Hey VDMXers! I've got a crazy busy schedule, but I wanted to take a moment to give a shout-out to the Vidvox crew for making yet another show possible. This time, I'm running visuals for Deadmau5's "Unhooked" shows, which means he plays whatever he wants and I improvise video to go along with it.
Here's the setup:
The setup for the shows is all LEDs, set up at each venue by the promoter so it's always a little different. We've asked them to provide a Back Wall, 11 Columns in front of that, and a DJ Booth surface.
So in VDMX, I work in 3 layers for this show - a Background, a Foreground, and a Playground (sound familiar?
I trigger clips into these three layers, and then I can choose which layer to show on each surface - so the back wall can show the BG while the columns and DJ Booth show the Foreground, as an example. I've grouped the BG and FG so that they can be shown on a surface together, and each surface has a Layer Mask which can use either the Foreground or Playground as a mask.
For control, I'm using the Lemur App on an iPad and a little 25-key keyboard. Here's a screenshot of my Lemur Setup:
At the top are the controls for BG and FG, including page switching (all triggering is done with a Trackball). In the middle you can see the controls for the three surfaces, and at the bottom are the controls for the Playground, which is my bin of Quartz Composer clips. The three horizontal sliders there map to control parameters in the clips, and the 8-button array mimics the 25-key keyboard in case I can't set that up. There's also a Master Fader and some per-surface coloring controls.
Finally, here's a pic of my full rig:
I'd built everything into a lovely SKB case, and then I was told to make it all lighter and smaller, so I hacked up an old camera case and filled it with a TVOne Dual DVI Scaler, 10-Port USB Hub, DVI 1x2 Distribution Amp and 8" Lilliput monitor. I snaked together everything I could, and all the devices are velcroed to the case so it stays in place pretty well. Setup and teardown times clock in at about 6 minutes apiece, not too shabby
Not pictured - the iPhone taking the picture is used as a backup source. After setting the pixel mapping to match the stage, I record about a minute of footage via Syphon, render it to mp4, and copy it over to the iPhone. I then use CineXPlayer on the phone to play the clip as a loop, using the HDMI connector to take it as a second input on the TVOne. In case of emergency, I can fade over to the iPhone. So far, I haven't had to use it, but it provides peace of mind.
Sorry if this is hard to follow, my brain is already a little fried and I have little time between shows. Feel free to ask questions and I'll get to them when I have some hotel time.
Happy New Year!