A baby has been conceived after two contestants had sex on the Danish version of Big Brother. Presumably this kid will be effected by TV ratings as much as the astrological heavens. And obviously it’s only a matter of time before someone is conceived during a VJ mix. But what software for such an occasion? A leading contender would have to be VDMXX 4.0, video mixing software from vidvox.net, with an intuitive, versatile interface and fluid rhythm control.

What is VDMXX?
Advanced video mixing software that allows you to mix movies from your hard drive together, blend in live camera input, add effects and use a variety of tools (such as audio analysis ) to control the playback and style of your video. Essentially it delivers 3 windows on the top of your computer screen, with the middle window representing your mix, and what is being fed out to the projector, the left and right windows representing the sources being mixed. Below each window are a range of controls for effecting / transforming the clips.

Versatility
As soon as the new VDMXX interface loads up, you can begin to smell it’s flexibility. Smooth and well-refined, the interface is broken up into several components, each of which can be shown or hidden as needed. The components come in 4 flavours:

Sources – movie players, live camera input, font, gradient & noise generators
Processors – FX buses, mixer controls ( eg cut, blend, layer modes ), & recording buffers
Outputs – preview windows, record to disk & full screen output controls
Controllers – audio analysis, motion tracking, master clock, sequencer ( vidi-yo break-beat anyone?) , shuttle pro, waveform oscillators, midi, mouse control of x,y axis

VDMXX also includes a matrixx router, which is a way of connecting the above items together, or sequencing the order they connect in. Different matrixx settings let you approach and optimise your video differently. How do you want to play today?

Fluidity
VDMXX manages a great blend of automated and manual controls – meaning you can slave certain effects and processes to auto-responsive controls such as audio analysis, the tempo or a range of event triggers within the program, and still manually fine tune other elements as you go. All of the effects, mixer and timing controls have manual controls – ie knobs or sliders on the screen – but a strength of the program is that any of these parameters can also be connected to and controlled by other elements. Almost anything clickable within the interface has a popup menu which allows you to control the parameter values by bpm, by oscillating waves, or by frequency of bass, mid or high notes. Rather than simply turning on a motion blur filter, you can have a clip which blurs in time with the music, or gets more or less blurry as slow or fast as you want. All of the effects also have wet and dry mixes ( which can also be controlled in many ways ). Time-based controls allow you to automate chop and change arrangements of a clip such as cutting to a random location within the clip every quarter of a bar, or stuttering slightly forwards then backwards every eight of a bar, or changing clip speed every 2 bars.

Udder Features
Live camera input can be used as one mixing source, and includes a nice time delay function for playing with live camera feeds. A gradient synthesiser creates dynamic gradients for blending on the fly, and the font synth cycles through text – which when using dingbats can create great masks or layers.
The audio analysis is quite advanced and lets you fine tune each frequency so you can isolate say particular kick drums and use them as triggers. Video analysis looks at one particular source and generates values based on it, which you can use elsewhere. And you can assign any of the onscreen commands to either midi or keys on your computer, customising the way you would like to trigger the program.

Performance
VDMXX comes with an exxtensive manual, including a large section on optimising your computer to deal with such an intensive video processing load. Amongst it’s recommendations are to use 320×240 clips (though it can play full res if you have the speed), using a ram disk rather than running clips from the hard drive, and to use a compression codec which doesn’t need to be heavily decompressed for playback such as photojpeg or motion jpeg. Bearing this in mind, VDMXX seems to crank on a 1 ghz machine even using heavily compressed sorenson clips. At times of peak load it can prioritise the output screen over the interface etc so that the output video is as smooth as possible. This can also be monitored within the interface, showing how many frames per second you are outputting, and how much processor load is being taken up, allowing you to cut FX when they are taking up too much. Another nice touch is a ‘tweening’ function, where if the frame rate slips low, VDMXX can blur and blend between frames rather than having jerky stop start motion.

Requirements:
$250 US, which is around 366.54 AUD
G4 Processor – MacOS X 10.2.4+, QuickTime 6, 512+ MB RAM

Verdict
It’s da bomb, and now that it’s stable on OSX, and includes capacity for 3rd party plugins, should only continue to improve in leaps and pixel bounds.

See also :
VDMX 2 review
Grid Pro Vs Arnold Schwarzenegger
VJ Software Round-Up ( extensive list from 2004 )

“Just got in from Tokyo and still suffering jet lag”. Like all good film festival directors though, Jonathan Wells still managed time to zap across an update about Resfest, the upcoming short film fest @ ACMI in Melbourne, Dec 4 – 8. More details (and well worth your bookmarking) at www.resfest.com, where you’ll catch a quite cool and expansive range of short films, articles and DVDs.

How many short films do you watch a year?
2000… I have a pretty good idea if a film will work for RESFEST in the first couple minutes. It has probably made we weary of sitting through festival screenings of 2 hour shorts programs if the overall work is not strong, usually you discover one or two great films but it can be hard to get to them.

The last time a short film made you drop your jaw?
It happens every year… This year it was Perfect Human: Cartoon, last year it was Terminal Bar.

Which of this years crop especially strike a personal chord with you?
Too many to mention in the music video category… The Michel Gondry program as a whole is mindblowing (though I love La Tour de Pise because it was an early French piece that hadn’t been seen elsewhere). Some favorite shorts: David Ellis’ Letter to the President, Virgil Widrich’s FAST FILM, The Winner of RESFEST 2003 by Johan Kramer (OK I was a sucker for this one), The Japanese Tradition: Relationships by Junji Kojima and Kentaroh Kobayashi, Treevil / dir: Christer Lindstrom, Aino Ovaskainen, Aiju Salminen, The Other Final / dir: Johan Kramer.

Any favourite DIY submissions?
In 1996, Eric Henry worked at Kinko’s (a photocopy shop) to earn money to buy his first Mac – a Powermac 6100, barely capable of video. Yet he turned out an amazing film ‘Wood Technology’ that we premiered at RESFEST 1997 and it went on to win multiple awards at various festivals.

What have been disappointing patterns amongst your submissions?
Imitation – one year it was Blair Witch another it was Tarantino. Actually we’ve had no such obvious trends in the last 2 years.

Australian works you’ve included during any of the Resfestz?
From the top of my head: Gregory More & Mathan Ratinam’s ‘THUMPA’ in the By Design program this year. Peter McDonald’s ‘Harvey’ in 2001, ‘Are you normal enough?’ by Richard Grant in 2000.

The limitations of music video as a form, and who is stretching them?
Someone is paying for the bill, some of these people don’t think a music video should be a piece of art rather just a commercial to sell their artist. Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer, Mike Mills… The usual suspects.

I thought the Daft Punk feature film : INTERSTELLA 5555 was really lame – why’d you choose it?
Electronic music video has always been a popular and key component of RESFEST. We’ve also show anime works at the festival over the years. However successful or unsuccessful it was we want to encourage experimentation in filmmaking. This film had its detractors but also hit a chord with a good deal of our audience.

Your thoughts on the regional encoding scheme for DVDs? ( I noticed Resfest dvds are all region )
I think it is rubbish. Which is why I bought a multi-region DVD player that can play PAL or NTSC DVDs. I can view a website anywhere in the world, listen to a CD purchased anywhere in the world, read a book purchased anywhere in the world… Studios need to catch up with reality and do simultaneous release.

What do you think of ‘Micropayment’s, an often suggested way of satisfying artists and online audiences?
I like it and obviously many are imitating Apple’s ITunes store. We need to continue to think of new solutions that reward artists for their work.

What are the challenges of DVD distribution & how are your titles going?
It is a challenge to market short film compilations. The DVDs are most often purchased at the festival itself. They also have been very popular in Asia, where I think shops and buyers can be more open minded about innovative products.

Why the lack of short films to watch on the Resfest site?
We over short QuickTime samples of films from previous years fests, and will add them soon for 2003 programs. Mostly we want people to view the films on the large screen at the fest or on our DVD compilations where the quality can be top notch.

What’s the Resfest criteria & selection process ? ( & When is your deadline for 2004?)
Early deadline is April 30th. Criteria – produced in the last 12 months and ideally something very creative, innovative with a great story. Selections are made by the editorial staff of RES Magazine.

What sort of Resfest events can Melbournians look forward to outside of screenings?
There’s a filmmaker brunch planned, but I’m hoping to have some locals show me the town (last night we had an amazing closing party for RESFEST Tokyo in a shoebox sized bar with 100 chandeliers and 4 mooseheads). We hope to return next year with a multi-media extravaganza in Federation Square itself.