trying out the new beatclock input feature from the beta

[blackdot]

i tried to send a midi beatclock from traktor to magic via LoopBe1(found here under 'other useful thirdparty stuff' http://magicmusicvisuals.com/resources). and it works, which is awesome. tried to apply it on the speed parameter of the video module. the beatclock seems to produce values like the ramp, just inverted, going from 1 to 0. the speed of it is dependant on the current bpm in traktor, if i change that, the values go faster/slower in magic. problem is though, that for the "speed" parameter a steady value would be needed. any idea how to do this?

i then managed a different way to get the bpm out of traktor, by sending out a "tempo" value. this arrives as a static value in magic and it increases and decreases as the bpm are changed in traktor, just as it should. problem here is that the amount of in/decrease doesnt really relate to what's happening in magic. decreasing by 30% bpm's reduces the value way more than 30% and so on. maybe i can figure out sth here with offsetting and multiplying.

[Magic]

Yep, the beat clock is a pulsing signal so it's not meant to control the Speed parameter. It's intended more for instantaneous reaction to the beat -- like for any effect which you would link directly to the Volume of an audio input.

It's much better to send the BPM as a static value, as you discovered. It's more accurate and there's no lag. Otherwise the clock signal would have to be analyzed, which would always result in an approximate value and would be delayed.

decreasing by 30% bpm's reduces the value way more than 30% and so on. maybe i can figure out sth here with offsetting and multiplying.

Perhaps this helps? http://www.traktorbible.com/en/123pitchrange.aspx

[blackdot]

ah so the beat clock is more like a metronome going from 1 to 0 but with each beat? that would still be cool for other stuff. your link sounds promising. looking into it. thanks

[Magic]

ah so the beat clock is more like a metronome going from 1 to 0 but with each beat?

Yep, exactly. And you can add modifiers to make it decay faster or slower, etc. Pretty versatile.

[blackdot]

Would it also be possible to have the pulse twice as much? Like having twice the beats? ( 1010/1010 instead of 1000/1000, 1 being a beat and 0 none in a hypothetical 4/4 rhytm) or to offset it by a half beat to 0010/0010. Or would such things have to be done at the sender side?

[Magic]

You can actually use modifiers to accomplish both those things.

To make it go twice as fast, add a Scale modifier with a value of 2, and then a Wrap modifier (with the default 1.0).

To offset it by half a beat, add an Offset modifier with a value of .5, and then a Wrap modifier (1.0).

It all works because of how the beat clock is implemented with a linear ramp in Magic. It allows for some neat mathematical "tricks".

[blackdot]

Thanks a lot eric. Thats exactly the math wizardry i wasnt able to achieve on my own .

[blackdot]

did try again to get a static BPM from traktor into magic and it's quite frustrating. i was able to manage it "somewhat", but the problem is that midi is restricted to 127 numbers. deviding a bpm range from 40 to 200 into 127 steps, gives ugly numbers obviously. while 40 is 40 and 200 is 200, 100 comes into magic as 99.213 or 80 comes in as 79.055. not big deviations, but things would still get asynchronous.

would it be too far-fetched to request a feature that calculates a steady bpm value off of the incoming beatclock? would that even be possible?

the purpose of my eneavour is still to be able to match the playing speed of a rhytmic video to the speed of the music.

[Magic]

I'll see what I can do, but as I mentioned above, the value still won't be fully accurate. There may be some minor timing delays due to the way MIDI messages are processed, and there will also be some lag because the previous several beats will have to be analyzed when the tempo changes. But, maybe these things won't matter too much in your case.

One thought though: do you really need the full range of 40 to 200? Is it possible for you to restrict it to a smaller range, like 53 to 180? Then you have exactly 127 steps. Most music will still fall within that range.

[blackdot]

indeed your right with using only a range of 127 steps, i'd still be restricted to full numbers then though. that'll depend on what kind of music we're going to play (and how).

for the hypothetical new feature: a delay of a few beats until the new speed is adopted would indeed not matter much in my case. i'd just want to automate the video speed and not have to deal with it manually so i could focus on other things and the music.

btw scaling and offseting the beatclock works like a charm, thanks a lot. with that and the audio analysis, a lot can be done already. syncing my prerendered rhythmic videos to the music would be the final touch .

[blackdot]

You can actually use modifiers to accomplish both those things.

To make it go twice as fast, add a Scale modifier with a value of 2, and then a Wrap modifier (with the default 1.0).

To offset it by half a beat, add an Offset modifier with a value of .5, and then a Wrap modifier (1.0).

It all works because of how the beat clock is implemented with a linear ramp in Magic. It allows for some neat mathematical "tricks".

is there also math wizardry to make it go half as fast? from 1 to 0 in two beats instead of one? cant figure it out

[Magic]

That can't be done with math unfortunately. So maybe I'll have to implement it separately. But could you also just slow the BPM to like 60 instead of 120? Or would that screw up the music?

[blackdot]

In traktor there are apparently no "modifiers" or such for the midi clock. only other types of midi messages. so not possible to send out the beatclock half as fast or so. actually changing the bpm would also change the music, so no change at all so to speak.