by **Dan_** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:47

I would like to see video beat synching in resolume. We wouldn't use it for everything but it would be useful and would lead to higher quality shows.

I don't want VJ software that I stand and watch - we think that our realtime creative input is important to our shows. However, I do want software that deals with mechanical aspects of running the performance and lets me concentrate on creating a great show.

Recently, we have been playing quite a lot with flowmotion (using it alongside resolume at gigs). Resolume and flowmotion are very different beasts (and long may it be so!) but one feature from flowmotion that I would really like to see in resolume is the ability to synch video to beats, triplets, bars, 2 bars and 4 bars.

With some kinds of music (i.e. music that is very strongly 4/4 based) I think the visuals work best with the music when there are some visual elements that repeat on the bar, every other bar or every 4 bars (16 bars works too but is less noticeable)

Currently, we match the tempo of clips using the resolume speed control to achieve this effect. This means that we have to ride the speed slider. making constant small adjustments to keep it in sync. If we could tap a tempo (or even better for our AV work, send a midi timecode) and have resolume keep specific clips on the bar, 2 bars etc, we could concentrate on other things, such as getting the off beat triggering that builds on top of the on beat stuff just right, or doing interesting things with effects.

It's not about lazyness - its about aspiring to producing a better quality show.

Dan.

Post by **bart** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 18:00

so far we never atempted to do a bpm clock because i have yet to see one that actually works. I,ve tried motion dives, and flowmotions but i,m not convinced. they always run slightly off beat after a couple of minutes or seconds sometimes. so instead of saving you time to do automated triggering it is just takes a lot of work to actually keep it running in sync.

the new vjamm has a bpm tab function and russel (one of vjamms programmers) told me it works great so i should take some time and play with theirs ...

so untill i see one that works and one that people actually use we will not waste time on implementing such a feature. we,d much rather concentrate on the dishwashing feature

bl0m5t3r_ · Post by **bl0m5t3r_** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 18:36

the tap button / bpm clock on the editrol V4 works great, this only works on transitions between channels of the editrol, it would be nice to have it in resolume so it could match speed of a clip like motion dive does.
or even adjust the value of an effect (hopefully some day in resolume).

triggering could be another use, like the chaos mode (now i can't seem to find a use of it) that is in resolume now with a tap button to set a tempo and a button next to it to set it to halve, a quarter or even less of the tempo so you could use it on 1 channel and like said before concentrate on the other channels for a while and bring your show to a higher level.

I haven't used flowmotion you say anything about it but editrol & motiondive tokyo work for me, no problems with the tempo getting off within a amount of time that would cost me more time to keep it straight then it is worth.

tnq_ · Post by **tnq_** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 07:32

even better would be something like a beathandler to flash, so you can draw/move/dowhateverwith flashobjects in sync, or on the high tones., or the low frequencies, or on loud parts.
it doesnt need to count/match the beat exactly, it just needs to get from the sound/frequency a value back which can be linked to like a controller for an effect, or maybe on the speed, do a 10 frames speedup or whatever you can imagine.
we just need to have a way to link audioinformation to controls in resolume.

Dan_ · Post by **Dan_** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 12:23

Totally understand about not wanting to do beatmapping stuff unless you are confident it will work well.

However, we find the tap BPM mode in flowmotion a lot less hassle than constantly riding the speed faders (especially on multiple channels!) - we just need to tap the space bar every so often to ensure it is in time.

With midi clock, there is no reason for the timing to run our of sync.

No worries if you don't implement this any time soon - there is no reason for every VJ app to try to do everything.

What would be useful would be a tap speed/sync adjustment for channels that we could use to get the channel in the timing we want really quickly. I would see it working like this:

tap the sync button/midi key once to tell resolume where the clip should start. tap the sync button/midi key again to tell resolume where the clip should end - resolume then sets the speed of the clip so that the whole clip (or preferable the span between the in and out points) is the same time as the specified period and retriggers the clip when the second tap is done.

We can then take over and manually keep it in sync (either by adjusting the speed or by retriggering the channel) but we'd skip the most annoying part - getting the clip to play at about the right speed in the first place.

We'd be able to bring new clips in and get them synced much quicker this way than by starting them playing and adjusting the speed manually until the loop took the right amount of time to play.

Make sense?

Post by **bart** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 14:26

yes that makes sense Dan but it seems even more complicated then a bmp counter ...

i do see a midi clock working better then an internal bpm but i do not think a lot of people have hardware that produces a midiclock .. or can ableton live send out his bpm as a midi-clock? that would be nice!

another thing we though about to automate repetative operations is to have somesort of record function that records your actions for a couple of seconds and then repeats those actions infinitely, this is possibly even better then a bmp counter because it is then easier to have clips trigger (or other actions) runn off-beat. But because of it,s flexibility is also hard to keep track of as a user.

Dan_ · Post by **Dan_** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 18:14

I don't think tapping a button/key twice to set the speed of a clip is complicated... maybe it was just the way I explained it...

I don't think the current version of ableton live sends midi timecode (or indeed, any midi at all). The musician we work with uses the timecode sent by one of his synths to keep ableton synced and we take that to sync flowmotion.

The new version of ableton live if going to have midi sending features, so I would expect it will send midi timecode.

Of course, you could always run midiox on the machine with ableton on it and use a midi loopback to get the timecode that midiox outputs into ableton and send the same timecode through midi out to the visuals machine.

I can't see us using a record/repeat function much really (for the same reason we don't use chaos much) - if we're not reacting to the music live, we prefer to put a long clip on that will work with the music until we start controlling live again.

Dan.

timEther_ · Post by **timEther_** » Fri Jun 25, 2004 21:04

Hi Bart

i am interested in the idea of an "action recorder" of some sort - i've always thought it would be awesome if resolume could record your actions (key-presses etc) and write a file/script that could be used later to re-render the effect that was happening.
imagine if it was an EDL or similar that could be loaded into and editing program! - that would combine the spontanaity of a live performance with the ability to re-edit (at high resolution) the performance for archive/music video etc
(goes starry eyed and blissful.....)

keep up the good work

Tim
http://www.warptv.co.nz

timEther_ · Post by **timEther_** » Fri Jun 25, 2004 21:07

(i would be happy if it just recorded clips triggered in the 3 layers - not necessarily effects/composite modes/speeds etc - that can always be explored once the main content is arranged on a timeline)