Magic Music Visuals

A small suggestion for the video file related nodes.

In the VideoFile node, there is a start parameter from which the video starts and, when the video ends, will loop it back to that start value.

I can imagine several use cases for a similar parameter (called e.g. "offset") that initially starts from an offset but afterwards loops from start. It would be dangerous (perhaps) but interesting to iterate this parameter.

For instance a video with start, offset and end set to 2, 4, 8 resp. would initially start 4 seconds in (at the start or refresh/reset of the scene), continue to the end at 8 seconds then loop back to start at 2 seconds - continuing normally from then on. Having three video nodes with offsets of 0, 2 and 4 would all start and continue from different points but all still loop from start to end.

One can almost achieve this effect by delaying the powering on of the nodes or changing the speed temporarily but neither of these are precise enough for syncing parts of a loop.

I guess that's possible but I'm not sure why it would be a visually desirable effect? Can you post an example?

These are gross simplistic examples for very short loops.
But even for longer video, an offset to show different parts of the video e.g. offset dance moves, chases etc..

Couldn't you achieve this by just varying the Start parameter?

For example, using some kind of Expression like: if time equals 0, set the Start param to 4; else set the Start param to 2

Yes, that totally works, thanks Eric.

I tested several scenarios: chases, alternating loops, dance offsets and others.

For folks to set this up...

On the VideoFile start parameter add these modifiers:

• Increase 1.0 (that's the scene timer)
  Expression: if ( x = 0, offset, 0) where offset is the delay you want.

The same setup in every case just with different offsets.