Comments on: VJ Day Mailbag: What VJ Software to Use?

By: hendrik

hendrik — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:34:32 +0000

once again … vj-software
hope the link works now … best,
hendrik

By: hendrik

hendrik — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:32:01 +0000

hi,

there is a free basic version of this new software:

best,
hendrik

By: robotkid

robotkid — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:56:03 +0000

Hey gang,

I’ve been using Resolume for more abstract video mixing, (less beat driven) and then Vjamm for AV video sampling (triggering samples and loops to the beat.) Both are great for their own specific purposes.

A great resource for learning about all this is Vj Central They have some great forums there were you can talk to experienced VJs.

On a side note, I just got back from seeing Meat Beat Manifesto in Boston…it was AMAZING! You need to go see one of their last shows:

WED JUN 29 Baltimore, MD - Sonar
THU JUN 30 New York, NY - Irving Plaza

Lots of live video sampling…totally amazing. Can’t recommend enough. Check out their gear photos on their MySpace page:

Meat Beat Manifesto

By: hps

hps — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:49:35 +0000

I don’t really know about VJ software per se, but any OS X Tiger user interested in syncing visuals to MIDI, audio, keyboard, mouse, tablet or whatever, should seriously check out Quartz Composer, included in the Developer Tools package on the Tiger installation DVD, installed in /Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/.

It is an amazing piece of modular (kind of reminds me of Max) visual effects software with great support for QuickTime videos and Core Image effects (among many other things).

You can see a smallish screenshot of Quartz Composer on Apple’s Core Image development page.

By: cycle60

cycle60 — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:01:12 +0000

don't forget to check out Modul8 from garageCUBE. And there are plenty who still use Arkaos.

By: jaymis

jaymis — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:35:11 +0000

Wow. My favourite music tech blog just got more relevant :)
VJing is as personal as any other form of music making, so the most important thing is to try out a whole lot of different tools and figure out what you like. I come from a Photoshop/Premiere (and more recently After Effects) background and am a digital film/multimedia student so for me Resolume was great as it was more like “editing live” than programs like Arkaos which felt to me like it was very basic and aimed at people who want to press some buttons and go WHOO! TUNNEL!

Once you’ve figured out what you work best with (or even beforehand if you’re super-organized) you really REALLY need a midi controller for VJing. Once again this really depends on style, but my video editing style is a very granular Chris Cunningham style of synced editing, so when VJing I’m hitting a button or moving a slider (or both) on basically every beat. I’ve seen people VJ with just a laptop and trackpad, which works but a midi controller really takes your performance to the next level. I’ve used the Evolution UC-16 and X-session, but soon after the Behringer BCR2000 was released in Australia I picked up one of those and it’s fantastic! Pretty cheap, so many control options and plenty of blinkenlights for those dark VJ booths. My only problem with the BCR is the lack of sliders can make it a bit hard to do a full fade from 0-255. Should be solving that soon though with the addition of a BCD2000, which should allow me to control both audio and video from the same controller (via 2 seperate laptops) and put together some interesting stuff while I save the money for a couple of DVJ-X1s and a decent vision mixer.