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Video Scratching Goes Mainstream
Boomzilla writes "Pioneer has released
a digital
audio and video turntable (the DVJ-X1), which allows you to manipulate and
playback synchronized digital audio and video. You can manipulate DVD visuals in
the same way as you would music i.e. real-time digital video scratches, loops
and instant cues. The video and audio streams will stay in sync, even when
they're being reversed and pitched. I guess this is the logical, commercialized
version of that which has been
done before.
It's being
shown at CES, and there are several pictures on the official Pioneer site."
You are very good.. at turning me on
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
This THING is enough to get any geek laid!!..
Just imagine walking in to a Club with this. Even if you have hardly an inch on your face with out a pimple, you will still get laid...
Rapid Nirvana
How big of a buffer does this thing have? If this thing uses DVDs for a turntable, then it must mean it has over 5GB of RAM to get around the lag of spinning the disk to find the part of the video.
Unless, of course, it only goes over the span of a few seconds, but since video/audio streams take up a ton of data, then it must have something like 512MB of ram built in to do it.
That, plus they have to find a way to capture the results of the delta frames, or else they're going to have artifacts.
Pretty amazing stuff.
We could already do basically the same kind of thing with iMovie, although with more of a workspace interface, but it was still nice and cheap.
Still, a scrub machine for the masses. Could make for some interesting deejay team competitions; visuals used to be automated. It's nice to see a more hands-on approach to a technology we've otherwise left to the A/V club geeks.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Scratching and looping? Sounds exactly like "Max Headroom" from the early 80s!
Not only has he already re-edited his own stuff, imagine what he can do with DVD's of other people's movies!!! He'll frickin' P-Diddy his way back into the mainstream with remixes of The Sound of Music, Casablanca, and The Godfather.
It's not copyright infringement, it's sampling!!! Now a "meesa jar jar binks" is just about the same as an "uh huh yeah!"
I like the Final Scratch approach. Just put a dummy encoded record on the turntable and then map any content (mp3) to it spatially. the perfect input device.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I suppose it's redundant to you because looping money shots is your prime form of entertainment?
At least for my porn collection!
This thing looks awesome, any DJ would be drooling at the mouth over it. It gives them a chance to mix visuals as well as their turntabling. With a huge screen behind you and one of these babies you could mix your viinyl with some visuals. Its great to finally get something that is so hands on with video.
Hmm...
It has RAM, and a DVD drive. Therefore, it can be made to run Linux!
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Unless, of course, it only goes over the span of a few seconds, but since video/audio streams take up a ton of data, then it must have something like 512MB of ram built in to do it.
Well, I think the concept is to mix and scratch like you would LP records in hip hop music. Well, not really mix since you would need another player and the equivilant of a cross-fader, but that would be cool.
So really, you only need to handle the amount of memory to manipulate a few seconds. But why not do overkill?
Other things you could do with this is play at fast speed. The equivilant of playing a 33rpm record at 45rpms.... and with fine pitch control. Not to mention playing things backwards. For these you might need more memory.
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
Can someone link a old Pioneer car audio tv commercial? It had some dude rockin' in his car on a shaking bridge Tacoma-Narrows style and after he realizes his stereo is causing the shaking he turns off his stereo and says "uh...sorry"
$cat
Although I would love it to be cool video remix is just not that cool looking. People have been doing this for a long time with various systems and I have seen quite a few of them. I used to work for MTV back when they had a techno show (AMP) and they tried to mix video but it just didn't work. There was no way to match rythm and even if you could it just didn't look particularly intereting. It seemded like it would be cool and you wantedted it to be but it ended up have only slightly more novelty than Microsoft's clippy. I have also seen a few groups that tried it with more advance equipment in more recent years and it mad for a nice compliment to a music DJ but these guys used a bunch of short weird and distorted clips mixed with CG. It was cool but no one person could have done it. I am also not so sure scratching would go too well either. Mostly because one of the things about scratching is that music scratching is done by going back and forth over a sound thus creating a NEW rythm and tone. However, picturing someone going back and forth over video clips just conjures silly images that I would imagine could even be a little dizzying to watch. So while they might of solved some techinical hurdles I think the artistic side has a long way to come.
In the early days (the really early ones), manipulating text easily was a challenge for computers. Then images and sound were the next hurdle. Compression schemes were not standard and memory limitations limited the kind of things that could be done and prevented realtime editing. I have long been wondering when video will reach the stage that sound and image are in now. I didnt think it was any time soon, but apparently DVDs/mpeg2 allow some semblance of this realtime, free-form editing possible for the other medias. Now what really interests me is, what is next for computers to conquer (and yes i know video is hardly conquered yet)? 3d video? (and i dont mean stereo, i mean 3d recordings of entire rooms or people ie scifi "holo" displays) or is there something even more amazing that i cant think of...
I'm not sure that the points that it makes sense to scratch audio at are appropriate for video wobbling at the same place. Most of the cool (coldcut etc.) previous stuff that people are mentioning, was small bits of video triggered rather than wobbling.
;).
Woudln't mind a play though
I'm interested to see if they come out with a mixer to support it.
Actually I've found that doing porn really tends to not go over so well with most crowds. Instead I use a lot of kung-fu, anime, war shots, and old black and white films. Nuclear weapons test footage also works well. I add to that custom 3D renders and live effects, and get a show that most people like. I tend to do this while I am mixing live and let Geiss's Milkdrop run when I'm taking a break =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
A little history for you electronic arts folks who dig this stuff:
I did this same thing in 1989 using a Roland Alpha portable keyboard and MAX running on a Mac 2. Max was a great program for the Mac that let you graphically build a control system for any peripherals (almost like Labworks for MIDI/Appletalk). The scripte we wrote could queue video sequences by pressing a piano key, and you could scratch using the pitch wheel, turning it into a video jog wheel.
During the performance, three musicians would jam on midi instruments (drums, roland wind thingy and a guitar synth) and another program on MAX would improvise based on what we were playing. The video artist also stood on stage with the ROland Alpha, jamming with us and using a small monitor rather than facing the projection screen.
Technologically, it was HOT.
In practice, the music was a cacophony and the video didn't change fast enough to keep up.
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-until the image of an actor could be digitally sampled and then cast in a new movie? Like the commercials that use licensed images of Elvis or Humphrey Bogart to advertise contemporary products but an entire feature using a sampled image of Bogie that cannot be distinguished from images made from the actor. I see a whole new area of licensing and intellectual property battles. Then again, I'd love a chance to redo Star Wars Episode 1. The story just cries out for new casting. At least erase Jar Jar.
I'm laughing at clouds.
I actually found a device to do this much cheaper. Anything sharp works quite nicely. However, after I was done, the movie didn't play back the way I wanted it to. I even drew little arrows to point to which areas of the disk to go to in which order. However, it does seem to be blipping out more now... although it is skipping, but not as much as I intended. I'll probably have to buy a new DVD player for the scratching feature to work properly.
Yeah but will it make modern music any better? Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
This an optical encoder disk that you put on a turntable. Scratches video quite nicely. Works very well for mixing hip-hop music videos.
These kids are at Macworld in SF this week. Check them out.
Remember in Batman Returns when Batman used a CD of the Penguin's private conversation against him by repeating one line over and over again by scratching a CD.
Learn something new.
The pictures indicate its limited to region 2 dvd's. And this isn't likely to be a product we get region free versions of from Asia. This seems limiting since DJing is largely sampling from a wide variety of sources, I would think it would be advantageous to show first release/current stuff from region one or (preferably) all regions.
and this only matters to a few hard-ware goobers too.
So, WHY are we being subjected to it again?
A machine that lets me make my own Purina Cat Chow commercials. Just what I needed.
You're using her as bait, Master!
From the wired article:
Video scratching was pioneered by a U.S. multimedia crew called Emergency Broadcast Network in the late 1980s, and refined by Coldcut and Hex, a pair of U.K. collaborative multimedia producers and musicians.
Does anyone else remember EBN? They were sorta Negativland-ish music (later Negativland, that is... dispepsi-ish stuff that had a beat and wasn't as abstract as their earlier stuff) and had all these cool videos where they did video sampling.
Their live show was one of the coolest I've ever seen. They had three huge video screens behind the stage playing sampled video, and this this weird podium thing that had two arms... On the front of the arms were TVs with yet more sampled video, and then later in the show, they arms spun around and had lasers or something on the other side. This was a long time ago, so I don't remember exactly, but it was incredibly impressive. They had re-edited all this footage, so they had Connie Chung, Dan Rather, et al. saying "This is EBN Nightly News!" and stuff. They also had a real gun shooting blanks during "Shoot the Mac 10". I grabbed some of the bullets of the stage, and I think I still have them. Amazingly, they were just the opening act for Banco de Gaia, who I also like, but come on... Toby Marks (BdG) was just sitting at a mixing board. It didn't even compare.
You can find some of their videos around the net. We Will Rock You shows them re-working (elder) Bush speeches, similar to the Bushwhacked that's been floating around the net.
They also had this tricked out station wagon with a satellite dish and video monitors all up and down the roof. It looked pretty cool, though I only saw pictures, not the real thing.
Later I saw them in "concert" opening for someone else, and they just played a video. I don't even think there was anyone from EBN there. It was totally disappointing.
Coldcut and Hex are cool, too, but I've never seen a show like the EBN one since.
Personally, I'm not a fan of "video scratching", as it seems too similar to scratching on LPs. (Or is it "bangin' on wax", as the kids call it).
But if you're interested in video scratching, check out Wave Twisters [http://www.wavetwisters-themovie.com/] - it's a "movie", all based on video-scratching to the beat of an album produced by DJ Quik, the scratch artist.
Pretty interesting to watch when you're stoned, I guess.
+5 FUNNY!!
I've played with more than a few VeeJays in my time, there seems to be a huge range in the effort that the video people put in - some of them try to sync stuff up to the music, others just plug up a DVD player and let whatever they have play - usually hentai porn. Really the audio needs to be syncrhonised to the music activity.
n eeds the XviD codec)
I've been messing around with video for a long time, but I'm still really a DJ at heart, I figure that a good audio video show needs at least 2 people with one DJ + One Video performer. The DJ needs a mixer which can send MIDI events from it's knobs and faders allwing the videographer to slave effects and synchronise them to what the DJ is doing. Problem is any mixer which sends midi events is just plain lousy for DJ'ing right now.
Anyway, I figured that most Promoters these days just don't listen to mix CD's for very long, so I've started to work on the video approach to complement my demo packs - here's a little one I'm working on right now.
http://www.radiodmz.com/radiodmz_trailer.avi
(
2 minutes of fast mixing and video effects - more of a commercial than a demo, but it's definately a step up from teh average video artist who plays Hentai porn over my DJ sets.....
Turntables have come a long way since I remember them back in the 80's.
This sort of stuff was out years ago and even made a big splash at last year's Macworld Expo San Fransisco (Jan 2003)
Check out the product here
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine went to a weird multimedia show at a club where they hung sheets up on the wall and did live video/music mixing. He bought their CD which had video mixes on it for about half the songs, I think.
Anyway they were called Emergency Broadcast Network. The album was Telecommunications Breakdown and it used clips from news broadcasts and infomercials. There's a very small clip from one of the songs one that album here. There also some better resolution clips of some of their other songs here, and a better resolution download of "Rock This Base" here. I don't think any of those sons are as good as the stuff on Telecommunications Breakdown, but check it out, I'm not sure if that album is still available anywhere right now.
Others gargle and spit! get it right!
Yeah, EBN were an amazing band pioneering all this kind of stuff, and still going sadly unrecognised to this day ( tip: Telecommunications Breakdown is probably one of the best albums of the 90's, and had all this k00l multimedia shit bundled with it too ).
The swinging apparatus you described was also at some points mounted on the station wagon - it can be seen configured like this in the documentary Sonic Outlaws, which is awesome, and first turned me on to EBN, Negativland and that style of music in general. Anyone with an interest in fair use rights should view this documentary, as it features extensive coverage of the Island Records / Negativland lawsuit.
YLFIP.S. Am very jealous you were lucky enough to see them live.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Just kidding. But this sounds like a the results of a late night drinking session with the engineering and marketing departments. Scratching is 'hot'. And visuals are hot. Scatching (um, jog) videos is NOT.
This is still more interesting to me.
Quack, quack.
Let's see... LP's operate at 33.3 RPM.
:-)
DVD's rotate at 1400+ RPM.
I can picture earnest, stern-faced VJ's sucking on burnt fingertips.
I've been skratching a lot, a lot, I know and perform most standard moves and have a few of my own, I tried most Denon and Pioneer CD turntables, they suck, period. Anyone who is telling you that those things are adequate for skratching has never skratch in his life or believes that skratching only means moving the record back and forth like some nutcase.
I mean, honestly, you have to press a "skratch" button to be able to do basics like baby skratches and can't even hope to trow in a simple drag cause the algorythm simply is programmed to do a "swee" when you move the record.
there is one system that can let you skratch digital files adequately and its Stanton's FinalSkratch. The only reason it does it adequately is because you actually play with real records on real turntables (whichever you like, mines are SL1200MKII, the tanks!), the records you use simply contain an analog timecode not too much unlike FSK (remember that bugger?) which is maped to your files. I tried it and was simply amazed, truly, much like the first time I tried 2 SL1200MKII with a Vestax optical crossfader, amazed. I was able to do one hellish scribble (some call those really fast scribbles "uzi" so pick the name you whish) which I was cutting trough transformer style, the file never did even a hiccup, it just followed.
Video skratching has been a long time requested feature for final skratch, the developer seems to be serious in its intention of bringing it, we can just hope, because I really want to go the next level and skratch my movie samples but I'll wait for a real dj tool like final scratch not those cheesy inoperable anti-performance pseudo tables.
http://www.finalscratch.com/fs4/start.asp
You only DJ in the U.S.? Sex isn't such a big taboo in other parts of the world. Or maybe it's a universal thing that the girlfriends in the crowd don't want the guys thinking about sex with anyone else.
--
Power to the Peaceful
According to this forum (contains some specs as well!) "it took 40 engineers 4 years to develop this." Exhaustive testing, i guess :P.
Yeah I VJ in the midwest, not the bible belt but probably more conservative then the coasts. Of course the crowds that tend to go to the clubs and parties I VJ are pretty liberal. I think it has more to do with it being porn and the objectification of women then the sex part, hell I've seen people having sex in the corners and that didn't really raise any eyebrows. Besides there's nowhere better than the rust belt for good electronic music Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh has probably one of the best scenes in the world.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
This is nothing new. Just a commercialization of what video artists have been doing since the 70's. Video mixing/performance is at least as old as the Amiga. Video art goes as far back as the sony porta pack. I certainly would not give any credit to MTV and its vapid brood.
Join them, and together you can rule the galaxy.
i somehow dont think the dvd-cdj thingy is intended for turntable battles ;)
although itd be funny for style points to not only perform a perfect juggle, but do it so the video flows as well :P
dms0
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What kind of retard would use that shit, and for what purpose? No that purpose sucks. Shutup, ass.
VJamm Demo
Actually, you can still buy one of their best, the wonderful video they made.
click here
Sometimes your local wierd video shop will have this for rent, too.
Last year I was trying to dig up more info on them, just to see what happened to 'em, and only found the main guy's home page, who's now some kind of big-wig Video guy running a company serving Ad firms or something. Full circle, huh?
This sounds like what the Quicktime codec Pixlet can do. The WWDC keynote by Jobs showed him "scrubbing" back and forth through a full-size Nemo video with, supposedly, no skipping nor visible artifacts.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This product is great, but why force the user to use DVD? Why not make it so it can be hooked up to an external hard disc?
I'd rather go to a club with a laptop. That way, I can just plug in and go, and I have access to all my data easily in one place, no disc changing required.
Today's VJ/DJ booths are a mess of CDs, DVDs and VHS cassettes that have been battered to the point where they barely work, they go missing, and you have to keep shooing people away from putting down drinks and cigarettes on top of them.
Pioneer, don't mar a great interface by forcing users to use a crappy media!
I was bored one night when I was on the road in San Franciso, and I noticed that the Mozilla first anniversary party was happening at the Sound Factory. It was fairly ho-hum, but there I witnessed EBN. It (they?) was awesome. Very cool and innovative.. I'll have to get a DVD of one of their performances...
Batman did this video scratching thing, in Batman Returns during the Penguins television apperance when he's running for mayor.
actually one of the dudes from EBN (who were all going to school in providence, RI at the time) still throws monthly events at a place called AS220.
i wish i had been paying attention to music at the time
The good news: being a DJ will still not require any discernable talent.
I bought MS Pinky to use with my MOTU 828mkII firewire audio interface instead of Final Scratch. The software was $100 with the vinyl, and I didn't have to waste money on the Scratch Amp thing that is only good for Final Scratch. It is great! 10ms Latency on a G3 iBook, and much better quality than Final Scratch.
Oh yeah, it came with a program that does video scratching as well.
Check it out! If you already have a 4 input-channel soundcard, you only need to spend $100!
That particular night came off of tape, and nothing was done real-time on that night.
-sigh-
britney spears doing it again and again and again...... :( oh joy :(
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
kertong's post is almost completely wrong.
Ow! ow! My eyes! I'm not supposed to get lasers in them!
I guess this is why so many DJs wear dark sunglasses while in dank clubs. Now they're practical too!
This is cool, but this company makes equipment and software that lets you do video scratching using an existing DJ vinyl turntable. http://www.ejenterprises.tv/
Why?
Honestly, I don't think there is a great enough market for this sort of thing. I always imagined a live performing artist with gear sending MIDI->DMX (DMX is a digital light control system) to sync the lights in a club/venue to the music, but it seems to me that taking DVDs (even custom ones) and scratching them wouldn't be all that cool, as least not cool enough that someone is gonna buy this. It feels like a gimmick is all.
Can anyone point me to a video of someone actually doing something like mixing video clips like this? Besides that VDJ software that Coldcut tried to market back in the day...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
"full-size Nemo video"
You mean Captain Nemo from LXG? Spare me.
Oh, you meant Disney/Pixar Finding Nemo. Still, spare me.
The only Nemo video I want to scrub is this video featuring Winsor McCay's Little Nemo.
If Christianity is, as you claim, a fairy tale, then how the 'course else are you supposed to get into heaven?
Have a listen.
Just for the record which is being created now, ne ways, video scratching is accomplished by the jog shuttle, that is the only innovation. Now this Pinoneer thing, super, pens, letters, guitars, I guess all the tools are here to make us all art superheros. The music is the emotion, the visual is just a subconscious impression no one bookmarked. If anybody got two vcrs and a Radioshack mixer for 10 bucks and thousands of fascinatingly ironic and or (adjective) videocassettes, the effect could be quite similar. Ultimately like anything regarding this subject, it's all about the video projector and mystifying the importance of the person making the selections. Here's an idea, cut to the three video screen in some club funded by who cares what, and on the screen is a hand clicking a mouse that shows a face with the mouth being comprised of the word "Boring".|
You'll see demo units in action during the 2004 Winter Music Conference in Miami at various locations. I can only imagine the possibilites of this device when coupled to a movable video projector like the HighendDL1 or Catalyst system.
(especially the audio sync option)
-el
This thing is retailing at about 900 at the moment.
I've been messing with Vj stuff for a few months now, its all quite cool.
I picked up a mixman dm2 controller for about 40, grabbed a copy of dm2midi so it generates MIDI commands. Link this in with Resolume and you can scratch/mix/mess up video for waaay cheaper than the pioneer box.
On the other hand, it ties up my laptop and cant scratch DVD's. But hey, its less than half the price.
When I VJ, I fare best with tasteful girl-on-girl fetish action.
this baby
I used to work at a club in the 80's when the DJ's Coldcut were VJ'ing with Umatics - so the artform isn't exactly new just the method.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Who could forget Joshua Pearson and Emergency Broadcast Network?? Some of the early pioneers of video scratching-
Catch some of their videos here http://www.guerrillanews.com/ebn/
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Have the mods been freebasing glue again?
If you are interested in seeing some of what they do, go to the EBN Artist page on Launch. I have their audio CD and can help you find the videos off of it also.
You are now reading my sig. Do you enjoy it?
And just when we hoped the regular stuff was starting to fade...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
~Morosoph
I'm just getting into the market for a serious mixer. Currently this is at the top of my list, in the same range as the Pioneer DJM-600. It's probably too cluttered if you're a serious battle DJ, but all I can think if is all the possibilities this opens up.
6 stereo channels (4 phono or line, 2 mono/mic or stereo return)
2 auxiliary sends selectable pre/post fader (and crossfader)
MIDI output from VCF 1+2, crossfader, LFO (MIDI clock), dedicated data control and start/stop button
New twin-rail VCA channel faders or high quality VCA rotary faders
2 independent stereo mix outputs
2 VCF filters - any performance channel can be assigned to either filter and either side of crossfader
2 x independent Low Frequency Oscillators (LFO) for filter modulation
Active crossfader allowing contour to be set from smooth to scratch mix
Custom illumination showing status of all performance switches
4 band EQ - high definition of frequency bands, with 'infinite kill' on HF and LF; wide Q for cut, narrow Q for boost.
- spiff
Someone mentioned the ArKaos visualizer, but
this is the program that is more suited to the discussion.
ArKaos VJ
It's along the same idea as VJamm, but lightyears ahead and more powerful.
brockout.
In function and form, it is extremely similar to the CDJ-1000.
I cabled 2 CDJ-1000's, a DJM-600 & a power strip in my flight case (total wt. 68lbs) and have taken it to numerous clubs. If I even need to open it, people ooh and ahhh for about 10 minutes, but it's really nothing special. Most [good] clubs still use only Technics 1200s and if they've moved to CDs at all, they use the crappiest (read: cheapest) controllers they can find.
Still, if you're going to download and burn music from around the world, a CD mixing system is great since the production and distribution of records is slowly waning.
That said, I must really be fugly or talentless to not get laid after demoing or using that equipment for a set... according to your opinion.
And yet none of the news stories nor the manufacturer's website have any video clips of what the product does. It would seem to me that the best way to sell a device like this would be to provide samples of what it can do... I mean, are people expected to buy it just because the still photos of the player look neato?
'You are quite good at turning me on.'
The joke being, of course, that this is the highest praise Smithers has ever received...