Live Visuals

[gumpy green]

Anybody into doing live visuals??

I quite fancy getting into it so would be greatful for any titps for a beginner---ie

the better software, tutorials, help, url's , etc.

any info on this field appreciated :!:

[mux]

Anybody into doing live visuals??

I quite fancy getting into it so would be greatful for any titps for a beginner---ie

the better software, tutorials, help, url's , etc.

any info on this field appreciated :!:

I'm trying to get into this myself. Just don't have the $1000 CAD that I think it's gonna take to get into it properly. :(

By "properly", I mean:

1. Rackmount computer case. Shockmounted if possible - as lightweight as I can get, aluminum would be cool.

2. Motherboard, RAM, and hard drives - DUAL MATCHING HARD DRIVES setup into a RAID1, so when that git drops your flightcase off the back of the pickup and a hard drive crashes, you don't have to tell the guys you can't do the visuals you promised.

3. Powerful video card - depends really on what you want to use for software, but in my case I'm looking at a phat card, prolly $300 just for the card.

4. MIDI interface, wireless networking, etc. Some way to talk to the machine...

5. Software. This is where it gets confusing. :)

There's a great piece of software by DJ's Midnight and Lace from here in Vancouver, called "MIDIVID". It's *super* easy to use, it works just like a drum machine - setup your video "samples", then use MIDI to trigger them. You can do all kinds of fancy crap like setting brightness or filtering based on the incoming MIDI velocity or aftertouch or CC"s or whatever. VERY cool. Making an hour or so of visuals this way is a LOT of work, but it also comes across like nothing anyone else has ever seen. Downside: to maintain speed, the video is a little low-rez. Upside: it's rock-solid stable on everything from Windows 3.11 up.

I've also been considering something like Bome's MIDI Translator - http://www.bome.com/midi/translator/ . It's a piece of software that'll let you translate any incoming MIDI message into any other MIDI message, or even - and here's the really clever part - into a KEYBOARD EVENT. Meaning this: you know how some Winamp plugins will let you play the FX with your keyboard, change scenes and such? Well, use Bome's MIDI Translator and your MIDI sequencer to change Winamp visualizations live.

If I can raise the cash, though, I'm definitely going to go with something like R4. http://r4.rabidhamster.org/ - it's a *sick* visualization software, but it needs a really fast computer and a REALLY fast video card to be anything approaching smooth... you can load in your own textures, though, and that'd be great for something like my logo... :)

Speaking of my logo, my farking website is down today, 'cause the ISP is meefed. Jerks.

[mux]

Oh - heh - I took that as "I want to add visuals to my live music setup". If you're not talking about that, and instead want to do JUST live visuals (or maybe live visuals for a bunch of other musicians, or something), check out http://www.audiovisualizers.com - definitely the best resource for that kind of thing. ALLLLL kinds of software!

[jake]

2 computers, a dvd player and a video mixer and the bare minimum.. start saving!

[Chazbloke]

our basic visuals consist of a laptop (PIII 800, 512MB) and a projector..
s-video out of the laptop to the projector, so can have two seperate desktops screens on the laptop (dual monitor basicly)
projector screen has full screen winamp visuals, laptop screen has winamp windows + associated plug-ins setups etc...
you can trigger visual changes by "hot keys" on the keyboard, we just use the in built slide changes (fade way, fizzle, slice etc.)
its not exactly mixing visuals, but u can mess about with the settings of which ever plugin being used , or like me, just program in loads of presets and let the thing change automaticly after 20 seconds or so - that way, no one has to VJ..
you can get the visuals in beat time as well.
winamp can be set to play the mic input through itself.
The visuals take their instructions from the music's frequencies (i think...), the frequencies that go through it are the ones coming from the mic, which is the music off the sound sytem - that bit I espcially like.
is simple, yet quite effective.

[DJZeMig_L]

what about the arkaos VJ?? seems 2 b quite easy 2 use! ?!

Z

[FILTERZ]

what about the arkaos VJ?? seems 2 b quite easy 2 use! ?!

Z

I played with this and thought it was quite cool , i think you could do something with this even if you just have just one computer also ,there is another piece of software developed by coldcut called vjamm ,i dont expect these to be as good as the best set ups but if you have no money but have a computer it seems like a good place to start ;)

[gumpy green]

thanks for the help, ill do some research....

think id like to just make up some visuals on home pc, then just burn em to cd, take it to the club and let the disc play from laptop/dvd player....

not actually doing it "live", yet.