Your first music video #3

In my little series I sketched, which applications I will use to create a video clip for one of my song, that I can upload to Youtube or Vimeo. The second post tried to use the Syphon Recorder for that purpose.

Today, I will check out the internal recording function of Resolume Avenue. This feature was released with Avenue 4.

You can find the recording button at the right hand side of the application. Just press the button to start and stop recording – sounds simple. Avenue creates a Quicktime movie file and Wav audio file in the Resolumne Avenue 4 Recordings directory. You can adjust the location of this folder with the help of the Preferences dialog. If you like to set the dimension of the movie, you have to open the Composition/Settings menu.

In the beginning the recording don’t work on my machine. Sometimes google is your best friend. I found out, that the speed of your hard disk (SSD is better) and internal RAM limits the dimension of your movie you like to render to disk. Unfortunately, Avenue 4.1.1 don’t shows a hint, that there is a problem. Just the button shows after starting the recording the label “Working..”. I found the missing hint in Avenue’s log file (Resolume Avenue 4 log.txt: “Unable to allocate enough memory, recording will be finalized!”).

I read some discussion about the subject in the Resolume forum. There are so many threads in the forum about that, so I’m not sure, this is the best approach. At least for today, I won’t change my plan to use the internal function. I solve the problem by setting a smaller movie dimension. If I close all other applications, I can record a video with the size 1280 x 720 and that’s for sure okay for upload, but 1280 x 720 pixel should be enough for that purpose.

Unfortunately, the frame rate of the recorded movie is 24.7, although Avenue shows the visual with a higher frequency. I’m afraid that a value under 25 fps is not what I’m looking for. Maybe my machine is to slow for the dimension I have chosen. Anyway.

Logically, the movie is too long, because of starting the recording before beginning the performance and stopping it after the performance has ended. In addition to this, there are two files and the movie itself is silent. So I have to find a way to handle this, without buying Final Cut.

That’s all for today. Next time more!

alexander

Update: Today a got feedback from the Resolume Support regarding my questions about its internal recording function.

You’re comparing two similar features with different purposes. The Resolume recorder is a live sampling tool, which is meant to record a short sequence of your main output and then bring it back in the mix. This way you don’t have to keep moving a fader to have a certain look. It’s *not* a full fledged video production tool.

And about the missing message:

This is a bug, and we’d appreciate it if you could contact us directly.

So that means, to achieve my target, I should use the Syphon Recorder.

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Your first music video #2

In my first post of this series I sketched, which applications I will use to create a video clip for one of my songs. You may remember my lengthy and perhaps confusing description of a workflow, which finally results a movie file, that I can upload to Youtube or Vimeo. For this first try, I will check out the third way. Let’s go on.

Keeping the goal ever present means in this case, what video format and compression should I use? Many websites agreed that these settings are useful:

• Dimension: 1280 x 720 pixel
• Format: Quicktime movie
• Compression: H.264
• Frame rate: 25 per second
• Audio: AAC, 44.1 kHz

Maybe a dimension of 1920×1080 or 1440×1080 is better for HD video. I learned, that it is useless to set the frame rate to 29.97, because Vimeo converts all HD videos only up to 25 frames per second in order to optimize playback performance. Ok, that means our goal is clearly formulated and we can create a video. Please refere to my first post, if not everything is clear.

We have to activate Syphon in Resolume Avenue. Go to the Preferences/Video dialog and check Syphon Input & Output.

The default dimension of your Resolume project could be not correct, so open the menu “Composition/settings” and set the dimension to 1280 x 720 pixel.

After that start the Syphon Recorder and open the Preferences. Change the Video settings like in the list above. The shown dimensions are just an example. This depends on the power of your system.

Now we are are almost finished. Press Syphon Recorder’s Record button and start Resolume’s visuals. Stop the recording and you will find a move file on your hard disk. Yeah!

Unfortunately, my video didn’t contain any audio. I don’t worried about that, because something just had to go wrong. It was clear to me, that I have to postprocess my recording, for getting the right starting and ending point of the final video.

So, the postprocessing is the last step. I don’t own Final cut, but I helped myself using iMove 11, it came with my iMac. I imported the silent video and audio file into the application. It takes a bit time to find the settings, in order to get the result I expect: Go to the menu Shared/Export using quicktime... Press the Options.. button, than the Settings.. respectively Size.. button and enter the values from above again.

That’s it! You got your first video ready for upload to Youtube or Vimeo, but this is only the beginning. To be continued.

alexander

Your first music video

Today, I have decided to realize a long cherished dream. What about making visuals for my music? It is not my intention to start vjing, I would like to create music videos. I have in mind abstract pictures, so processing computer graphics and effects should be the right starting point. The beginning is, as always, the most difficult, for that reason I would like to share my experiences by some posts and this one is the first.

What do I need for my first music video? Software is always a good answer, when you don’t know how to start.

My prefered DAW is Ableton Live. I would like to trigger, sync and control my visuals directly from Ableton. I read that VDMX 5 or Resolume could do this job. Both are known VJ software programs and regarded as equivalent. Don’t ask me my, I decided to use Resolume Avenue. I found out, that there is a full functional demo version. That is the way things should be.

Resolume supports Quartz composer patches. So I installed the Apple‘s Quartz composer. That was not so simple. You have to know that the Quartz composer is delivered as part of the Developer toolset for Graphics and Animation. I’m running Mac OS X 10.6.8, so I had to search a while on Apple’s developer website in order to find the right version. And I was forced to register myself as developer, but it’s free of charge. That means the second step is done.

The next step should be rendering the visuals to disk. Unfortunately, there are three possibilities. For a beginner like me it is hard to identify, which approach is the best for my purposes. Since Avenue 4 there is a internal recording function, but my first tests and studying the Resolume Forum raised doubts over this feature – in a later post more about that.

The second alternative, buy a HDMI video capture card – in order to get the file – is for a start to expensive. But there is a third solution: The open source software Syphon Recorder it records video from any Syphon supporting application. Unfortunately, the recorder is in beta state. And there are more risks: It’s not a good idea to record to disk while reading video during a performance from the disk, because frame dropping can happen. We will see how good it works.

But, how can Resolume stream into the recorder? The name of this solution is called Syphon. This free application routes the visual output of one program to another.

So, these are my first steps to make my first music video. For my taste there are to many application involved and chained. Wait and see how it works. To be continued.

alexander

Continue reading with Part #2.