November Video Snippets

Vidi-yo~! Another round-up of developments in the land of moving pixels.

Web Video
Hard not to notice Google’s purr-chase of youtube recently, a landmark event for online video and notable more for the value it places on social networks and user generated media, than the price ( $US1.6billion of google stock, not cash, mere grains from the google shores ). As Susan Mernit noted Google could’ve bought the New York Times for the same price, but as media shifts online, conversations and networks, collective tastes and filtering are becoming more valued than the old one-to-many approach of traditional media. Whether Gootube can simultaneously please both the copyright holders and the network of users, remains to be seen, there being plenty of other online video infrastructure to play within if Gootube gets too restrictive or advertorial.

Something missing in many of the online debates about the Gootube merger is that around half of the network’s most viewed clips are created by users ( as pointed out by a series of ‘YouTube trends reports‘ ). That’s significant. The most viewed clip is of course, the ‘Evolution of dance’ an extensive swiping of pop culture’s most memorable dance moves. Virginia Heffernan of the NYtimes reckons part of this clip’s popularity is do with it’s lack of language, allowing it to transcend national boundaries. And why should youtube get all of the advertising from that clip’s 34 million views? Revver.com is one alternative to that, providing a slice of ad-revenue to the creators. In the end though, whether people jump ship to another video host or not, youtube will awlays be remembered as the most significant key trigger for shifting people to publishing video online.

‘The Amazing YouTube Tools Collection’ hosts a huge range of various scripts, code, tools for integrating youtube into your site or blog, or enhanced searching, gathering and auto-downloading of clips.

Converting those flash video (.flv) files from youtube / google video etc… into editable quicktime clips is best done on mac with the free www.isquint.org software, or www.rivavx.com on PC ( free 30 day trial, but undoubtedly free alternatives exist).

Neave.tv is worth a look for an amazing interface to present clips from Google Video, YouTube and Blip.tv.

Coming soon : www.tapeitofftheinternet.com :: TIOTI combines great design, TV-torrent tracking, favorites, recommendations, RSS feeds, tagging, groups, wiki’s, and a lot more ‘Web 2.0′ stuff.

Video Peoples
http://aliveinbaghdad.org : A videoblog of Iraqi news which shows in highly personal manner the effects of the war and the daily reality of kidnappings suffered amongst the community.

Matt Hanson, who founded One Dot Zero in the UK, and is currently helping develop the collaborative feature film ‘Swarm of Angels’ , has had a book out for a few months which I’ve just noticed : Reinventing Music Video : Next-generation Directors: Their Work and Inspiration. Looks promising.

Viral Videos
www.p2p-art.com : “Filter” – A 73 minute experimental film made by Anders Weberg, and available only on the peer to peer file-sharing networks. “This film and all the files used creating it was deleted 2006/09/15. The original artwork is first shared by the artist until one other user has downloaded it. After that the artwork will be available for as long as other users share it.”
Fast Film : an astonishing hybrid of paper origami and relentless cinema collage, has finally become viewable online.
“guitaaaar sooolo shreddingshreddingshreddingshredding” will make more sense after watching the Incredible Mouth Band.

Software
Firefox extension forone click downloading of youtube, google videos etc.
perian.org – free software that enables quicktime based applications to play .flv files within them…
Flash based VJ app – http://www.onyx-vj.com/
Democracy Player – mac & pc software for subscribe to video channels, download bit torrent videos, and watch .flv files all in the one cool player.

Hardware
http://red.com – Launch date for the hyped video camera draws nearer, 12 Megapixels, 60 frames per second, 35mm lens, lots of other crazy specs, costing $US17,500 instead of a few hundred thousand. Inevitable, and somehow not as exciting as the lo-fi genius of using a Nintendo DS as a VJ Controller : Home-brew coders in Europe have hooked up VVVV software to their Nintendo DS, using it’s Wi-Fi capacity to enable remote VJ control action~!

by Sean Healy, November 3, 2006 0 comments

Ableton Live 6 Review

live 6 On September 29, 1997 scientists discovered a link between mad cow disease and a human brain disease. On the ninth anniversary of that fine occasion, with a nod to the gods of mutation, Ableton dropped ‘Live 6‘ into the audio ecosystem.

Vat Ist?
Revered with a cult fever since it’s first release many moons ago, and as it’s name suggests, ‘Live’ is all about real-time manipulation of audio – whether for performance or studio work. It’s latest incarnation sports a few major changes, as well plenty of minor ones, all the while building upon it’s wonderful interface – which has really set a benchmark for interface design. Live has and those wondering about whether they should chase DJ software or Live – simply haven’t explored enough of what Live can do for DJ and live remixing. With a little taste of Live’s capacity for dragging and dropping mp3 files into a mix, adjusting pitch or tempo to suit, adding FX, isolating loops etc – all done in real-time, there is really no question about Live’s superiority.

Fresh Meat
Whats New in 6? Movie playback! New instrument and effect racks ( that allow saving and control of multi-fx at once ). New Ableton devices and project management tools. Multicore & multiprocessor support. Mac Intel support. New crossfader curves. A giant instrument collection of samples. And much, much more, as well as various subtle tweaks.

Movie Import
Aye carumba~! While most people are going to want to use this long-requested feature for composing soundtracks to short or long films, the fact that Ableton 6 can play sequences of clips, and output that video to a second screen – also opens up a whole range of live audiovisual possibilities from within the one application. Drag and drop a William Burroughs narrated film about witchcraft onto the sequencer timeline ( weighing in as a hefty 90 minutes and 700mb cpu intensive divx codec ) – and bam – it’s added to one of the tracks in the timeline, the soundtrack is visible and can be manipulated, and layers of sound added easily.

Instrument and Effect Racks
Given the endless variables involved with an application like Live, endless noodling can often create wonderful results – somewhere in the middle of the night, in the middle of a mix. The newly added rack feature is a way to capture and harness those combined settings for instruments, effects and plug-ins. As a bonus these can be distributed and swapped online. As usual, this has been implemented in an ultra smooth and efficient way, and it’s astonishingly easy to switch between sprawling combinations without a hiccup. The racks also allow one midi controller button to control many elements at once. Live 6 comes with many preconfigured racks with both instruments and common processing tools like guitar and bass distortion, drum processing, and mastering.

Udder Assorteds
Deep Freeze editing technology : ‘freezing tracks’ temporarily renders multiple layers to audio to free up CPU, and in this version much editing can still be done on a frozen track.
Crossfader curves : fade between tracks in a number of ways.
Multicore/multiprocessor support : Get all the robots working for you.
New and improved Ableton Devices : Beat Repeat seems to offer a lot, there is now an EQ Eight, and the Impulse percussion sampler instrument continues to shine. Most effects seem to come with more presets than before, a huge array to explore even before considering personal customisation.
Project management tools : Easier than ever to save rich settings and related files for use on another machine.
Sampled instruments : from glockenspiels to orchestral strings, a whole swagger included.
Midi functionality continues to improve and expand.
Up to 32-bit/192kHz multitrack hard disk recording.

Tutorials & Community Support
Live’s intuitive interface remains unintimidating for spontaneous exploration, but there is vastness to explore in here, and so the in-built tutorials accessible right from within the menu will help most users grasp some of this application’s amazing potential. Ableton also have a thriving forum dedicated to Live, and as a measure of it’s popularity, have inspired a buzzing network of external forums, bulletin boards, blogs and professional tutorial CDs available to tap into online.
Looking to warp some acapellas, synthesise some drums or handclaps, try your hand at live mash-ups, create sweeps and swooshes, isolate sounds, splice samples or split keyboards? Try these :
http://www.ableton-live-fans.com
http://abletonlivedj.com
http://www.beatmixed.com
http://www.teragon.org/wiki/index.php
http://abletonlive.tribe.net
O’Reilly — Getting Started with Ableton Live
Want to trigger Ableton Live via a handheld PSP game device?
What about playing Live with a blue toothed Mobile Phone?

What do You need to Run Live 6?
There is a free demo at www.ableton.com to give a taste. Beyond that, you’ll need $499 US ( download) or $599 ( manual & samples ). Reasonable upgrade prices are available for earlier users.
Distributed in OZ by Musiclink.

Verdict :
If new to Live 6, this is definitely the best it has been, and represents a great time to dive in. If wondering whether the upgrade is worthwhile, that might depend on whether you want to play with video or soundtracks, want to better exploit your newer processor(s), and whether you want to take advantage of the new effects architecture.

UPDATE : skynoise review of Ableton Live 7, and previous skynoise reviews of Ableton Live 4, and Ableton Live 2.

by Sean Healy, October 29, 2006 5 Comments

Audio Remixing & Sample Booty

A brief wade through the embarrassment of audio riches online.

Near drowning in available Mp3s, the challenge has shifted from finding music to figuring out ways to deal with the waves of it being published. Podcasts and Mp3 blogs are one strategy – after finding some of quality, subscribing to them can deliver a fairly reliable source of new or interesting music. While plenty of these sample tracks from newer albums, there are also plenty that publish relentlessly diverse, out of print material, or their own personal mixes. A few samplers?

Scarstuff – huge collections of ripped and uploaded halloween records.
Record Brother – all kindsa oddness.
Wayne & Wax – have been enjoying various mixes and tracks posted here.

Huge archives of weird sounds also abound :
The Avant Garde Project – a series of recordings of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. New AGP installments are released as bittorrents each Friday night around midnight. “To the best of my knowledge, all of the recordings on this site are currently out of print.”

The Ubuweb sound archive is a stupendous collection of rare, avant garde and weird audio :
“Categories include Dadaism, Futurism, early 20th century literary experiments, musique concrete, electronic music, Fluxus, Beat sound works, minimalist and process works, performance art, plunderphonics and sampling, and digital glitch works, to name just a few.” Amongst other gems, DJ Food’s epic “Raiding the 20th Century” can be found here in it’s full 70mb sample-history compilation glory.

At the same site can also be found hosted the 365 Days Project where one MP3 was uploaded everyday for a year. Mostly oddities and humourous schtick such as William Shatner’s drunken rendition of Rocket Man, but well worth a browse.

Archive.org is famous as a hoster of public domain and creative commons licenced videos ( see this video which explains creative commons superbly in 2 minutes, but it also hosts a huge catalog of audio too : Audio Books & Poetry, Computers & Technology podcasts, ‘the Grateful Dead collection’ and a ‘Live Music Archive’, nearly 600 virtual record labels found in the Netlabels collection, the unique contemporary compositions and performances found in the Other Minds collection, News & Public Affairs podcasts, non-english audio, open source audio and much more.

Catering more specifically to sound artists, musicians and soundtrackers, The Freesound Project zooms in on sounds themselves, aiming to provide a giant database of individual sounds that can be used for music or audio projects. Has a great exploratory interface, is free, and filled with creative commons ‘sounds, snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps’. As with any collaborative project, users are very encouraged to upload their own samples so that others may use these too.

Connected to Freesound is CCMixter which expands on that database with a huge range of creative commons related music files ( both songs & parts – eg drum loops ). Amongst it all can be found legal Public Enemy & Beastie Boys samples, tons of acapellas, and multi-tracks for remixing songs.

Forward thinking record label Magnatune allows podcasters* to use all their music for free, allows easy sampling licences for much of their music and even includes track by track audio and midi files in some cases. ( *Podcasting doesn’t get any simpler than using the podpress plug-in for wordpress blog software )

Downhill Battle host a range of music and copyright related projects such as ‘Hippocamp Ruins Pet Sounds’ ( Beach Boys acappellas & synth sounds ), The Double Black Album ( Jay Z & Metallica’s Black album ), The Grey Album ( Jay Z & Beatles White album mixed by Dangermouse ), and the Illegal Art compilation by Stay Free Magazine – which hosts songs that have been the subject of lawsuits, such as music by Negativland, Biz Markie, The Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, and De La Soul.

Splice Music offers browser based audio editing, collaborating and remixing ( a good companion to the browser based video editor – Jump Cut). Author Greg Palast has made his audiobook “Armed Madhouse’ available for remix & cc podcasting, and lastly, a follow-up to the online charity – Let’s Get Hasselhoff to Number One. They were trying to leverage net tools to get everyone buying David’s single at the same time and topping the Uk charts. On Sunday 8th October 2006, David Hasselhoff reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart with over 26000 copies of “Jump In My Car” sold.

by Sean Healy, October 29, 2006 0 comments

A Greener Apple?

Greenpeace & Apple both have a sophisticated grasp of marketing and public persuasion, so this battle should play out interestingly. Say Greenpeace :
“A cutting edge company shouldn’t be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. That’s why we Apple fans need to demand a new, cool product: a greener Apple.”

green mac

by Sean Healy, October 29, 2006 0 comments

David Bowie Vs Martin Scorcese

Ricky Gervais, writer and actor behind the painfully self-deprecating humour in The Office and The Extras, ( or see the Ricky Gervais Microsoft Training Videos ) also holds a little known career as a skinny little prancing singer in an English synth-pop duo known as ‘Seona Dancing‘. Videos of their TV performances have inevitably surfaced on youtube, which makes all the funnier and stranger – a recent cameo by David Bowie on a second series of the Extras. Upon forcing his way into a conversation with Bowie at a lounge bar, Gervais in his role as bit-part actor tries to imply he suffers the same pains of super-fame as David “the man who feel to earth’ Bowie, and after shoving his foot deeper and deeper into his mouth, prompts a wonderfully savage improvisation from Bowie with heartfully sung lines such as “the little fat man with the pug-nosed face”. Such a delight to watch the camera keep switching between Ricky’s mortified face and Bowie’s vigorous delivery.

So Bowie might think he knows a little about scamming, having been the first rock star to float himself on the stock market ( Gained $55 million overnight based on the projected royalties of his first 25 albums over the next 15 years. Mmmm, speculative economics. ) – but for real insight into corrupted minds, we’d have to give Scorcese the nod. And the grim grain of the underworld he has portrayed so many times, is arguably seen in no better place than this Sesame Street Scorcese remix which matches gruff mafia voices on top of a day in sesame street, a superbly edited lil number. Found via the ever fruitful WMFU radio blog.

by Sean Healy, October 16, 2006 0 comments