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."

Let's see it in action.

[ActionPlant]

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,

yum

[highwaytohell]

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.

How will it look....

[Flat Feet Pete]

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.

Done before and again...

[Sebastopol]

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.

How long -

[ir0b0t]

-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.

Re:yum

[Anonymous Coward]

well, im a dj, and i think i'd be more keen to leave the visuals to the visuals people, in the same way that they leave me to do the music side of things.. its cool, ubt i think its a big call to say "any dj would be drooling" - many will, but not all.

Emergency Broadcast Network! Remember them?

[dietz]

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 [guerrillanews.com] 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 [audiovisualizers.com] 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.

DJ + Video Mix example

[szyzyg]

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.

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
(n eeds the XviD codec)
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.....

Re:Done before and again...

[Flat Feet Pete]

If you're a max fan Pure Data [pure-data.org] may be worth a look. Similar concepts and open-source.

True home page is here [ucsd.edu]

um, video art?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Done before and again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked with San Francisco experimental musician Kit Clayton who used midi synched input from a G4 laptop that was running MAX/MSP with customized software from both Kit and Monolake and it was amazing to behold. The video was manipulated with midi sliders and synched perfectly with the audio no matter what beat it was.

This peice of hardware just makes it easy for the everyman to get into video mixing without a bunch of software or hardware to worry about. It's the equivalent of Abelton Live vs trying to use MAX/MSP for a live music PA

Re:Emergency Broadcast Network

[netik]

Around 1991, I spent alot of time with with Greg Deocampo and friends from RISD in the early 90's when they were writing the software (which later became a company called AVX Design).

Mark Marinello [parsons.edu] wrote the original software, It was used on the U2 Zoo TV Tour which was largely based around what EBM could do with video.

The software was written for Quadra 950's under OS 8 running video cards (radius videovision, I think) that could barely crank out 320x200. It not for pixeldoubling and on-board zoom, it would have looked far worse.

Specs [geocities.com] on EBM's live rig are still available.

If you're still interested in this sort of thing, ArKaos makes a MIDI-able video sampler now, called the Arkaos Visualizer [arkaos.net] which works a bit better than the AVX Video Sampler did.

I think the pioneer device might be great for real-time video mixing, but nothing quite compares to being able to fill up a midi keyboard with 88 keys or more of whacked out video and sync it to midi.

Quite a few of us moved to the West coast in the late 90's during the .com craze, and started IFILM, but that's a whole other story.

Re:video scratching

[mindaktiviti]

Wave Twisters isn't all skratching if you want to get technical about it. Quite a few of the beats were produced (i.e. some by Mix Master Mike). Now for a purely skratch album check out: D-Styles Phantazmagoria. Everything was done live. You can check it out here: http://www.djdstyles.com/.

For other discussions on skratching there are a few message boards floating around, namely the dstyles board, also www.asisphonics.net which is a great site that caters towards skratch djs, as well as http://www.styluswars.com/.

Oh yeah, for another cool turntable instrument, check out the QFO, Qbert's turntable with a built in mixer. Here's a link for that: http://nerdgod.org/vestax-qfo

Re:Buffering?

[mikis]

Um, not really. There is only one video stream on DVD, and several audio streams for different languages. And audio stream is at least 8-10 times smaller, so most of space IS occupied by video.