Magic Music Visuals

Yup sounds good

. I think we've got that on our to-do list actually.

Here's another one from last year which I like because it uses 3D models. Some of them are really great. Also, this video makes use of many different scenes in a way that keeps it interesting.

This video was submitted to me soon after Magic introduced the video export feature (almost a year ago). I still really like it, especially because the music is original and minimalistic, and really fits well with the visuals.

People are always asking me how they can see more videos created with Magic. So, I've opened this forum to hopefully make it really easy to share what everyone has made, and to see lots of cool videos in one place. If you'd like to post a video here, the first thing you need to do is upload it to Yo...

Of course. Let me know when you're in town.

Eric

To be honest I'm not sure about that. It sounds like you are talking about a very high-level type of control, but fractals are somewhat complicated and I don't know where it would get you to just change one value. I'm not an expert in fractal software though. You've probably been to this page but I'...

Hi Jan, Magic can do this in a basic way using the Fractal module and the 2DScenes module. Aside from that, I'm not sure if any other software has more complex options. What features were you looking for specifically?
Eric

A lot of today's popular music makes use of an audio effect known as "dynamic range compression". Here's the Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression Compression can often improve the listening experience, but it almost always worsens the vis...

I definitely hope that Magic will have projection mapping support sometime soon. But, it's pretty complicated to write good projection mapping software and I'm not really an expert in it. The best thing would be for someone else to write a good FFGL projection mapping plugin (or maybe one already ex...

Hmm, ok. Yeah Resolume is kind of expensive unfortunately. One thing you can try in Magic is using the Resolution module (or any of the other Effects2D modules) to "flatten" your scene. The scene will be rendered to a 2D plane, and then you can rotate/scale/translate the 2D plane in 3D spa...

A lot of people seem to want to use Spout to send to Resolume for projection mapping and other things. I know Resolume supports Spout input natively. But, keeping in mind that Spout comes with a virtual webcam, you can use it in any app that supports webcam input. Here's one I found, though I haven'...

But will a second output window mean increased workload on the hardware or could this just be "mirrored" somewhere? It would increase the workload a tiny bit, but not too much. The scene would only be drawn once, and then saved to a temporary image; and that image would be displayed in th...

Yup, encoding the video with more closely-spaced keyframes can reduce dropped frames when jumping to arbitrary start points. Or, as you mentioned, having less compression can shorten the decoding time. But, as you also mentioned, the tradeoff for these things is that the video file is larger, so it ...

Even unloading graphics memory can take a little bit of time, and it can't be done in the background, so there might be a few dropped frames. That's really the main issue to be dealt with, because you don't want anything to interrupt the live show. Yup, the video resolution is the only thing that ma...

Ok cool thanks, I'll see what I can do. Just one quick note, when you choose a frequency range (either one of the presets, or a custom range), what's actually being measured is the logarithmic center of the range, with a certain amount of octave distance on either side. In other words, if you choose...

Yep, you can use Syphon or Spout to send Magic's output to another app in real-time. For example, as Chris mentioned, you could send it to a projection-mapping app since there isn't currently a way to do projection mapping in Magic. The delay is very small -- at the most it's usually only 1 frame of...

But maybe the same technique could be used to "switch" between sets of scenes? One could have a designated switcher-scene which is very simple and not dependant on any other scenes. while this switcher-scene is running, all the other scenes are unloaded and smashed out, and then another g...

Cool, thanks so much! Very helpful. Here are some comments: - Middle mouse button for panning: Good idea. - Overall sound volume: One thing you can do is select multiple inputs and set the gain on them simultaneously. But, yes, it would be nice to have a master gain setting. - Better particle system...

Yes, very cool! So did you end up using many narrow frequency ranges?

Hi Carlos, thanks for your suggestion. It's a good idea and the only reason it doesn't exist is because we haven't done it yet :). But it's definitely on our list. In the meantime we've been suggesting that our users can simply create images with text in them (using an image editing program) and dis...

Hi Chris, no need to apologize :). The way to use Magic with other apps is to use either Syphon (OS X) or Spout (Windows) to send the video. Here are the web sites for those technologies if you need more info: http://syphon.v002.info http://spout.zeal.co We've had modules for Syphon available as a s...

Hi Vlad, I think what you want to do is use a Peak modifier with one of the parameters in the Translate module. The Peak modifier will respond to the audio immediately, but it will smooth the decay so you get a movement that is less jerky. You can also use a Smooth modifier after the Peak modifier t...

Yep, you'd have to have a separate Scale module for each frequency range, so it might indeed be a bit tedious to have that many bars. But you could use Scene modules to manage it a bit more easily (see the MidiPiano project for an example), or alternatively, just uncheck the Bars option for the fine...

Hey Simon, thanks for your message. Unfortunately there isn't a way to increase the number of bars in the Spectrum module right now. But, you can use the Frequency Range feature to achieve the result you want. Take a look at the FreqRanges.magic sample project for an example of this. You can use the...

Ok, thanks! Good ideas. :) Actually, another user had suggested an "array" module, which would make multiple copies of its input, and spread them out along the x- or y-axis. I think this is probably similar to what you want? Also, we're planning to add copy-and-paste functionality for the ...

Here's another example of additive blending. Note that the Alpha value is set to 0 in each ColorRGB module.

At this point, you might be thinking, "that's all a bit complicated!" But, it does have some nice advantages. For example, in the ColorHSB module, what happens when you don't multiply the Brightness by the Alpha? https://magicmusicvisuals.com/images/forums/OrangeSquare_AlphaOnly.jpg The or...

The ColorHSB module works in a similar way. However, only the Brightness value needs to be multiplied by the Alpha value. To get an orange square using the ColorHSB module, we can do this: https://magicmusicvisuals.com/images/forums/OrangeSquare_HSB.jpg https://magicmusicvisuals.com/images/forums/OS...

Magic's Color modules (ColorHSB and ColorRGB) use the concept of "premultiplied" alpha values. This means that opacity works a little bit differently than what you might be used to in Photoshop or other image-editing applications. For a very technical article on premultiplied alpha, check ...

Hey Ted, thanks. Where are you trying to save the project? I wonder, is it possible you don't have administrative permission for the location you selected? You might get this error if you were trying to save over a sample project, because the SampleProjects folder isn't writeable. Try saving to the ...

Another good question. So, just as one really quick answer, there is a version of LoopBe ( http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe30.html ) which provides 30 "cables", each with 16 channels. That's an easy solution but it's $20 or €17. Alternatively, keep in mind that each MIDI channel has lots of i...

Well, most audio files are stereo, so channel 0 would be the left stereo channel, and channel 1 would be the right stereo channel. The difference between the channels comes from how the instruments and effects are panned; in other words, if you were wearing headphones, it would determine what you wo...

Personally I've just had too many stutters and dropouts with wireless cameras so that's why I don't use them. :) When you say "install" the shaders, do you mean the expansion pack? For that, you can just unzip it anywhere. Then, all you have to do is choose a shader file by clicking on the...

Cool thanks! I know I have at least one other customer who has used Kinect with Magic, but I'll have to ask him how he did so. I know it was on a Mac though. Right now there aren't specific plans to create Kinect modules due to the limited demand, but that could change of course. For now, Syphon (an...

Thanks Mikey! Always good to hear from a satisfied customer :). I'll talk a little bit about computer hardware because I think that's the most relevant thing to your question, and because there's so much great software out there that it'd be an endless discussion. Maybe we can talk about software in...

Yeah that one's pretty cool! Although a lot of the coolness derives from the sound waves being very low in frequency. If they were higher-frequency (as in most music) they'd be a lot less smooth and pretty. I do actually have plans to allow waveforms and spectra to be shown more three-dimensionally,...

This should be fixed in version 1.43

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Eric

Argh, sorry about that. You're right, there needs to be a better safeguarding against overwriting existing files. I'll put that on the list for the next version.

Good question! So, the short answer is that MIDI is control data which is already in a numerical form, whereas audio is a representation of a sound wave and needs to be analyzed further in order to extract relevant data. It's therefore pretty easy to just use MIDI as it is; MIDI is all numbers, and ...

Hey Jerome, thanks! We're based in Los Angeles and I'd love to come check out your work with Magic at the Echo :). I think I've been there before but it was probably a long time ago. That's an interesting idea with the transitions, I'll definitely see what I can do. In the meantime you might want to...

Ricky, thanks! Yeah, we're definitely not trying to compete with Arkaos or Resolume -- those programs are great for what they do.

I'll try to have a look at Beat Reactor.

Eric

Thanks!

Yeah, as soon as there are enough posts to warrant a separate forum, I'll split one off.

This is an easy question which I get asked quite often. The short answer is, all audio and MIDI devices are supported! Magic doesn't care about hardware -- it just uses standard protocols to communicate with your audio or MIDI device. If your device works with your Mac or PC, it will work with Magic...

Let's say you want to add the same video to two different scenes (in this case, Scene 0 and Scene 1). You might think you need to add one Video module to Scene 0, and another to Scene 1: https://magicmusicvisuals.com/images/forums/Scene0vid.jpg https://magicmusicvisuals.com/images/forums/Scene1vid.j...

EDIT: In Magic 1.63, the Invert modifier is an easier way to invert a value. However, the tutorial below is still useful for understanding modifiers in general. --- A question I get asked a lot is, "How can I invert a value for a module parameter?" For example, let's say you want Volume t...

Windows Many Windows audio devices provide an input that allows you to monitor any audio going to the speakers. Selecting this input in Magic will allow your visuals to respond to your speaker output, including any other applications that are playing audio. Standard audio devices For standard audio...

In this forum we will be adding many new tutorials that will provide explanations of various features in Magic. You can't create new topics in this forum, so if you have any suggestions for things you want to learn more about, please let us know! You can reply to existing topics to ask questions. Eric

Hi Renzo, you are right! It looks like there is a new bug that prevents ASIO from working properly when there is more than one ASIO device installed on the system. I'll fix this for the next version. Currently the audio file playback can't be controlled via MIDI, but we are planning on adding that f...

A lot of you have been asking about what new features we have planned. Here is a list of some of the things on our to-do list, in no particular order: - FFGL module for loading FFGL 1.5 plugins ( http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/ ) - Syphon output of entire application on OS X, including playlist tr...

Hello Magic users! We've just opened the forums, so please feel free to ask any questions you may have about using Magic. Also feel free to post any problem reports (including bugs), or any feedback or suggestions for new features. Have fun! Eric p.s. For customer service issues (such as billing or ...

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