Quote Originally Posted by 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 :!:
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.