I am demoing Ebosuite. In the tutorial video about shaders, things go a little too fast for me, so I thought I might find some answers here…
When I load in the Eclips and the ISF app in an audiotrack, how do get the shader going? What do I have to do, in its most basic form, to get something on the screen happening?
In the shader instruction video on the Ebosuite website, the instructor suddenly jumps to a project with multiple tracks and clips when he starts to explain the shaders basics in Ebosuite.
But how do I do a basic setup? The manual speaks about putting an eclips app in an audio track, followed by the ISF app. But it doesn’t explain what to do next (at least I couldn’t find it). Just starting out on this journey, so thanks for all the help!
Hi Hooger
Welcome to EboSuite . The ISF plug-in is very versatile and powerful, follow these steps to get started:
Add an eClips plug-in to an audio track. Note that the EboSuite application will automatically launch and the output window will appear.
Drag a video to a clipslot on that audiotrack. Enable Warp Markers and enable Looping. Make sure to save the Warp Markers, otherwise EboSuite will not be able to use the Warp Markers and the video will not play.
Play the clip. You should see video in the output window.
Add the eFX-ISF plug-in to the audiotrack after the eClips plug-in.
Click on the drop down in the eFX-ISF plug-in to open the browser (where is says --------------, see below). There should be two options: the ‘EboStudio’ folder and the ‘Standard’ folder. Select one of these folders. The EboStudio folder contains 3 advanced shaders, the Standard folder 250 basic shaders.
Select one of the shaders. The eFX-ISF plug-in should generate an interface that fits the shader
Now have fun! Play with the parameters in the interface and watch the video distort.
Bonus: you can download shaders from the Interactive Shader Format (ISF) website and add them to the ISF folder in the eFX folder in the EboSuite folder in Ableton Live’s User Library. (User Library>EboSuite>eFX>ISF). This way you can use all shaders (with a few exceptions) from this website. There are many. Cool generators and filters, very interesting to dive into that too.
Thanks so much Jeroen. That did the trick. So a shader always needs a movie clip? I have worked with vertex shaders in the past and they were ‘standalone’. So you could manipulate them without video input.
Other question: are there quick wins in optimising the handling of video by my MBP 2015? The CPU load is quite heavy on my i5 2,7 Dual Core (8GB ram).
Hi Hooger, soon we will release EboSuite 1.7, the ISF plug-in will be updated then too. Then you don’t need to use a video source if you are using a generator shader. For filters (effects) you obviously will still need a video source. Processing video effects and generators and Hap video decoding happens on the graphicscard initially, the CPU will only be used when the GPU is overloaded. So it is highly recommended to use a dedicated, powerful graphicscard. If that is not build in into your computer, you can use an eGPU. I don’t have any personal experience with that, but there a EboSuite users using eGPU’s and they seem very happy with the results.
In that same video it shows using images instead of videos to set the dimensions of the viewport. I have been trying to do this with little success. I can drag a video onto the session view and create a clip, but Ableton is not allowing images files like PNG or JPG. Ableton displays a symbol when trying to drop an image onto a clip in session view.
Hi Dysonant, unfortunately Ableton removed the ability to use image files in Session View, but you can still use image files in the eSampler and eSimpler.
. The ISF plug-in is very versatile and powerful, follow these steps to get started:
symbol when trying to drop an image onto a clip in session view.