Video Playback

Chat about Show Buddy Active lighting & video control software
Corinhandley
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:26 pm

Video Playback

Post by Corinhandley »

Hi

I've literally just downloaded Show Buddy Active, and working slowly through the features, I have a few questions.

I have a large library of songs and shows in Show Buddy with which we have been running click and backing tracks while triggering lighting for several years, the reason for buying Show Buddy Active was to add video playback functionality. We already have videos that match each song, I just need a simple trigger at the start of every song to trigger playback.
What I'd like to do is trigger a video at the start of each song, and have the full video play to the end. The video is the same length as the song.
Do I have to add video to a preset, and if so, will playback stop when Showbuddy reaches the next preset? Or is there another way to add/trigger video?

Also the visualiser doesn't seem to work nicely with moving heads, the beam direction doesn't match reality. Is there a way to edit how the visualiser displays beams for moving heads?

Without these two things being an option I'm no better off than with DMXIS, so wasting my time and money on Active (No disrespect to the software, it may just not suit my particular needs).
Dave Brown [admin]
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Re: Video Playback

Post by Dave Brown [admin] »

Yup, you need a separate SBA preset for each full video clip you want to play.
  • Click the visualiser 'monitor' icon to open the video window
  • In the Effects tab, click 'Video' to add a new video layer.
  • Click 'Load video' and select your VP8 formatted video. (It starts playing immediately in the video window)
  • Adjust the size & position of the video layer in the visualiser. Check it looks good in the video window. (You can adjust video window resolution & frame rate in the Preferences window)
  • Switch OFF the "Lights" toggle (under the Mix slider). You only want this video to be projected, not used to pixel-map your DMX lights.
  • Save as a new preset.
Now you need to prevent your lighting presets from stopping your video playback.
  • Load a lighting preset.
  • Click the "FX ON" button (in the Effects tab) so that it reads "FX OFF".
  • Save the preset.
  • Repeat for each lighting preset which will be used in the song.
This disables the effects engine in your lighting presets, preventing those presets from stopping your video playback.

Now in Show Buddy Setlist, you can drag your video preset to 00:00 in your backing track, and drag in your lighting presets as normal.
Dave Brown - db audioware
Author of Show Buddy Setlist | Show Buddy Active | ArtNetMon
mpm32
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:53 pm

Re: Video Playback

Post by mpm32 »

Let's say I want to drop in some text onto the track.

I only want the text to play for a specific amount of time. How would I do that?

I have all the Presets set with FX Off. When I drop the Preset with the text onto the timeline, the text starts playing immediately and does not stop.

Is it possible to do what I want?
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