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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
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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
At least for my porn collection!
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.
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.
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.
Well that's nothing new. I attended an art history lecture where a professor described how the ancient Greeks used arrays of tinted glass with candles behind them, behind shutters activated by strings attached to a keyboard. They would take ergot to trip out, then listen to lyre concerts with freaky light shows.
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.
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.
Actually, the first "video scratch" effect I recall seeing was in the video for Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and also one for a subsequent tune which I think was named "Hardrock." I saw a lot of Max Headroom (not the TV series that had Matt Frewer as a reporter for a TV network in a dystopian "20 minutes into the" future) but the oddball chat show that (IIRC) ran on Showtime (I still have some of that stuff on VHS) and the time-domain video effects there were pretty much entirely freeze-frame or just plain cut in nature, i.e., freeze then alternate the freeze with the live or just throw in odd cuts.
By the way, I loved this:
Rutger Hauer: "I wonder...about your soul."
Max: "I haven't got any feet; how can I have a sole?"
Guess you had to be there.