This installation at Heineken’s Green Room Sessions party at Malmen, Stockholm, is a was a group effort. Jakob Grandin, head of Grandins Flying Circus asked the Vidiots to set up a triple screen video installation displaying film and photography from a number of artists. One wall displayed a slideshow and the other two video. Every 8th second a strobe went off the movies and the slideshow changed.

The gear used in this project was 3 projectors, a Triplehead2go and a Macbook Pro running Modul8 (VJ software). A Modul8 module, that was programmed specially for the occasion by The Midi Thief, sent a midi signal to a DMX light board causing the strobe to flash and the video plus slideshow to forward to the next piece.

Contributing artists:
Curator – Tony Cederteg
Left wall – Ruben Broman
Middle wall – Mathias Sterner
Right wall – Nakkna

All work and no play makes Mikey a dull boy. I’ve been busy with work and not been able to post for a while. Got some half finished articles just waiting to make their way on to the blog. But some news just magically produce themselves. Like this one: The *Spark Defuser mixer by Toby Harris is one step closer to getting into production. And you can help by showing your interest so that Toby can esitmate the price better and get to the next step. Read all about it here!

To be a little bit more objective about it than in my last post: This is not an entirely new subject and it has been talked about before. That’s why some VJs wern’t too excited when they heared of Toby’s project. Read more about it in this recent thread and this old thread on VJ Forums.

But still, considering the decent price and all the features I say I’d probably buy the mixer.

Sometimes prayers are heard. Remember the poll we did where we were asking “What do you think is a reasonable price for a modern video mixer that has the ability to mix VGA and send out an video that spans over 2 or more screens?”. A saint named Toby Harris has modified a conference kit and built a controller for it so that it’s possible to mix two VGA or DVI sources and output to a Matrox TripleHead2Go, which means that you can make a multiscreen projection and mix content from two computers. This has been possible to do earlier, but at a huge cost. Toby is negotiating with the manufacturer of the original box and he is planning to assemble enough orders to put it into production. His estimated price for the box is… ta-da… somewhere in the $1000-£1000 range. At the moment the manufacturer is busy with a trade show. We just have to tap our fingers impatiently until deal is sealed and Toby is ready for pre orders. Read more about the mixer on Toby’s website.

Results from the poll:

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So finally, the long awaited Modul8 version 2.6 is now out in beta. Along with some bug fixes and Snow Leopard compatibility there are some exciting new features: blend modes, sound analysis, dmx support, 4 video inputs and importing/exporting of midi & key maps.

The beta is available for registered users and the final version will be charged a €49 upgrade fee. Garagecube hasn’t charged for minor versions before and even if annoys me a little bit, I’d still buy the update in a heart beat. Even if I’m missing better OSC and Quartz Composer support in this release, this is a huge step in the right direction.

Read more about the new version at modul8.users.

People often ask me what VJ application they should start with. I usually suggest that they should to go to softwarevj.com, find something for their platform, download a beta and play around for a bit. Let me present a slightly different solution:

Turn to the video hosting sites and look for groups and tags with the name of the major VJ softwares. You will get plenty of examples. The software that, in your opinion, has the best examples is the the software you want to pick. I still think it’s worth downloading a beta and see if you can handle it. And don’t forget to read the manual. Most of these softwares has very active user forums and FAQ’s that will answer most of your newbie questions. And don’t forget all video tutorials out there too!

Here’s some fast links to the video hosting sites:

Arkaos (Win/OSX) examples on Youtube
AV Mixer (Win/OSX) examples on Vimeo
Modul8 (OSX) examples on Vimeo
NuVJ (Win/OSX, both hardware & software) examples on Vimeo
Resolume (Win/OSX) examples on Vimeo
VDMX (OSX) examples on Vimeo