Ableton with video output for live set

[thegophoto]

So here's what we are looking to do. We are going to incorporate pre edited video to our live set. We have all the audio/midi tracks in arrangement view on one computer. We have edited video in imovie and VDMX for our songs. Does anyone experience lag or any other problems when loading video to the ableton arrangement view? Also, is there another program or option that would be more foolproof way to run video to a projector (would have to be able to sync up, timewise)? DVD, another program, is ableton the best to use? What are other people doing in this type of application?

[Pitch Black]

I would not choose to run Movies from Live’s Arrange page in a live setting.

Here’s whats currently working for me:

I have an 8yr old macbook pro (specs below). I currently run a Live Set of 10 songs, with 8-12 stereo stems for each song + live keyboards (mostly Ableton Samplers) played over top. Lots of in-Live dub mixing i.e. lots of MIDI CC’s incoming during the set from a Novation Launch Control XL.

On the same Mac I run Modul8 (another industry-standard VJ program like VDMX).
Live sends MIDI notes to Modul8 via the IAC Bus - one MIDI note at the head of each song to trigger the corresponding movie in Modul8.

Modul8 contains 10 movies (1920 x 1080 Photo-JPEG’s rendered at medium quality setting) Photo-JPEG is Modul8’s codec-of-preference - it might be something different on VDMX.

In the week-long pre-show testing and one gig so far I have not had a single problem, no dropped frames of video and no audio glitches. Frankly I’m a bit surprised such an old Macbook Pro could deliver, as I’ve been doing live visuals for 20-odd years and always subscribed to the idea that using a second computer for live visuals is Best Practice… which it kinda sorta really still is… but then, Best Practice also involves redundant backups of each computer, dunnit?… never quite had _that_ luxury.

Specs:

2010 Macbook Pro 17”
Dual i5 2.53GHz
8 GB RAM (the maximum)
Samsung EVO 850 1TB SSD
MacOS 10.12.6

RME Fireface 800 audio interface

Live 10.0.1
256 Samples Latency
16bit stereo WAVs (stems)
8-12 stems playing at once + live keys and dub mixing

Modul8 2.9.2
1920 x 1080 Photo-JPEG MOV files
MIDI sent from Live to Modul8 via IAC Bus.

1920 x 1080 HDMI output to projector

Novation Remote SL61 Mk2 controller keyboard
Akai APC Key 25 controller keyboard
Novation Launch Control XL mixer controller

In the past I’ve run a dual-Mac setup with Live on one MBP and Modul8 on a second MBP connected by USB MIDI interfaces and a 5-pin MIDI lead. This is the first time I’ve ventured to do a public show like this. Should I wait a few more shows to make sure I can be confident of reliability? Hell yes, but I probably won’t get that opportunity, so I’ll keep torture-testing it to destruction to try and make it fail in rehearsal, but this is currently working for me. I haven't seen any glitches in either rehearsal or performance (touch wood). I would not have thought an 8yo laptop could handle it.

Live’s forte is not delivery of non-linear video. I would at least use a separate VJ app, either on second laptop, or the same laptop if that proves reliable,

HTH

[thegophoto]

Thanks for the input. I have noticed whenever I bring in a video into live, its pretty glitchy. I believe I could do this in VDMX too. If I am understanding it correctly, you just use a midi note file in ableton to trigger the different movies? That seems like a good work around. Also, I am just starting out working with any video, so forgive me if its a novice question, but is there a better file type and video size that is standard or better for projecting for live sets? Thanks again for your time, the info is very helpful.

[Pitch Black]

Yeah, VDMX would be a great choice, instead of playing the video from Live’s Arrange page. Live is not the right tool for the job for "live" video shows. You can do it, but you can run into issues with how to fullscreen the video on the projector, and Live is not designed for this purpose... Live wants to treat the video file as a ready-to-warp audio file which is not an efficient use of your computer's power.

Yes send a MIDI note at the head of each song from Live and into VDMX to trigger each video.

On Mac you can use the IAC Bus to send MIDI from Live to VDMX. The IAC, or Inter-Application Communication Bus, is a "virtual MIDI cable" that you enable in your Mac's AudioMIDI Setup. It lets you send MIDI from one app to another. Once you enable it in AudioMIDI Setup, IAC becomes available as a MIDI Output in Live and a MIDI Input in VDMX.

Regarding movie file type and size: that depends... obviously you don’t want to use movies with a larger resolution than the projector you’ll be using. For example it’s pointless to use 1920x1080 movies for a projector that’s only 1280x800. That would be a waste of space and tax your computer needlessly.

Regarding codec, check what VDMX prefers. General wisdom is that you don’t use highly compressed codecs such as H.264 for live video / VJing. Common codecs used for VJing include photo-jpeg and HAP, plus a few others specific to various VJ apps. Again, check what VDMX prefers.

Hope this helps! The main thing is to build your show/content (your movies) and build your delivery system (Mac/Live/VDMX/projector) and test test test the system prior to the gig to sort out any issues.

[thegophoto]

I will try this. Thanks for taking the time to help me out with this.