Bitwig

Excds · Post by **Excds** » Fri Jan 13, 2017 10:26 am

Note: You have to use the jack sound system. But that is available for Windows as well.

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Fri Jan 13, 2017 10:43 am

Excds wrote:
lehtiniemi wrote:
ThomasHelzle wrote:Bitwig 2.0 has MTC output now and I just tried to use Cubase 8 LE slaved to it as Video Player on Windows 8.1 x64.
Works great and only uses ~2% CPU here. I updated to Cubase LE 8 a while ago from an ages old hardware-bundled LE 4 for 10 Euro...

Best solution so far for me, having the video fullscreen on my second monitor.

Cheers,

Tom
Yea, it sucks there isn't (=I haven't found) a slaveable video player for Windows. Mac has "Video Slave" (ironic) but video player is still missing. Of course, when scoring, you eventually want to be able to export stuff as well for demo purposes for the client so built-in support is eventually needed. But hoping to find a light-weight solution for Windows as well. Perhaps you can slave Ableton Live with MTC? Haven't tried. As far as I remember, Ableton Live video window disappears when you switch to another app so this is an annoyance if you would use it with another software as any kind of master.
Try xjadeo, it's available for Windows: http://xjadeo.sourceforge.net/download.html

I spent days on it and it does not really work on Windows.
It only works with Jack and Jack is a nightmare on Windows (I personally find it a nightmare on Linux as well). I had to get rid of Jack because it crashed several audio tools I use by simply being installed.
The other sync-options just don't work.
Otherwise I would be happy to use it.

Cheers,

Tom

StudioDave · Post by **StudioDave** » Fri Jan 13, 2017 11:54 am

ThomasHelzle wrote:... Jack is a nightmare on Windows (I personally find it a nightmare on Linux as well).

re: your Jack/Linux experience: Saddened to hear it, Tom. My guess is a badly configured system, but of course without further details it's hard to pinpoint where things went wrong. FWIW, I've been running BW since the early releases, always with Jack and rarely (never?) with any Jack-related issues. Jack performance is rock-steady here, Xjadeo too.

Running Fedora 21 x86_64 with a realtime kernel from the Planet CCRMA repo. Very stable system.

Best regards,

dp

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Fri Jan 13, 2017 12:14 pm

StudioDave wrote:
ThomasHelzle wrote:... Jack is a nightmare on Windows (I personally find it a nightmare on Linux as well).
re: your Jack/Linux experience: Saddened to hear it, Tom. My guess is a badly configured system, but of course without further details it's hard to pinpoint where things went wrong. FWIW, I've been running BW since the early releases, always with Jack and rarely (never?) with any Jack-related issues. Jack performance is rock-steady here, Xjadeo too.

Running Fedora 21 x86_64 with a realtime kernel from the Planet CCRMA repo. Very stable system.

Best regards,

dp

Linux just isn't made for me, I'm not made for Linux and Jack isn't made for Windows.
But I don't want to turn this into a Linux/Jack rant, instead I'm more interested in working solutions in the here and now.

Cheers,

Tom

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Fri Jan 13, 2017 9:30 pm

A first small project done in Bitwig Studio 2.0 Alpha 6 with Cubase 8 LE as video player, synced via MTC:

"Childs Play"

https://vimeo.com/199371664

See the video comments on Vimeo for more information.

Cheers,

Tom

VIGOMUSIC · Post by **VIGOMUSIC** » Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:51 pm

Hello Thomas, look great, can you explain how to "link" bitwig 2 with Cubase LE ?
Do you need to use LoopBe or something similar ?

Thanks

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:26 pm

Hey Vigo,

yeah, I use LoopMidi, but LoopBe would also work.
http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html

On the Synchronisation page in Bitwig Studio 2 you set for instance the "loopMIDI Port 1" to send MTC.
Then in Cubase (I only have Cubase LE 8, but it's probably the same in the full version) you go to the Transport Menu -> Project Synchronisation Setup. There you select "Midi Timecode (which is what MTC in Bitwig means) and select the same Midi port as in Bitwig, in my example again "loopMIDI Port 1".
And then you again open the Transport Menu and select: "Use External Sync".
Now Cubase should follow your timeline in Bitwig Studio.
I only created one single Video Track without audio.
And like I wrote before: if Cubase is in the background, the video window is hidden. To work around it, you can maximise the video window on a second monitor (which is the best way to work anyway IMO).

The same also works with Ableton Live, but I no longer have a full version so can't test it, it's possible that it needs "Clock" and "SPP" instead of MTC ("Midi Beat Clock" and "Song Position Pointer"). You also need to set Live in external sync mode, IIRC it's in the transport bar somewhere - or was it in the upper left corner?

I hope this helps,

Cheers,

Tom

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:42 pm

Short after I wrote above I stumbled upon this:
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/vidpla ... layvst-com
Free ATM (the current open beta runs until September 2017), 32 and 64 Bit, PC and Mac.
Uses FFMPEG so supports a huge load of formats.
In a quick test it worked like a charm!!!

So please everybody give it a try and report your findings here - this may be the solution for all us video people!!!

Cheers,

Tom

VIGOMUSIC · Post by **VIGOMUSIC** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:13 am

I tried between Bitwig 2 and Cubase LE with loopbe and your instructions, working well thanks

Now I'm downloading the precious thing you just discovered, thanks a lot !

VIGOMUSIC · Post by **VIGOMUSIC** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:30 am

Thanks a lot for sharing Thomas, VidPlayVST seems to work like a charm

And also in previous version of Bitwig of course.

Excds · Post by **Excds** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:45 am

Hmm, that video VST looks promising. I wonder if I can use it in Linux wrapping it through carla.

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:54 am

Or maybe contact the author if he would be willing to do a Linux port.

I just wanted to point out that the current beta of this plugin is free and will run until September 2017.
So I guess it will be a paid plugin later on. I didn't realise this at first.
I'll correct my post above.

Cheers,

Tom

EagleZone · Post by **EagleZone** » Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:50 am

Just tried VidPlayVST... It worked pretty damn well for me! Certainly a perfectly good stop-gap. Did not test extensively, just played around for a while with some MP4 files.

It didn't skip to the relevant part of video if I double-clicked later in the track (without stopping) would just continue playing where it was at, BUT any time I pressed stop/start it instantly synced to the place it should be. And actually think it did jump appropriately skipping backwards a few times, though again, not an extensive test.

I very quickly adopted the method required to keep it in sync (stopping/starting) and for a continuous video player it was perfect anyway, no intervention needed. So, can see myself making good use of it! Certainly fine for scoring to it in a linear manner, just not totally auto-syncing for jumping around.

Exceeded my expectations! And thank Jesus of Nazareth there is no need to install Jack (tried that in the past for Reason 9 syncing, never again.)

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:58 am

Thanks for reporting.
That may actually partially be Bitwigs fault. Other DAWs keep the values under the playhead updated at all times, but for instance with motorised faders on a controller, if you jump back to zero, BWS does not update the values of it's automation until you start playback again. Somehow the playhead seems not to get much attention here, you can't scrub or otherwise realtime-move the playhead other than hard jumps...
Not sure if it's the same in your case, since you said you jumped while playing back though.

Maybe contact the plugin author and report it - it's a beta after all and he writes that he tested it in Bitwig...

Cheers,

Tom

VIGOMUSIC · Post by **VIGOMUSIC** » Sat Mar 25, 2017 4:02 pm

same issue for me.
I reported it here, I don't know if it's ok...

https://www.kvraudio.com/news/vidplayvs ... test-36652

Bitwig

KVR Audio

Video Support for Bitwig ;-)