Audio to visuals or music video software, other forums with this stuff being discussed?

[studiowaveform]

I didnt know if this is the bets place for this, but i'll try anyway.


I want to make some videos. I have 3dsmax, photoshop skills. FLstudio with zgame. ableton, adobe suite.


Ideally I want to go the Gantz Graf route by using audio controllers in max, then other FX with zgame and doing some layering and filtering in after effects or similar.


Anyone else here into doing this? Any good forums for this stuff? Programs I could use?

[Steve Bolivar]

Maybe forums for VJ software? You might get some leads from there.

[lfm]

Don't know exactly what you want to discuss - but I had some luck at www.videohelp.com and various part of that site.

You find out rather quickly...

[studiowaveform]

Don't know exactly what you want to discuss

any kind of audio to visual/VJ softwares really, i am in the dark about what there is. Or methods of working

[Winstontaneous]

It's worth checking out Echobit Viz which is discussed in this thread.
I have it, need to dig in a bit deeper.

[studiowaveform]

It's worth checking out Echobit Viz which is discussed in this thread.
I have it, need to dig in a bit deeper.

Ah very very cool. Thanks

[cron]

I've been learning TouchDesigner for about a year on and off, and made some decent headway just by watching a load of the official 'getting started' tutorials and workshops. The Touch Designer wiki with info about all the objects is fantastic too. It's kinda like Max in terms of patching things together, but it's really easy to get things going quickly thanks to some superb high-level objects and pre-rolled subpatches. Quite a bit easier than Max IMO. You can do an awful lot with comparatively little knowledge. I'm using the free version which is limited to 1280x1280 resolution output and older video codecs when recording your output (any format is fine for input - output limited to MPEG4-Part 2, which is sorta between H.263 and H.264) but the quality still comes out respectable at the lowest compression settings.

I've found it pretty easy to get a basic handle on all major parts of it, which I wasn't expecting: working with control signals (including audio and MIDI), mashing 2D images and video, getting animated 3D rendering working (and looking surprisingly good! - love that noise module that disturbs all the points in space)... The learning curve is really approachable and being able to watch videos of the workshops by the company who make the program has been really helpful.

I haven't tried any other programs out yet to be honest (vvvv looks very interesting!), but the learning curve of TouchDesigner seemed very approachable to me and I can highly recommend checking it out. The full version is *expensive* however, so bear that in mind if the free version limitations might become a problem for you. For me it was just learning enough to have something for Youtube viewers to zone their eyes out on so average quality 720p is fine, but I was surprised by how deep I ended up going down the rabbit hole regardless! I've even made tentative steps in learning Python so I can extend/modify the functionality where required (probably getting a bit ahead of myself!), but I had no programming knowledge at all (bar learning a bit of Max 10 years ago) when I got started.

Resources here: http://www.derivative.ca/wiki088/index. ... chDesigner

Watch "First things to know about TouchDesigner" first so you can find your way around the GUI, then dig into the introductory "Best Of The Best" workshops.

edit: The First things to know videos are actually on the below page, not the one linked above. "Best of the Best workshops" are on the above page however (I recommend the Norway Workshops)

http://www.derivative.ca/wiki088/index. ... chDesigner

[jabe]

Don't know exactly what you want to discuss

any kind of audio to visual/VJ softwares really, i am in the dark about what there is. Or methods of working

YouTube should help with methods of working. There's probably some less-well narrated stuff to work your way through before you find a good presenter, but you may be able to judge early on in a video.

[sjm]

I recently made this video with a combination of ZGameEditor/FL Studio and Vegas Pro:


This is the first video I've ever made with actual footage (all shot on my phone), so it's more of a POC than anything. It may or may not be along the lines of what you are looking for.

I used FL Studio to create all the funky visual stuff like the fractal dancing in the club, the trippy paintings (as seen in the video preview), the rotating keyboard etc. I automated the parameters in ZGameEditor using automation/LFOs/FL controllers.

That allowed me to tempo sync things, and you can use stuff like the Keyboard controller/envelope controller/peak controller to automate the FX based on the music that is playing. I don't know how much experience you have with this sort of thing, but I find linking velocity to the FX parameters is particularly useful. Either in combination with an envelope (so it's a smoother transition) of using the keyboard controller for abrupt switches.

I made a tutorial that explains how to map velocity to any parameter in FL Studio, including ZGameEditor:


Basically I created a whole load of loops, generally 8/16/32 bars and exported the videos from FL Studio.

Then in Vegas, I lined everything up on the timeline and used transparency to blend the different components together. I also applied a couple of FX in Vegas; the scan lines, and snow/noise are Vegas filters, for example. If you intend to use more than one video as your source, you'll want some form of video editing software. If all you need to do is stitch together pre-rendered videos, you can do this in Windows Movie Maker or whatever other free software you fancy using.

If you want to do more processing to the video, you might need to spend a little cash. I picked up Vegas Pro 14 in the humble bundle around Xmas for ~$20, which seemed like a good deal. Unfortunately, the bundle is no longer available. I'm assuming After Effects can do much the same sort of thing (never used it).


Personally I think ZGameVideoEditor is amazingly powerful. What you definitely want to do is look into how you can manipulate your own videos and images. For example, I loaded the footage of people dancing in the club on one of the layers, and then transformed the entire video using the Fractal effect (and manipulating the size in time with the beat). You can also pass one video layer to the next. It's worth playing around with some of the different effects and experimenting to see what you can do. It's entirely possible to do things like move characters around the screen (automate the positions) etc. as well; although if you want to do 2D cartoon stuff, I'd recommend something more like Camtasia for that (which I also used to make a video; I can post the link if you like). But a little bit of thinking outside the box will allow you to an incredible amount of stuff!


There's also another (super-ancient, unfinished) little demo of ZGameEditor on my YT page that I knocked up yonks ago to show someone on the IL forum. That video has a lot of tempo synced stuff and many of the effects are reacting to things like the velocity of the tracks. It's a bit duff, so I won't link it here, but it should be easy enough to find from the other vids if you want to give it a look.


I would also strongly recommend posting on the IL forums, as that's where you'll find the FL Studio users. Quite a few of them have used ZGameVideoEditor; some in more depth than others. There's a fair few boring static videos out there, but some people have gone a lot further and made real videos.