multiple synced video streams?

[mabuse07]

I have six video files (PAL resolution) that I want to play back in sync to each other and then instantly switch between the individual video sequences through a key press.

I want only to show one video and then switch to another one at the exact same frame within the sequence.

Can anyone recommend me a software solution to do that on a Windows machine?

TIA!
mabuse07

[Meierhans]

How long do these video sequences last?? If they are only 20-30 seconds you could use 6 PC`s with Vjo and a midi keyboard to trigger em.
The good point: Everytime you trigger your are 100% in sync again.

Longer clips will need a program that does a real sync between the clips. There is one for commercial presentations, but its really expensive.
Can`t remember te name.... anybody can do so?

[bigloose]

I don't have a windows solution but...

Take 6 same brand/model VCR/VCD/DVD player and 1 remote controle
when u're ready press strart on the remote they should start at the same time...
b!gl00z3

[mabuse07]

Originally posted by bigloose
I don't have a windows solution but...

Take 6 same brand/model VCR/VCD/DVD player and 1 remote controle
when u're ready press strart on the remote they should start at the same time...
b!gl00z3

Both nice suggestions, but I need a.) frame precise sync, b.) a software-only solution (needs to setup real quick).

Any other suggestions?
Just tried Resolume, but that doesn't handle PAL sized footage well, and it really bogs down with six simultaneous sequences. Also I could not find a way to lock the playback of the six videos in sync.

M.

[mabuse07]

Originally posted by Meierhans
How long do these video sequences last?? If they are only 20-30 seconds you could use 6 PC`s with Vjo and a midi keyboard to trigger em.
The good point: Everytime you trigger your are 100% in sync again.

Longer clips will need a program that does a real sync between the clips. There is one for commercial presentations, but its really expensive.
Can`t remember te name.... anybody can do so?

The sequences (six videos per sequence) are between 10 and 50 seconds.

Do you have any clue on that commercial presentation software? Any keyword I could search for on Google?

M.

[spark]

if you've got a budget, no matter how small, then talk to the people at green-hippo.com

they do this all the time, on windows, and they're also the people who make the hippotizer vjo based hardware.

[Meierhans]

it really bogs down with six simultaneous sequences

You wanna run them on one PC?? 6 Video cards or what? :>

Sorry, but i can`t remember the name of the company. I did search a little in google, but did not find anything...

[mabuse07]

Originally posted by Meierhans


You wanna run them on one PC?? 6 Video cards or what? :>

Sorry, but i can`t remember the name of the company. I did search a little in google, but did not find anything...

Thanks for looking. :-)

Kinda hard to explain what I want: I would like to select six different video files (each has the same length etc.). Then I would like to playback one of them (in PAL resolution if possible). On a keystroke, I'd like to switch to a different video file, but at the same time position within the video file.

Any ideas?
M.

[Meierhans]

So it switches seamless at the last frame from last clip to the next one??

Like several rendered clips with a driving car, turning to different directions in different clips?

This is really hard to do , but i can imagine a solution:

Use Vjo with the new midi-plugin that sends 1 clock signal per frame. (Set maxfps to 25 (PAL) or 30 (NTSC)

Syncronize a midi sequenzer in a way it uses this clock as master.
Quantitsize your midi inputs in a way it only triggers at clip ends
(all clips need to be the same lenght)
I don`t know in what midi sequenzer you can do such big quantisation steps. (like 10 second)

I hope there will be a plugin in the future that support seamless playing of clips/parts of clips directly (+stretched in sync to music)

Cheers Meierhans

[bigloose]

on mac it should work with nato but I'm not using it so I don't know
b!gl00z3

[Meierhans]

On a keystroke, I'd like to switch to a different video file, but at the same time position within the video file.

Do you mean: Jump at frame 37 from video A to video B at frame 37??

So all clips gotta run at the same time to keep them in sync -->6 times full PAL on 1 PC??

... thats impossible on today PC systems!
What exactly do you wanna do with this???


Perhabs if developers of Vjo could add a "only count frames but don`t decompress avi" option into mixer plug.
There already the possibility off freeze /
don`t freeze channels that aren`t visible.
But 2-3 full PAL already clips eat up all recources. (Even in Cinepak/Mideo)
I will ask them later.

(Sorry if I`m talkin only about Vjo, but its the main proggy I do use, so my solutions mostly base on it)

[sleepytom]

VJamm 2 Pro can do exatly what you require www.vjammpro.com or http://www.camart.co.uk/vjamm/vjamm24demo.zip for a demo version

[eXhale]

This is a feature I wanted to ask the Resolume guys to add. There is already the option to restart playing a video at the moment when it was stopped (as opposed to restart from the beginning) but it would be nice if all the videos could keep on "playing" (only counting the frames of course) and be replayed in sync whenever we want. At the moment such synch could only be done by changing layers but it's more complicated and, as ***** said, there is only 3 layers in Resolume.

[KillingFrenzy]

This is kind of wacked....
And it would be WAY less complicated with 4 instead of 6 streams.
BUT.

You can take your six streams of video and edit them into one file.

123
456

So, you end up with one file that chugs along at a framerate with all six streams displayed at once (if it were 4 streams, it would just be simple 1/4 screens, six makes things ugly). Now, you define keys to focus on 1/6 of the screen. The video will always be in sync, you're just changing your focus on it to the section you want.

The logistics of what resolution and compression you're able to do this at, are sort of up to you. But using a trick like this might get you around the syncing issue or stream limitation issue in Resolume.

Home DVD players will not necessarily sync... even if they are the same model.
You need to get one of the timecode syncable higher end ones. Even then, getting six going would be a pain in the ass.

DV decks/and or even Digital-8 decks are more likely to be able to be cued and set off simultaneously. You could rent/borrow some and then use a rented/borrowed mixer. That would be the best quality solution short of using professional gear like betasp decks.

Oh yeah, if you do end up having to manually release 6 machines, use staggered cues. So have each tape have a gap and then a countdown to start the next one. It will add time to your startup, but will keep you from having to trigger six at once.

[Anyone]

hi,

if you're a control freak and are familiar with coding,
you can do this extremely precisely with Macromedia Director
and a few xtras...

if you have Director, tell me and i'll send you some instructions...

NE1

[MoRpH]

I'm not 100% sure wether VJamm can or wether maybe Tom miss understood, but VJamm is a VERY specialized bit of software for triggering and switching A/V, so it wouldn't amaze me if it did have the sycho/count functions your after.

[BrainStove]

Yeah! I?m not death sure, but I think Tom is right about that full PAL rez VJAMM-PRO capability (I?ll have to check again), but maybe worth to check also the evolution of these threads too Mabuse07.

1.-> http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=684
2.-> http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=619

[norm]

what about EyesWeb? I think there should it be possible, but the setup wouldn't be so easy. But you can use Midi and/or Keyboard or Mouse, even a serial connection or a Network to controll...

[sleepytom]

come on folks get with the program!!

VJamm 2 Pro can of course playback fullscreen PAL (768x576) clips (there will very soon be support for clip resolutions above this eg 1024x768 and 1024x576 widescreen)

for fully synched clips you'll want to make all the clips the same number of frames long (add black on the end if you need to have diffrent length clips) then load them up in sync mode and they'll be playing in sync - you can then mute and unmute them and they'll maintain there synced positions

on a lower power computer you'll get a slow framerate but on a good fast computer using an efficant codec you'll get full framerate even when displaying all 6 clips at once

Gridio (http://www.gridio.com) [our installation for the Pompidou Centre] works just like this -we're not using fullframe pal clips (all the clips are 384x288 indeo 5.1) but we're running 16 at once with an output display size of 1024x768 so the data rate and decompression is similar to 6 fullframe pal clips.

[elbows]

Ive been meaning to buy vjamm 2 pro, as original vjamm was the first VJ app I ever used. Certainly has some unique features, and still the only package thats suitable if you need full audio with the movies too, as far as I know?

[Meierhans]

Did you try it??

About clips:

1 full pal clip = 4 half pal clips (...x?)

16 half pal clips = 4 full pal clips.

6 full pal clips = 24 half pal clips

From my experience i do know: One half pal clip needs al least
1 mb/sec for reasonable quality

Does mute mean: Count frames but do not decompress????

[sleepytom]

Full PAl = half pal x2
Full pal = Quarter pal x4

half pal is hardly ever used as its an odd shape (768x288)
quarter pal is 384 x288

people often missunderstand area calculation - if you divide both the x and y by 2 then the area your left with is one quarter the size of the original

mute means that no sound or video is diplayed but the file is still playing and thus retaining sync

download the gridio demo version which comes with 4 quarterscreen clips that play in sync mode - this will simply demo the technology for you

[Meierhans]

Thank you for your explanaition.

I always thought half is ment on both, x and y, so the result is a quater of the full res.

So 384*288 is quater not half :>

[mabuse07]

Thanks guys!

"just counting frames", that's exactly what I want.

The picture-in-picture option is a neat idea, but it limits the resolution too much for what I need (I need at least 640x480, and 640 * 3 = 1920 x 960 doesn't sound to me like smooth playback. Or does anyone know a codec that would do that on a decent machine?

Renting hardware is not an option, unfortunately (neither is buying six decks), so I have to use a pure software solution.

I will definitely check out vjpro and see what it does.

In the meantime I think I found an alternative: Flash MX. :-)
It does playback video streams nicely, it can layer them easily and it is fairly straight-forward to add code to toggle the visibilty of each video object.

Thanks again for the good suggestions,

mabuse

PS: is there any VJ'ing going on in the area of Stuttgart?

[schank]

hardware solution: use 6 dvd players with a syncstarter
(every loop started at the same frame) i dont know where you live but here in amsterdam you can rent them at montevideo.nl
http://dusi.glow.nl

[krokodril]

www.datapath.com (or co.uk maybe)
software called mosaic, used to build videowalls, what it basically does is render multiple streams, so You'd need a 6 channel mixer at that. als0 there exists something like visualcircuits who produce a card for commercial presentations running four sync mpeg streams + a tbc/genlock signal (so one could sync a umatic or something)

[trips]

Hello!My name is David, I'm a software developer.I've developed some programs for visuals to my group of vj's.
I can create a simple program that can help you (to sinc 6 videos with press a key to the same frame to the next video).This software will be that you want:resolution,number of videos, you can assign a each video to a diferent key, ....
Wtih this software, you only needs a pc with windows so.
If you are interested, mail me.
Salutations

[slimpslamp]

Have a look here, a DVD syncstart unit: http://home.hetnet.nl/~raydike/index.html

[cat]

VVVV could do it too Http:/vvvv.meso.net
if you dont need more than 1 playing at a time.
It would handle PAL or greater too, and its free, (still in beta) might take a while to get your head round though, If you need help email me...

[Nema]

i nearly don't dare mentining hippotizer here, because morph will kill me (but 6 simultaneous PAL videos really don't challenge the hippotizer)...

[djMidnight]

As long as your video clips are entirely composed of keyframes, there's no need to actually decode them all. You could read the data for all six sources, but only actually decompress the one you were interested in. You'd need a machine with a fast HD in it, or enough RAM to just load all the clips.

If you want to try it, I can write you a lock-step multi-clip playback system as a MidiVid GPU plugin. Press "play", and then use a midi controller or one of the interface knobs to switch clips, so it could be sequenced, and it'd be frame exact. If you're cool with using an AVI-based codec, it'd probably take me less than a weekend.

Jason