Control repetitions on looped video

1

hi everybody,

I have an eSampler set with looped playback, synced, and i trigger it with my drumset.
I also have the “lenght” parameter mapped to a knob, so that turning it i can decide how big will be the looped area.

working around i discovered a very interesting thing: when I trigger the video (for example with lenght at 1/4) and AFTER the triggering I turn the knob (for example moving it from 1/4 to 1/256) the loop gets smaller and produce various notes (depending on the video material and of the dimension of the loop) ad the video loop change in real time getting shorter creating a beatiful “progressive shortening” effect of the audio/video loop

anyway, not always but often, this “progressive shortening effect” doesen’t happens in the video but only in the audio, with the video remaining as a still frame until the next trigger.
(maybe it’s a little complex to explain, hope I was clear enough)

do you think it’s possible to preserve the video effect?

many thanks!

2

Have you got Load in Ram checked in the ESampler?
And is the video an appropriate format - probably Hap - something where every frame is a keyframe.

I’m no expert but it might be a good place to start?

3

hi gavspav and thank you for your suggestions

no, load in ram is not selected and the format is mp4, so i’ll try to do both the things you suggest.

anyway, the fact that sometinmes it works and sometime not makes me think that it’s not a ram or format problem.

I’ll let you know asap!

4

Hi Maxmagaldi,
You should be able to control repetitions, but if you change the loop start to another value than 0, you are not able to change the length (the loop will turn grey in the interface). When you change the loop length, the new loop length will be used for the next cycle, so after the loop end point has been reached.
I think your issues are caused by the use of mp4 (which contains h264 probably). mp4/h264 is an unreliable codec for live video triggering. The video is very compressed and this makes it demanding for the CPU to process. This causes unexpected behaviour. Load in Ram is also good to do for videos that you trigger and manipulate fast.

1 Like
5

Hi Jeroen,
Many thanks!

A couple of information more:

Today I’ve tried to use the load in ram option but, it’s very strange I know, when in use the loop length has stopped to change at all (I was moving the knob but the video loop was always the same)

Tomorrow I’ll try to convert the video file to hap and I’ll see what happens

One important thing is that every stroke I hit with my drums changes also the starting point of the loop (with this solution that Timo gently suggested me couple of years ago Slow motion-stop motion controlled via midi - #2 by Timo)

Maybe the fact that every stroke that trigger the video change also the starting point can be the problem?

Thanks

6

Hi maxmagaldi, on second thought: this is probably a bug anyway. Changing the loop start affects the ability to use loop length, but audio and video should be in sync under any circumstance. So thank you for reporting. We will add this to our issues list. Sorry for the inconvenience.
It still will definitely be a major improvement if you use Hap or ProRes instead of mp4.