visuals

for some while we have used resolume and sony vegas pro along with various cameras/video cameras for our visual work as VMAG. vegas pro is an expensive program but very powerful with a clean workman like interface. we have just upgraded to version 9 which offers little advantage over version 8 apart from a few nice new video effects, some tweaks to help streamline your workflow and of course the new industrial dark grey skin - if you cannot afford pro movie studio platinum does a good job but is seriously restricted by only allowing 4 video tracks. resolume is the package we use for our live transmissions- the new version resolume avenue 3 handles audio as well as video but we have no need for this functionality preferring the older version 2 software- raw footage is imported, processed by multiple effects then rendered in short looping sections of 3-5 seconds using a pegasus mjpeg codec at 640x480. we add stuff to this bank of clips periodically before dividing the clips into decks on a per track basis. live the clips are manually triggered from a stage laptop sent to venue projector. only master bus effects are added which combined with the modest file size means they run efficiently from our laptops and every performance is different as we try to keep up with trigger points- even the 640x480 output size works well projected at near cinema size - this is so far in advance of our original visuals which were created using photographic slides and a bank of kodak carousel projectors fed with sync pulses from a fostex A8 reel to reel machine along with heavily cut and spliced super 8mm cine film - the most recent vegas extract VICTORY can be viewed here



VICTORY edit in vegas