Use FFmpeg to find a possible loop in a video

As stated an multiple occasions, I am doing live visuals every now and then for various events. Most of my footage is based on shaders. In (very) short: These are programs that are executed on your graphics-card and create visuals in real-time instead of playing pre-made videos. Extremely interesting and extremely nerdy. You might want to check out https://glslsandbox.com/ to get an idea. However, trying to run shaders on, for example, a Raspberry Pi 4 instead of a top-tier Macbook pro has a huge amount of its very own quirks. Playing videos on an RPI4, however, doesn’t cause too many problems. 

Continue reading

ofxSyphonProxy

This app is based on openFrameworks. It is able to receive multiple Syphon streams, allows you to quad-warp them, reduces their resolution and sends everything out as another combined Syphon stream.

Get it here: https://github.com/Andymann/ofxSyphonProxy

As an example I have a simple VDMX-setup that consists of 2 individual layers. Each layer is sent out via Syphon.

Continue reading

VDMX Setup

As some of you might already know (because I’m constantly telling you about) I occasionally do lights and visuals in a discotheque. VDMX is my tool of choice for doing visuals and I was looking for the best hardware-controller for quite a long time. Recently, someone reminded me of the Kontrol F1 by Native Instruments and after working out some quick ideas I got myself a Kontrol F1 via ebay and built a VDMX-set around it. In this post I’ll describe the setup and how things are realized.

Continue reading

Midi Clock to Ableton Link

Long story short: This is an application which receives Midi clock data and converts them to Ableton Link. Target scenario is using it to enable Track Decks in Native Instrument’s Traktor being the Tempo Master in an Ableton Link Timeline. You can download it here (Github repo with compiled binary for macOS ).

Continue reading

Bewerbung zum Doppelteamleiter

Ganz ganz , ganzganzganz eventuell ist es so, dass ich als Kollege/ Mitarbeiter nicht der unkritischste Typ auf der ganzen Welt bin. Es gibt Sachen, die mich unendlich aufregen. Das sieht man mir dann auch an. Wenn Leute nach 20 Jahren in der IT immer noch nicht wissen, wie man “³” auf einer Tastatur erzeugt … sorry, aber: ARRGHH!

Sei’s drum: Irgendwann kam meine Chefin auf mich zu und … ein Wort gab das andere … es fielen Sätze wie “Du und Conny, wenn Ihr Teamleiter wärt, dann würdet Ihr ganz schnell lernen, damit umzugehen, … ”  (so oder jedenfalls so ähnlich). Jetzt ist es so, dass ich vor ~20 Jahren~ schon mal etwas in der Art gemacht habe: Da war ich Chef vom Service in einer Diskothek. Das hat mir gereicht. Klaro ist das nicht dasselbe, ich bin nicht mehr derselbe, aber trotzdem: Danke, nein.

AAaaber: Aus irgendeinem Grund haben wir uns dann doch beworben. Auf eine tatsächlich ausgeschriebene Teamleiterstelle. So mit Präsentation etc.

Continue reading

TCPSyphon

<TL; DR> I’ve built a TCPSyphon Server myself in Java and tried to circumvent some of the flaws of the original Version </TL; DR>

 

Maybe you heard about Syphon. “Syphon is an open source Mac OS X technology that allows applications to share frames – full frame rate video or stills – with one another in realtime” (Link). It was originally intended to only work locally and not be shared between different Hosts on a Network. Fortunately someone took care of this and built a set of applications to share “Syphon data” between multiple Computers. Actually it doesn’t: It renders local Syphon data into single images (jpeg, for example), applies a compression and sends them over the network. Anyways, this is one of the applications you don’t get around as a VJ. You just HAVE to have it: TCPSyphon.

The person behind the TCPSyphon-apps also built a client for the Raspberry Pi. The TCPSClient. Now things become really interesting.

Continue reading

Syphon to RTMP

This idea caught me a while back and it took quite some effort to rebuild it from the leftovers a few days ago. Kids don’t forget: The only difference between noodling around and being a true specialiologist (they don’t call me “Doktor Andy” for nothing) lies in a reusable form of documentation. Fortunately I got this website. What would I do without it.

<TL; DR> video from Mac to Raspberry via network</TL; DR>

The approach uses Syphon, Open Broadcaster Software (obs), nginx and Omxplayer. I guess this ain’t too revolutionary. Using RTMP is quite a common task to distribute video. But it’s a good idea to have it all written down at least once. Furthermore I couldn’t find any kind of writeup like this covering this topic so … it’s okay.

Continue reading