Help: Connect Bitwig 2.0 - XJADEO via Jack MTC on Linux (virtual midi?)

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Nice one. Fingers crossed.
Adrienne

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Hello Excds,
Any news from the xjadeo devs?

Adrienne

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Well, according to Robin it should just work fine. And he did send some debug data. I'll see if I can get an update.

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Excds wrote:Well, according to Robin it should just work fine. And he did send some debug data. I'll see if I can get an update.
I just tested it here with a short AVI clip. Start/stop works well, but there's no locate function, AFAICT. So no rewind and no autolocate. Functional, but not fully.

BWS 2.2.2, latest xjadeo from git sources.

Best,

dp

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Hi StudioDave - did you select SYNC/JACK or SYNC/MTC (Jack) or SYNC/MTC (ALSA Seq)?

I can get the same results as you using SYNC/JACK, but nothing from using MTC.

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When I repeat the steps below I get the same result as before. Xjadeo responds to Bitwig when I move the playhead and press play - Xjadeo updates its current frame to match the time in Bitwig - but it does not play, it stays fixed on that frame.
tusk wrote:
-create virtual midi devices through

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe snd-virmidi
-enable MTC for this device in Bitwig settings.

s-tart XJADEO and select MTC (Jack) as Sync source.

-in the Claudia patch bay for Jack, export midi ports, and then selecting "Start Bridge".

-patching the output from VirMIDI Raw MIDI 3-0 to the MTC In of XJADEO
So nothing has changed at all....

I asked Bitwig support about it and they said
that's why we asked if the XJADEO depends on MMC messages for play, stop etc.
Some products depend on them, even when they should not be necessary, as the slave can tell from the pure MTC messages already where the play position is and if it is stopped or advancing.
When I asked what to do they said:
we recommend finding out if XJADEO depends on MMC messages, which are not necessary for playing and stopping when using MTC.
I wonder where to go from here.

Jack transport would be another option but Bitwig only listens to play and stop, it doesn't sync it's position with jack transport.

Adrienne

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Did you try this:
http://vidplayvst.com/linux.htm

Pretty rad IMO. On Windows it's the best video VST I know by far.

Cheers,

Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
Sculptures ScreenDream Mastodon

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Hi Thomas,

I did not know it had been ported to Linux. Wow. I'll check it out now.

Thank you for the heads up!

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Thanks for the link Thomas, it's great to see developers thinking about us Linux heads too :)

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Yeah :-)

Let us know how it works for you.
I think it's the better solution compared to Xjadeo, since it runs directly inside the host, so the sync shouldn't be a problem.

Cheers,

Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
Sculptures ScreenDream Mastodon

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Hi Tom,

I checked it out. I'm impressed with the concept of the vst, but the performance has not improved compared with running vidplay on wine, last time I tried it. It drops a lot of frames, quite jerky, even on a low res video, and I am running an i7 machine with plenty of RAM. Much poorer performance compared with xjadeo.

For socring a movie it would work, but I would also like to use something to synchronise videos with a live music/dance performance I do... and for this it doesn't work. I hope they figure out the performance issues.

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Ah, too bad.
I was more thinking about scoring, I can see how Xjadeo could be nice for performance if it worked.
Are there any VJ tools for Linux that maybe support MTC or even Ableton Link?

Could also be important to use the right codec. Many of the modern size-optimised codecs like h256 aren't good for streaming, since they heavily depend on inter-frame compression. A codec with keyframes on every frame is usually easier to play back and keep in sync.

But I don't know enough about Linux to really help, it works well for me on Windows 8.1 x64.

Cheers,

Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
Sculptures ScreenDream Mastodon

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ThomasHelzle wrote:Ah, too bad.
I was more thinking about scoring, I can see how Xjadeo could be nice for performance if it worked.
Are there any VJ tools for Linux that maybe support MTC or even Ableton Link?
Ardour can do that and it can control Xjadeo via MTC. So the problem is that Bitwig is not sending the correct data.

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@Thomas,
I am using h264, with non-exotic settings, which displays fine in xjadeo with Ardour so it should work, i wonder which codec is less intensive? Thank you for your help though!

Excds - yes Ardour implements it well. Bitwig devs insist there is something wrong with the way xjadeo sends MTC, but who knows where the fault lies?

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Thanks for testing the Linux version of VidPlayVST. I think the reported problems may have been related to a bug I have just fixed. In some cases a video would not load correctly when it replaced a previous video of longer length. New version available here https://vidplayvst.com/linux.htm

Some info about Bitwig...
In most DAWs, when you move the playhead timeline by clicking within the sequencer window then plugins will 'see' the new timeline position. Bitwig is unusual because transport status seen by plugins is updated only when the transport is actually running. For VidPlayVST this means that it does not respond when you click with the magnifying glass symbol in the bar/beat display at the top of the Bitwig sequencer. When you hit play the plugin seeks to the current timeline position and then syncs to the transport. When you stop the transport the plugin freezes on the current frame and does not move again until you hit play.

Re discussions about MTC...
Just wondering if maybe Bitwig updates MTC only when the transport is running. This might explain the reported difficulties with software that syncs to MTC.

Regards to all...

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