VDMX STRUCTURE

I came across this post in Create Digital Motion a while back called 'Structuring a VJ set' by Momo the monster. In it he explains to the viewer how he would go about creating various types of media that would run in different media sets - and be on specific layers- thus allowing more control over what is being displayed on screen. I had tried exactly the same method before (and assigning the clips to Ableton tracks) with a degree of success. The limitations were that movies being triggered in fast sequences would either run with a delay - or in the worst case, crash the machine.

Click on the shots of my set-up, the output, and what I was trying to achieve...

----------

1.

The first is a shot of Ableton, with a number of MIDI tracks, all sending signals out that can be read by VDMX. There are a couple of 'audio in' tracks for any incoming music that I want the visuals to sync with.

In the MIDI slots, I have a number of pre-made sequences that are sending signals out. What this set-up also allows for is creating sequences (and therefore visual patterns) on the fly - by using a MIDI keyboard, such as the M-Audio Oxygen8 that I have.

There are 12 MIDI slots in total - 2 for background patterns, 2 for drum patterns, 2 for percussion (or other random sound effect) patterns, 2 for bass patterns, and 4 more called 'Main' - which can contain main song patterns or live input - so it would literally like playing videos as a piano

----------

2.

The second shot is of VDMX - with 12 Media bins, linking back to the 12 MIDI slots that I have. From the shot you can see that there isn't much in the way of Media here, however They could be filled with large amounts of clips that can represent each sound or note - it is here however that the ambitious size of the project starts to enter pitfalls as literally trying to render out so many videos at such speeds uses up massive chunks of power. And thus crashes horribly.

----------

3.
This is a shot of the output window, displaying several layers of video - all reacting to MIDI.

----------

4.

And this is an Illustrator image of the kind of visuals scene I was trying to achieve...
Each of these elements would be linked to MIDI and thus react (changing shape, colour, or animating in an entirely different way) to each signal.

I'd like to try a set-up such as this on Modul8, just to check speeds and the ease of linking videos - though the Modul8 demo is, alas, quite limiting because of the lack of module support.