[linux-audio-user] audio/video player for theatre use anyone?

[Joern Nettingsmeier]

Robin Gareus wrote:
> @Joern: is there a deadline you need to meet (get sth quick with
> mplayer) or is there time for proper open-source devel? video-jack might
> be worth waiting for!

no. currently i'm running this show with two dvd players, two md players
and a winxp machine that runs arkaos (a cue player that would suck even 
if it ran natively on linux), all piped into a video scaler
matrix and a yamaha 01v96... works nicely, but a bit bulky for my taste...

> maybe the ardour punch-in/out and location marker concept can be
> extended in a suitable way.. 

nothing against ardour, it's absolutely great. but we are talking about 
situations where customers get really really pissed when things go awry 
and i would hate to see a crash during a show due to a bug in a feature 
i don't need - hence, i'm looking for a somewhat minimalistic solution 
that will "just work" for very large values of "work".

> How do you prepare the show? do you edit audio/video or only arrange the
> live performance automation?

no interactivity is required during the show except for the manual 
triggering of playback on cue.

> I guess you want to have a simple video-player or -timeline to preview
> and define sync points in the video source first. Then assign those
> clips to different triggers, events or sequence some of them.

the global sync source in this scenario is a carbon-based biped (i.e., 
me). not even a timeline...

> A theater installation might need more than one audio-transport!
> eg. some audio keeps running continuously, some audio is sync to video,
> some extra sound-effects,. I not sure if ardour is suited for that.

most theater installations will gladly trade hours of painful 
pre-production for maximum reliability and simplicity during the show.

for productions that use it, syncing to external timecode might be 
interesting, but it's not yet very common (except for driving fireworks 
or other extremely complicated events with critical timing).

> To complicate it even more there's qlc.sf.net (the QT light controller -
> i've never used it)-  it can be controlled by Midi ! dunno about OSC or
> jack-transport. sure sth that will come in handy for live theater! but
> that would place an ardour-midi-light-automations-track on the feature
> request list :-) seriously, let's postpone that!

yes, please :)