DP & Firewire video Output

[Saintmatthew]

So, as I get ready to run a video track live, synced to the backing tracks of my bands set, I've debated using DP's movie track. I already use DP live and it's rock solid and is a godsend for routing multiple tracks and I have an 828mkII that also mixes the band. The DP movie track would be awesome except that it won't go into "full screen" mode on a monitor like say, itunes' or Abelton Live's movie windows will. It will however use a firewire DV video output. My concern, is running that and the 828mkII at the same time and my MacBook only has one firewire connector. Anyone have any experiences using DP's firewire DV output from a movie channel they want to share?

[Armageddon]

So, as I get ready to run a video track live, synced to the backing tracks of my bands set, I've debated using DP's movie track. I already use DP live and it's rock solid and is a godsend for routing multiple tracks and I have an 828mkII that also mixes the band. The DP movie track would be awesome except that it won't go into "full screen" mode on a monitor like say, itunes' or Abelton Live's movie windows will. It will however use a firewire DV video output. My concern, is running that and the 828mkII at the same time and my MacBook only has one firewire connector. Anyone have any experiences using DP's firewire DV output from a movie channel they want to share?

Instead of using FireWire, why aren't you simply using the MacBook's DVI output? You can buy a 20 dollar breakout box from any Apple store that has both an S-VHS and an RCA video output, which attaches to the DVI out on your MacBook. Then, set up your video mirroring so that the DVI's out is acting as an extension (not a mirror) of your desktop. Now, when you open DP, you load your video as a QT movie and drag it over to the second monitor, which will, I assume, be whatever playback monitor or projector you have set up. You can then resize the QT window to taste (I have no idea whether you can select a "full screen" mode that will completely fill your stage monitor, but I'm sure you can come close). I use this setup in scoring film and my second monitor is a old, clunky TV set on the other side of the room. So far, the playback quality's been incredible, and even on my MacBook, I can run audio at 96 kHz/24-bit, several VIs playing live and full-speed video playback with no problems.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Smooth!

[Saintmatthew]

(I have no idea whether you can select a "full screen" mode that will completely fill your stage monitor, but I'm sure you can come close)

You can't which has been the most aggravating part. I had originally wanted to do exactly what you suggested, as my projector setup has vga or dvi in, but the lack of full screen mode leaves the gray window bar at the top with a little bubble to close it. Doesn't look awful, but it does look unprofessional enough where I won't go onstage with it visible. It's also impossible to scale the window larger than the monitor it's on which was my next idea. I might have to rewire Ableton Live as their video window goes full screen, but that's piling up the system resource overhead a bit.

[Armageddon]

You can't which has been the most aggravating part. I had originally wanted to do exactly what you suggested, as my projector setup has vga or dvi in, but the lack of full screen mode leaves the gray window bar at the top with a little bubble to close it. Doesn't look awful, but it does look unprofessional enough where I won't go onstage with it visible. It's also impossible to scale the window larger than the monitor it's on which was my next idea. I might have to rewire Ableton Live as their video window goes full screen, but that's piling up the system resource overhead a bit.

Damn! I was actually hoping that it would work out like that (and how cool would it be to just tell DP to play full-screen in your second monitor when scoring or projecting video in sync with DP?), but since I usually score hi-def and am running video to a regular analog monitor, I've just grown accustomed to seeing the borders of a QT window and never thought to try making it look like full-frame video.

Even worse, in QT itself, you can tell it to play in full-frame mode. I have no idea why DP can't also do this when playing a QT movie, but I assume it's so you're not bogarting an entire second monitor with just a movie.

I hate to even suggest this, but have you possibly considered doing a reaaaaaal old-fashioned trick of laying off your video to honest-to-God video, with one audio channel striped with timecode? You then take your audio output of whatever video player you have the video in, run it back into your audio interface input and slave DP to the timecode coming from your video playback machine. Now, you have DP locked to SMPTE, playing back only audio, while the video is being played on a video playback machine (DVD? Digital video? VHS?) and you're saving the MacBook's resources for the audio mix.

[Saintmatthew]

Honeestly, getting into that seemed a little too complicated for a live setup that gets, at times, only a half hour to put together. So far I've set my rig up to be streamlined for ease of setup and the all in one video/audio thing would have been sooooo nice. There's also the fact that I use a separate chunk in DP for each song. This way we can rearrange the set if we need. Syncing multiple sequences to one video track.....I wouldn't know where to begin-this has been the other hurdle to rewiring Abelton Live as the Live Set concept isn't nearly robust as DP's chunks. I considered slaving a second laptop but again that involves SMPTE or something as involved. The multiple chunk in one file paradigm that DP has is nothing short of awesome for live for me and since each chunk can have one movie file I thought it'd so much easier to use that. Maybe I just have to try the firewire thing. Just would suck to buy one and then it had issues.

[Armageddon]

Honeestly, getting into that seemed a little too complicated for a live setup that gets, at times, only a half hour to put together. So far I've set my rig up to be streamlined for ease of setup and the all in one video/audio thing would have been sooooo nice. There's also the fact that I use a separate chunk in DP for each song. This way we can rearrange the set if we need. Syncing multiple sequences to one video track.....I wouldn't know where to begin-this has been the other hurdle to rewiring Abelton Live as the Live Set concept isn't nearly robust as DP's chunks. I considered slaving a second laptop but again that involves SMPTE or something as involved. The multiple chunk in one file paradigm that DP has is nothing short of awesome for live for me and since each chunk can have one movie file I thought it'd so much easier to use that. Maybe I just have to try the firewire thing. Just would suck to buy one and then it had issues.

If it helps, you should be able to just connect a FireWire video interface onto the spare FireWire port of your audio interface (or vice-versa) without problems, sort of daisy-chaining FireWire interfaces. It really sucks that you can't utilize the DVI output for full-frame video, though. Maybe MOTU will get around to addressing this? The QT feature in DP is pretty nice, but I've also never needed full-frame playback, and I guess they assume most people will either score with a reduced QT window in a second monitor, in a severely reduced window on the main monitor, or have DP slaved to an external video source (film, DVD, etc.).

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OK, here's a novel idea... run the video without sound from a dvd or other device and play everything live. Sync can't be that hard to maintain with a little practice.

[Armageddon]

OK, here's a novel idea... run the video without sound from a dvd or other device and play everything live. Sync can't be that hard to maintain with a little practice.

I still say SMPTE is a cost-effective way to sync DP to video without taxing your video out. I wrote on how to do this elsewhere with locking it to QuickTime, but the same principle applies to locking DP to an external video source as it would to locking it to an internal QT movie -- in fact, that's what DP was capable of doing well before it had internal QT playback capabilities. The hardest part would be striping your video with SMPTE timecode and either burning it to disc or dumping it to tape. Once you have that (and the starting timecode number can be anything, most likely "0"), you just program that as your chunk's SMPTE start time, have DP slaved to the video's SMPTE and make sure there's a decent signal going out from the video playback machine to the 896 (or snag a MIDITimepiece, which has SMPTE In capabilities) and everything should lock up. Once the song is over, pause or stop the video playback device, load the next DP chunk and hit "Play" on the video machine. Doing it this way, you can even have DP sync your stage lights to the songs.

[groove]

You will not be taxing DP if your movie is in DV format, use the Firewire video output option and disable the Echo Video option in DP movie window. That way QuickTime doesn't have to convert the DV format movie in a window in DP. You will get FF video in your video monitor or TV set - not Mac monitor - assuming you have a Firewire AV convertion box (like a ADVC110 from Canopus - I think Grass Valley bought them) or use the poor man convertion trick of a DV camcorder in input mode.

[martian]

sony cameras work real well...

2 cents from a poor man

[Saintmatthew]

You will not be taxing DP if your movie is in DV format, use the Firewire video output option and disable the Echo Video option in DP movie window. That way QuickTime doesn't have to convert the DV format movie in a window in DP. You will get FF video in your video monitor or TV set - not Mac monitor - assuming you have a Firewire AV convertion box (like a ADVC110 from Canopus - I think Grass Valley bought them) or use the poor man convertion trick of a DV camcorder in input mod

Yeah, my main concern was overloading the firewire bus, but I don't run many individual streams down it so might as well try the canopus thing. Syn is so important that the DVD thing wouldn't work as vid clips need to align with samples pretty much dead on.

[Jera]

I'm running DP 5.1 with my MacBook with my band running video to a projector. I strech the video out a bit so you don't see the bar but sometimes I can. Has this been fixed in DP 7 where you can present the video?

Thanks

Chris

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'm running DP 5.1 with my MacBook with my band running video to a projector. I strech the video out a bit so you don't see the bar but sometimes I can. Has this been fixed in DP 7 where you can present the video?

Thanks

Chris

Hasn't been fixed because it's never been broken. That's the way it works. DP is not presentation software.

[Jera]

Hasn't been fixed because it's never been broken. That's the way it works. DP is not presentation software.

Right, not that it's broken, but that could easily be an upgrade to the software. Are there any others that do it? (Pro Tools, Logic?)

Chris