How best to handle visuals whilst performing Live

[dominicw78]

I've been looking into creating and streaming visuals from computer whilst also performing live. I was wondering if anyone could give some good advice or heads-up from having done this themselves before.

Ideally I'd like to have interactive visuals utilising Max for live and also included some pre-made clips etc.

However I foresee the actual set up of this which each varying venues potential visual set up being an ever changing challenge. I was wondering what work arounds people have come up with.

For instance the next gig I won't visuals at, I have been told there's a VGA/HDMI cable fixed to the sound desk which you can plug into. However as the sound desk is most likely on the other side of the room, having a 10m HDMI cable going across the room through the audience and then plugged into my computer on stage is obviously not practical.

Is there some remote way of doing this? Surely this must be a regular occurrence so how do people get around this?

[Jinsai]

There's Rokvid

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/rokvid/

[dominicw78]

Thanks I'm aware of Rokvid though.

I wondering about the actual out the box connections, routing etc, not the programs within Ableton etc

[oddstep]

it is a cabling issue. either you get loads of cable and tape it up around the sides of the room or you get a data projector and have it nearby. In general laptop performances are improved by the addition of >3m of heavy duty tape.
I've used vga cables and hdmi - vga seems to be a little lighter on the cpu - but that isn't something I can prove. Another approach would be to have another computer doing video and send some sort of control into it wirelessly.

[dominicw78]

it is a cabling issue. either you get loads of cable and tape it up around the sides of the room or you get a data projector and have it nearby. In general laptop performances are improved by the addition of >3m of heavy duty tape.
I've used vga cables and hdmi - vga seems to be a little lighter on the cpu - but that isn't something I can prove. Another approach would be to have another computer doing video and send some sort of control into it wirelessly.

Thanks, I don't really want to have to invest in a projector and have that to worry about also. I guess a long cable with both a vga and hdmi adapter to cover both instances.

Having a second computer doing video and sending a control to it wirelessly is interesting idea, any suggestions how to send a signal wirelessly?

[oddstep]

either midi over wlan or... bluetooth if you're into frustration, or create a patch that pumps data onto a webservice and another patch that reads this data in real time. it'd be quite a laugh creating a patch that created twitter posts that were just 140 character controls for an av patch on the other computer.
I've ended up sticking with wired connections.

[dominicw78]

either midi over wlan or... bluetooth if you're into frustration, or create a patch that pumps data onto a webservice and another patch that reads this data in real time. it'd be quite a laugh creating a patch that created twitter posts that were just 140 character controls for an av patch on the other computer.
I've ended up sticking with wired connections.

Thanks for the info. Definitely don't need any extra frustration when setting up, so I hear you re wired connections. I think that's best. I wouldn't trust having to relay on anything that requires an external signal. Perhaps an adhoc network could be an avenue. But that can be for future perhaps!

I guess you must be used to have your hands cover in duct tape glue after each performance, something to look forward too!

Cheers