KVR Audio

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:06 pm

When I worked with children with learning disabilities I used to use Soundbeam which converts movement into midi information you can use to drive a synth. It was a powerful way of encouraging controlled and meaningful movement and interactions. I want to take this further and use a video or webcam to capture live video and convert that movement into information I can use to drive a soft or hardware synth from - does anyone know a way to do this? (free preferably).

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:10 pm

EyesWeb?

http://www.infomus.dist.unige.it/eywindex.html

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:14 pm

Yes - might be it. Looks very interesting - thanks.

I was pretty sure there would be something MAX/MSP ish but don't really want to get PACED and it's too technical for me anyway.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:17 pm

Yeah, MAX/MSP (with Jitter/Cyclops) would be the 'obvious' one, but Eyesweb is free, and supports VSTs...

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:19 pm

Does it need special hardware or can it work with any computer/video?

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:24 pm

I couldnt tell you what it supports specifically but it claims to support "from webcams to professional videocameras". That seems a reasonable spectrum

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 11:03 pm

OMG - this is almost exactly what I had in mind but for the patients I am working with at present - people with dementia (Alzheimers etc) who have all sorts of movement and perceptual difficulties that amongst other things can lead to falls.

http://www.infomus.dist.unige.it/Research/Therapy.html

I've been using dance and music for quite some time now but wanted to develop a way of providing direct feedback to the person to help them to modulate their own actions and hopefully develop greater awareness of their own bodies moving in space. I'm starting a new job on friday at Leeds/York Uni and part of that will involve working with some technologists to develop assistive approaches to Dementia rehab (my specialism) so this is one of the things I had in mind (another is multimedia approaches to memory stimulation).

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 7:04 am

Well I've downloaded the software but I'm not sure I'll be able to make any sense of it - seems more like a development tool than anything and certainly looks more complicated than MAX/MSP. I might need something a bit simpler - all I want is a way to make a webcam act as a midi controller in realtime.

tetraplan · Post by **tetraplan** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 5:56 pm

Damn, I used to have a webcam-to-MIDI tool somewhere on my harddrive, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called. Looked like a simple app, just what you're looking for, but it crashed when it couldn't detect a webcam. Which is why I uninstalled it.
I may still have it, I'll see if I can find it.

Groet, Erik

Webcam controllers? - Converting realtime video into sound