Ableton Forum

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I've been messing around with video in the beta and wanted to share what functionality I've figured out. I want to know what stuff you guys have figured out too.

Warping > It works. Mutate your audio and the video follows along. Fun stuff. When you first drop in a clip in the arranger, it appears unwarped. What's interesting is that you can speed up or slow down the BPM, or tap in another tempo, and the audio from the video is not altered. It's kinda wild to see the playhead suddenly zipping along with the audio not changing. Then, if you click the warp button in the clip view, you can now mess with the BPM and the video will follow along. A new slave button appears under the warp button. This is when all of time and space gets fucked with. Say you click the warp button and slow the video down to 60 PBM. If you click the Slave button it turns into the Master button. You are now in 'Master' mode, and the BPM is locked at 60. If you click the Master button it turns into Slave again, and as a slave you are free (irony intended) to change the BPM again if you wish. All of this amazing fun is not renderable, and therefore not exportable. Yet. We hope.

Full Screen Mode > As easy as double clicking on the video screen. Double click and boom, the video image takes up your entire monitor. Want to quickly get out? Just double click again, you're back home.

Reverse Button > It will reverse the audio but it makes the video functionality cease. Kind of a bummer. I'd like to see the video image reverse as well. It can inspiring + other worldly to simply watch normal things happen in reverse. This other-worldliness would be right at home in Live.

Multiple Video Clips > You can load multiple video clips but you're allowed only one video screen. The clip that is at the bottom of the tracks in the arrangement screen gets the right to be viewed in the video screen. So, if a clip of a monkey eating a banana is in track one and a video of a hippy on a unicycle is on track two, the hippy will be on the video screen. If you want to watch the monkey you have to drag that clip from track one and drop it in track three, which requires a redraw of the track. So on a Mac you get the spinning beach ball for a few seconds and the image on the video screen will freeze + along with the GUI, but the audio keeps playing without a burp.

Session View > If you launch video clips in session view you do not have video screen capability. For now it is in arrangement only. If you launch a video clip in arrangement view and then tab over to session view, the video screen will remain and keep playing. There must be a reason why it was decided to only have video in arrangement. But I think it would be cool to have video launchable in session. That way a DJ can become a VJ pretty easily. If you have video clips associated with the cells of clips you are launching in session view in a DJ set, Live's new video screen could be used as simplified video show for the people shaking their bootys on the dance floor.

Transpose Knob > No weird new functionality here, it's just fun to mess with it. Kind of like when you had your first 4 track and you realized the tempo knob can turn anything into The Chipmunks. The same here excecpt now you're watching The Chipmunks as well as hearing it. Expect Chipmunks video remix madness at future Plastikman shows .

thanks for this. so you cant reverse video. and i take it you cant chop clips up in live? like make the video stutter and all that?

yourmom wrote:thanks for this. so you cant reverse video. and i take it you cant chop clips up in live? like make the video stutter and all that?

What do you mean by chopping things up exactly?

Warping chops things up pretty well. The video does what the audio does, so the image is slowed down and stuttery and funky. It's pretty cool. I'm an advocate of having Live's functionality mess with the video image, so I was psyched to see that warp action hit the video! You can throw effects in and it will hit the audio, like throw Grain Delay in for example and tweeze the audio with that. But I think it's be extra super awesome if -like the master/slave on/off concept- you could hit a button and have Grain Delay mess with the video image along with the audio. Drool drool drool!

Sales Dude McBoob wrote: I was psyched to see that warp action hit the video!

yeah me too... and i used to be a fanatical video-warping hater!
Not that i am a follower of these danish luddites, but i always associated that technique with bad taste music videos and shampoo commercials. but after 2 minutes of warping video with live, i was like, wow, so easy, so smooth... finally i can warp video and it doesnt look like a guy ritchie film!

Sales Dude McBoob wrote:

yourmom wrote:thanks for this. so you cant reverse video. and i take it you cant chop clips up in live? like make the video stutter and all that?

What do you mean by chopping things up exactly?

select a small portion of the video. hit ctrl+D (or apple+D) 8 or 10 times. or juggle little slivers of video around in arrange view.

Thanks for the details SDM

Sounds like they have implemented somefeatures that were not expected.

I put this up in Tips & Tricks
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43464
Video cutting with Live 6.

Just tried a little bit of video cutting up before I fall asleep - it's totally cool, much more than I expected.

But how do you get the messed up video - preferably including the new sounds - out of Live again? Obviously that's none of Live's business, but could Quick Time Pro help?

DeadlyKungFu wrote:I put this up in Tips & Tricks
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43464
Video cutting with Live 6.

hey guys - I was going to say to SDMcB too, maybe you guys could paste this stuf into the WIKI - then it's alwys at the front even after this thread has long since vanished!



I've kind of all of a sudden jumped on this wiki bandwagon because I think it's a good chance to catch all this stuff fresh -plus people are typing it up as they discover it (like you guys just did!)

Sounds excellent what you can do with the video. I wasn't even bothered at first, I bet its fun to play around with though.
Can you output the video to firewire for previewing ? (That would be nice)

another thank you for posting this.
although I'm disappointed no session view video.
The ability to warp and have it relate to the video is exciting.
Way to use your beta luckiness to the greater good.

It'd be great if by Live 7/8 we could have video manipulation as in Resolume

forge wrote:

DeadlyKungFu wrote:I put this up in Tips & Tricks
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43464
Video cutting with Live 6.

hey guys - I was going to say to SDMcB too, maybe you guys could paste this stuf into the WIKI - then it's alwys at the front even after this thread has long since vanished!



I've kind of all of a sudden jumped on this wiki bandwagon because I think it's a good chance to catch all this stuff fresh -plus people are typing it up as they discover it (like you guys just did!)

I pasted my post on the wiki yesterday. I never go to the wiki because it's blocked by the firewall at my work. It's pretty cool. But now I'm back at work and can't do any of this stuff except read + write about it .

I had this big CD project to do yesterday, and I finished it at 4:30AM, so that means later on I'm free to mess around with the beta all evening!

I had an idea of something to experiment with video-wise... it's the reason I was replying... but I forgot what it was... I need coffee and some sort of egg sandwich.

Holy shit! I just laughed my ass off. I've been a Final Cut Pro user for a few years now and I've seen plently of strange things messing with slow-mo and effects and stuff, but I've never seen or heard anything quite like this!

I loaded this short film that I made two years ago into Live. Then I warped the clip (warp from here straight, of course) during a dialog scene. Then I moved the warp markers over to the left a bit to slow things down... and suddenly the protagonist was drunk off his ass! It's a serious scene where one character is giving the other character instructions on what to do on their first day at a new job. When warped this way it's suddenly a scene between two dudes who have been drinking at the pub till they got kicked out and found their way under a bridge where they continued to drink for 6 more hours. Slurred words, off balance and tipsy, finally there is a bears effect in Live!

Also, I loaded in footage of my old band playing at a dive bar in Hell's Kitchen back in 2003. Holy shit, talk about funny!!!! I warped it and suddenly our fastest song was a dark and heavy dirge. Then I took a song with fast parts and slow parts and I warped it and switched which parts were fast and slow. It's now a new song I've never heard before. The between song banter is too fucking funny to even try to describe. If you have live footage of your band on your hard drive I would try this out.

Bottoms up everybody!