Before we get going, here’s a party trick. Find an article about the societal function of grooming amongst primates. Wherever you see the work monkey, replace it with band. For grooming use remix. The article now about the societal remixing between bands still makes perfect sense. Especially the bit about pulling off the skin for extra salt. I remix, and am remixed and the hidden bonding purpose of the process is getting elephantine. Surely a cup of tea would be an easier way?
OK, so where were we? I was going down to inspect a theatre with 3D Steve on Monday, discovered that Monday is public holiday & realised how when you’re running three jobs you don’t know arse from cake hole. Steve was similarly confused as to how many weeks can fit into a second. Academics, huh. They don’t really work.
I found a moment and loaded up the video for Walrus Guitars into VDMX and tried to play it at 720p. While fully aware that Apple computers are the one God and Steve Jobs is the Prophet PBOH, playback still sucked. Oh it’s pretty good but pretty good isn’t what I need. Normally you can allow the frame rate to wobble in VJ sets – dropped frames are just another effect. But what I need is rock solid video which keeps an external sequencer clocked.
(There was also a complete upgrade of VDMX a month ago and I didn’t notice. Arse. Cake hole. They changed the entire interface, as learning curve is the best part of new media am I right? I am always right.)
OK so how about running the video on QuickTime and sending out MIDI Time Code? Doesn’t seem to be an app for that. There’s a QuickTime player that follows MTC, but as it’s Java based the authors have dumped the Mac for dumping Java. PC version is still available and I’ll follow that up.
Here’s a thought: load the video up in Ableton Live. Set that copy of Live to be a MTC master. Now another machine can run the sequencer and receive MTC. OK cool, so I loaded Walrus Guitars into Live. Played it, that’s looking good. Dragged the video over to the external monitor and all hell broke loose. Black lines strobed through the video eventually leading to both screens having seizures and, as Macintoshes never crash, catatonic at the beach if you know what I mean.
Maybe I don’t use the Mac. At least I need to find some other software that plays video on the external screen without done pooh itself. Looks like Soundtrack Pro will take a MTC input.
Maybe I play the video off the DELL laptop instead, 8 cores it should be able to do it.
(Just for shits and giggles I installed OSX 10.6.7 on the DELL, got it it to boot, realised that it was a completely useless achievement and took it off again. I don’t know… Hey – now look – the best selling app on the iPad is something that reproduces your Windows desktop on the iPad screen. If that doesn’t tell you that the rhetoric is indivisible by the reality I dunno what. In the ‘post PC’ era what do people most want? – to use their PC. Case closed.)
OK so, when the temperature next goes above freezing, to do:
See if Soundtrack Pro can play a video and send MTC at once. Answer – no, but it will ‘chase’ MTC. What about Logic?
Try out the DELL as a MTC slave. But I don’t want to be transporting the DELL. The DELL is too nice.
Chip icicles off my bed cover while fighting a sense of impending doom.
UPDATE
Daniel says try Reaper. Will do!
Looks like playback is choppy no matter what I use – except QuickTime player itself. I have a suspicion. Maybe the drive is fragmented? NO! Macintosh Drives are NEVER fragmented. You don’t have to defrag an OSX disc because oh shut up and lets have a look.
Fuck. My test file is in 231 fragments. In fact the whole hard drive looks like Swiss cheese. Bought a copy of iDefrag (which makes OSX cost another 30 bucks people, but hey you do get GarageBand) and I’ll start doing the hard drive version of Aliens 2.
Meanwhile, yeah, I’ll probably need a Firewire 800 external. Or maybe USB3 or whatever stuff the computer people have come up with in the last few weeks. Sigh.
Posted inRanting