Live Show Visuals

How would one go about doing live show visuals. I don't really know much about it, but mucking about on it could be fun. Something that you can trigger and blend video clips with visual effects ect. Also, making simple music videos out of video files would be fun. I loved the way Trackermatte did his latest video with all the kaleidoscope stuff.

 

I know this probably sounds fairly daft, but I see guys doing stuff for live visuals at shows and it looks like good fun. Anyone know how to do that stuffs?

I've always wanted to play with Resolume. My friends use it for live visuals and it looks like mad fun.

You want to do your music and visuals live at the same time, or just do visuals to someone else's performance? Latter being vj'ing which I don't know fuck all about, except there is software for it.

 

Googled 'best vj software' and got this;

 

http://www.thepixelart.com/best-software-for-visual-performance-artist/

 

 

There are also ways in which you can link your audio software to visual programs, linking sounds in tracks to images and/or visual fx through osc for example. Max/Msp Jitter is good for that stuff I think. I dunno what kind of computer rig you must be running to have this kind of cpu intensive stuff working without hiccups.

wear a mask

wear nothing or use TouchDesigner

 

http://www.derivative.ca/

 

really worthwhile AV dev environment and thanks to the node-based approach, quite easy to get in

try the free PLE and have a look at those 2 workshops..

 

http://www.derivative.ca/Events/2012/MUTEKWorkshop/

http://www.derivative.ca/Events/2013/ResonateWorkshop/

 

and check the archive for real world examples..f.i. carsten nicolai

 

http://www.derivative.ca/Events/2012/unidisplay/

 

https://www.derivative.ca/Archive.asp

squarepusher's 2013 jaunt was insane, i'm amazed what he did was possible

 

I use Resolume Avenue and it does the job... actually, it's pretty fucking good. I haven't done any VJing while playing myself, because they would require a whole bunch of coordination and planning, but I'm actually planning on doing something like that when I finally release something later this year (or next year).

There are a couple of ways you could do this... I don't know if you plan on having a backing track playing in the background? If that's your plan then you could always edit your video to match the backing track and find a cue point in your track where you can trigger the video. Make sure you don't have to start the video at the same point as your track, because that won't work... or you could rewire Resolume to run in Ableton or something. That can be done, but I wouldn't risk having everything run on one computer.

Depending on how live your show will be, you could also prepare a bunch of clips for each track, add cue points to these clips and then do live editing in sync with your music.

 

I bet there's some way you could have a midi controller control both Ableton and Resolume at the same time, so if you trigger an effect in Ableton then it'll trigger some effect in Resolume. The only problem is that live effects in VJ programs look like shit. "Check out this sick twirl effect I'm adding to my videos, guys! WOOOOH!". Yeah, that stuff looks like shit.

 

I would create videos to match the backing track and build all my videos around those tracks. That way you're able to make much cooler looking videos and edit them to match your music 100%.

TouchDesigner

 

Bumping this thread because I've been looking into it myself. I'm pulling my hair out to be honest.

 

Here's my dilemma: I'm using Logic 9 to play a live set but don't know which VJ software I can control or cue video with it. There's a video track in Logic so I spent ages putting all my audio backing tracks into one channel - then added markers and meta events so I could navigate between them. Then I found out you can only have one video in the channel FFS.

 

So then I downloaded a cracked copy of Resolume. It looks great, but it doesn't look like I can trigger visuals from Logic. Apparently there's a way of routing MIDI out using IAC from Logic, which can be fed into Resolume, but it's way beyond me to figure out how to do it - plus it's meant to be a bit flaky too. There's no OSC output from Logic, so that's out too.

 

Apparently GrandVJ is a Rewire app, which means it's a lot easier to control using Logic or Reason - but I can't get hold of a copy without paying top dollar.

 

I've got a gig next week and I badly want to work visuals into it - this rate though I'll just be playing a single video on a loop with Quicktime. Not really the mind blowing experience I want to create.

 

Has anyone got any experience playing audio through Logic and creating visuals at the same time? Cheers.

  On 3/28/2014 at 10:19 PM, paranerd said:

I've always wanted to play with Resolume. My friends use it for live visuals and it looks like mad fun.

Just looked at the site (particularly the 'footage' section) and it did indeed look great but then I digged a little deeper ... Is it just a fancy pants video playback thing, like it doesn't render stuff just plays back pre-recorded video clips (albeit in some funky ways) ? Plus do you then have to buy all the clip packs separately !

Can you have multiple video channels in Logic and then switch between them?

  On 5/19/2015 at 9:37 PM, paranerd said:

Can you have multiple video channels in Logic and then switch between them?

 

Unfortunately no - theres just the one global video track. I guess Logic wasn't designed for this but even Mainstage is just as useless.

  On 5/19/2015 at 9:37 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 3/28/2014 at 10:19 PM, paranerd said:

I've always wanted to play with Resolume. My friends use it for live visuals and it looks like mad fun.

Just looked at the site (particularly the 'footage' section) and it did indeed look great but then I digged a little deeper ... Is it just a fancy pants video playback thing, like it doesn't render stuff just plays back pre-recorded video clips (albeit in some funky ways) ? Plus do you then have to buy all the clip packs separately !

 

 

 

I really can't say with confidence as I've never played with it myself, but yes I do believe it's a clip playback system with live effects. I don't know about rendering clips like in Avid MC if that's what you're referring to.

By rendering I meant like be able to make & manipulate 3d stuff, reacting to the visuals in real time. E.g something like Jitter -

 

 

If that's the case I'll just stick with the max4live VIZZable setup

Ah well, by Joe, I say that's pretty nifty!

Finally figured out how to connect Logic/Resolume - for anyone who's interested:

 

 

I was also looking into this recently - ended up shooting and making some custom videos in Premiere to go along each song in the set, then manually triggering "next" videos with a separate laptop hooked to the projector running VLC (flashy, eh?) - had the same worries as mentioned above - Ableton handling both midi info for instruments and data to VJ software (bit too risky for my blood)

When i get some time I plan on revamping a more 'live' visuals show, using an old circuit bent video effects unit i'm building and pumping video through it - main goal is to try sync it somewhat to the songs - think i can get 2 video signals going through it, but how to jump between the two without me having to switch manually is another story

Was looking into TouchDesigner when i originally thought Resolume was only for Mac - seems extreeeemely in depth, not something you just pick up the night before and try get working (which is what i did) - needs alot of time invested, which i'm hoping to do at some stage...might have a look into Resolume now that i see it's PC... and I totally agree with Squee about the basic stock effects in programs such as Resolume, absolutely naff - think it's key to try create as much of your own material/images/video/content and then use the effects sparingly and creatively to bring your material alive with the music. Shitty visuals are probably worse than no visuals.

TouchDesigner definitely looks like something I wanna learn - http://www.derivative.ca/events/2014/Lakker/

I've made a few full length promos I can use but for the stuff I haven't, this has guy been invaluable - he recently did a video for Flying Lotus. All free downloadable clips: https://vimeo.com/beeple

Balls. That's vimeo.com/beeple

Sounds cool but premiere really isn't the app for showing live visuals. The VJ stuff I've seen so far, they use their own video codecs to minimise CPU overheads - as something like MP4s require decoding. Plus they recommend 640 x 360px for dimensions, which is a joke, but that's what you gotta do for stability.

  On 5/21/2015 at 8:40 AM, westhead said:

Sounds cool but premiere really isn't the app for showing live visuals. The VJ stuff I've seen so far, they use their own video codecs to minimise CPU overheads - as something like MP4s require decoding. Plus they recommend 640 x 360px for dimensions, which is a joke, but that's what you gotta do for stability.

 

Yeah, Resolume/Arena has the DXV codec. But that 640 x 360 resolution is bullshit. I render everything in 720p and it runs perfectly in Arena

There's always VVVV. It has a learning curve along the lines of Max/MSP and PD (but is pretty different from them even though it looks similar), but if you want to do live video that interacts with your music and performance in real time it's a really good option. I just didn't have the time for it, myself.

 

 

Most of the demo videos on Youtube are lame 3d visualizations and particle effects, though.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpo28rH36Ok

 

 

 

  On 5/21/2015 at 2:25 PM, Squee said:

 

  On 5/21/2015 at 8:40 AM, westhead said:

Sounds cool but premiere really isn't the app for showing live visuals. The VJ stuff I've seen so far, they use their own video codecs to minimise CPU overheads - as something like MP4s require decoding. Plus they recommend 640 x 360px for dimensions, which is a joke, but that's what you gotta do for stability.

 

Yeah, Resolume/Arena has the DXV codec. But that 640 x 360 resolution is bullshit. I render everything in 720p and it runs perfectly in Arena

 

 

That's good to know - I'll test it out for my next live set.

Thought I'd drop these in here. Amazing what you can do with a wooden frame, white ply, a projector, a powerful PC, Resolume Arena and music. Basically just threw in some freeware clips in and ramped up the video effects. Had a friend manning the PC for tempo/scene changes. Whaddya think?

These are amazing. I recognise some of those clips too, using them myself! How many projectors are running there? Great setup and sound though, you look like some sort of minister, from the future.