LIVE! AVIT(AS) talk...

[spark]

avit brighton is go and this is live from the avit(as) talk... avit anarchy talk. a response to the route of increased organisation and legitimacy that avit brighton took.

we have 17 people here, including the founder of VJC, exhale, myself and unj who got the whole avit thing going back when it was the still the 'vjc gig' and leeds wasn't a certainty, and the crew who have set this up after the debates on vjc in the run up to avit - fALk and fREd.

we're in the chat room now if you want to interact, and i'll post an update in a second...

toby

[bigloose]

coool....
say hi to everybody...
>bigl00z3<

[spark]

paraphrased quotes....

falk - "there is a real danger for the vj scene and some directions it is taking could kill the collaborative scene we have at the moment. there are other scenes that we can learn from..."

falk "diva killed the superstar" - tz team "there are a lot of people who want to be vj superstar, i think we just have to wait and people will see by themselves" "you have to earn your life, to create you need time and you need money to pay the rent and so what we are looking for is the fine line between being commercial and doing things for their worth."

falk "you do videomixing for living not for a job"

murph - "i think the two concepts are fundamentally at odds - you have to make the rent, and you have to make the rent!"

[spark]

falk - "you can use this tool to enhance your position, you can say we do this for the belief of what we're doing"

murph "there are a lot of messages you can put on the screen, if you do this uncommercially you can get to chose whether its because there is not a big enough market for the vjs or you have the choice"

avit(as) logo screen is going 'tolerate, reflect, respect"

tz - "there are a lot of different styles but maybe there is a minimal level, we cannot judge who is the best as so many things just cannot be compared, but there are things like a emotional connection, or maybe just a basic level of thought that has gone into making it, not just someone who turns up and presses buttons to fun" "i wonder why i am at a vj festival when i see dancing girls on the screen,

tz - "maybe what we're saying there is a minimum level that respects that people have come in to the venue to be there and enjoy, watch."

aargh - lots and lots of tasy talk but i'm in it now and cant keep up here at all! i'll produce the recording and get it online asap - if its a recording we can use straight then hopefully later today, depending on how the wifi access goes.
"

ask questions here and i'll relay them!

toby

[spark]

ok no time for processing video, but here is a sneak peek of the mass jam setup, the upstairs multirig room.

http://www.avit.info/media/gallery/friday-mass-jam/DSC00079

toby

[disassembler]

THe stream is beautiful.

[disassembler]

Stream gone :help:

[disassembler]

Hurrraaaaaayayy!!!!
thank you;)

[disassembler]

That was rad.

[streamaudio]

I had the pleasure of being involved in the streaming tonight, so I was there. Wow - that rocked. Fucking amazing visuals all around the room, and Innerfield - that's some sound system.

How was the stream?

[WordVirus23]

for a while around 5pm PST I saw what appeared to be awful mixing... fades to blue screens, and what appeared to be someone who's never used a video mixer mixing between a camera (crowd looked good) and some VJs... the mixing consisted of Take to the camera, take back to visuals, take to camera, take back... etc

honestly, seeing 3 blue screens, and two windows/mac interfaces within 30 minutes made me feel pretty good about my shows...
<knocks on wood> I've had 1 GUI show up for approx 1.5 seconds in the last... uh... months.

the VJing was good... the mixer should be shot. I saw some great stuff, that was just BEGGING to be lumakeyed with the live camera.... none of that tho. in fact, so far as I could tell, there was only 1 video feed being sent over the net, come on guys, I know y'all have at least 5 video feeds....

Looks (from the live camera) like everything is going well, at least the crowd was enjoying themselves... and good music :)

..james...

[disassembler]

Hey James,

From what I could tell the stream mixer was mixing from the other VJ's and the crowd. It wasn't just one VJ. I did see all the flaws your talking about but shit I'm just gald to get to see anything. It has to be the finest stream I've ever seen live. I kinda like that the mixer doesn't do anything but fades cause then I get a less contaminated stream of the people performing.

KEEP uP the good stuff AVIT UK. This is soooo cool. I do feel like I get to be a part of it. Well I am bummed I missed the "sampled vs. self-created debate"..

I forgot to logout of the chat room while I was at work yesterday and now I can't login. Double login isn't allow I guess. Perhaps I will become dizassembler for a day. So I can participate greater.

[streamaudio]

Yeah, we did have some technical problems with the video feed to the streaming crew last night, so we basically ended up having to improvise. What we should have had was just one pre-mixed feed coming through to the streaming guys, but instead what we had to do was take a feed from one VJ's mixer for a while, then change it to another VJ's mixer, and so on. And if one of those VJ's blue screened, well that's the video feed that was streamed!

As for the comments on the mixer - well, point taken. This mixer was on the streaming desk, and wasn't operated by a VJ. Maybe we could have done better, but we did what we could under the circumstances, and I can vouch for the fact that the guys that did the streaming worked their asses off last night to give you guys something to look at and listen to.

This was a learning curve for all of us! But hey, all comments are appreciated, so thanks for the feedback!

[WordVirus23]

the chat room isn't letting me in either :(

I'm sorry if my earlier post sounded too negative, I know there are a gajillion things to take care of. and I too am sorry I missed the sampling debate. I'm glad to see the stream, thanks for busting ass everyone :) hope all goes well. (looks & sounds like they are so far)

..james...

[superj]

Hola,

I had to interject a comment or two concerning the stream from AVIT as I and my business partner were responsible.

- The mass jam night was a logistical nightmare and we never did get a "video" stream as promised from the VJ rig. We were told not to bring a vision mixer as it would "not be needed" and not to film any of the audience. During the setup day of the jam after waiting hours and asking constantly for a "test" feed, we took it on upon ourselves to build the required composite cable during the last hour before the start time of the event. We tested the cable which worked fine and after running the length up to the video matrix, nobody seemed to actually know where to plug in?! Without mentioning names I was actually told by one of the few in charge, "I don't care about the webcast" and walked off. I've never been so tempted to run SMPTE color bars into the encoder and i too walk off... We decided to fire up the camera and also start taking feeds from individual VJ's by climing into the VJ rig and manually un-plugging and plugging as needed. Bluescreens etc. were not the product of our mixing (from a mixer we didn't need) and as far as chroma keying visuals on top of the live audience: this isn't what a broadcast is about.
We provide clean high quality streams within the constraints given, bandwidth, codecs, window size etc.

- The day after the jam we were given tapes to stream:
1st one had no audio, the 2nd was so underexposed it looked black onscreen and the 3rd had such loud ambient room noise we couldn't use it.

- The person doing the mixing on the jamm night (me) has been designing visuals for live performances for years and has been an avid user of After Effects (since version 3) and Combustion.

I don't mean to sound overly negative but i had to just clear a few points.

Overall a good time was had by all.

Adios and all the best,

Stuart Smith
Havelina Webcasting
www.havelina.com

[syzygy]

Yep, any problems with the streaming were down to AVIt and not Havelina - they did a supurb job of streaming out our content. If our content was at times a bit, shall we say, chaotic, then that was not the streaming guys fault - they really did do the best that anyone could hope for to deal with what we threw at them ;)

The streaming side of things has been a real learning experience for us. We have now seen the importance of what happens with the content before it goes to the streamers to be sent out, so that is something we'll be working on. You can all expect a *much* more slick operation next year...

At least now we have an idea of the issues that are involved in streaming an event like this - that's something we can pass to anyone else around the world that is planning an AVIT (or indeed other kind of event)

Dan.