SpoutControl

[Sadler]

I would imagine you've already thought about this, perhaps in depth, but controlling MV from other applications would definitely add convenience. Being able to control the MV playlist, for instance. Is SpoutControl a suitable mechanism?

[Magic]

I've seen SpoutControl, but I guess I assumed that the current ability to control Magic with MIDI would provide the needed functionality. Especially because there are plently of good free utilities that let you send MIDI commands between applications. Do you think SpoutControl would be significantly more convenient? My impression is that SpoutControl is really for senders that don't have sophisticated GUI/MIDI input.

[Sadler]

I think the rationale for SpoutControl is that if you're receiving spout in an application you'd generally want to stay in that application and since there's already a connection between applications, why not use it for a bit more control. One could always alt-tab between Resolume and MV, for instance when MV is spouted into it, so perhaps the feature wouldn't be a massive gain for simple things like change of scene but sometimes there's that split second decision to be made and there is always the risk of fumbling the keys.

Regarding midi, Resolume (for example) has midi-in and some midi-out for feedback to controllers but I don't believe it has the capability to configure midi-out messages, especially at the granularity of clip parameters. Even midi-in configured to control a certain parameter is liable to change if the order of effects changes. If using a controller exclusively one could probably send midi to both applications but physical controllers have their limits too especially with such sophisticated programs as MV.

Using Arena as an example, could you outline a midi workflow to control MV?

Lynne Jarvis and the spout team are heroes with all their application integration projects. Perhaps when OSC is bidirectional in more apps SpoutControl will become less interesting but right now it's the ISF of Spout senders.

[Magic]

If using a controller exclusively one could probably send midi to both applications but physical controllers have their limits too especially with such sophisticated programs as MV.

Using Arena as an example, could you outline a midi workflow to control MV?

Yeah I didn't mean to suggest there was a MIDI workflow for Arena to control Magic. I meant the other thing you said, which is for a physical controller to send MIDI to both apps at the same time. I know a lot of people who are doing that.

Or, similarly, one physical controller could be used for Magic, and another one could be used for whatever other app, etc.

My personal estimation is that people who would use SpoutControl rather than MIDI to control Magic would be a very small percentage of Magic's users, especially because only a small percentage are using Spout in the first place. But anyone can feel free to tell me otherwise of course . What I do hear from most VJs is that they don't want to touch the computer at all during live shows, because it is so "delicate"; they prefer to use their physical MIDI controllers because of the nice big buttons which are much more robust and easier to deal with than mouse/keyboard. That's just what I've heard though.