On 3/2/07, Joern Nettingsmeier <nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de> wrote: mplayer has the --cache option. Lee

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Joern Nettingsmeier wrote: I'm working low priority on a tool that could do the job (event triggered video sequencing), but it's far from being usable - check xjadeo and gjvideotimeline SVN-devel-branches on sourceforge and stay tuned for video-jack... You can already do sth. like that with the xjadeo remote control, but xjadeo does not pre-cache video (the xj5-branch and gjvidetimeline do), but you can change the video-file(s) and video-file-offset during runtime and use JACK-transport to start/stop the show. mplayer does provide low latency, caching and double-buffering. If you only want to trigger sequences: just script it, it can even read simple EDLs and is quite flexible. - but you can not sync it to some external app, only trigger it to start/stop. The dual-head setup depends on your grafix hardware not the software. many chipsets only allow accelerated video only on one video-pipe (usually the built-in on laptops) - you can always render something on the 2nd screen in RGB (check mplayer -x ..) but it's probably going to be slow.. robin

Was looking at it, but at this time I am not sure Ardour is the best choice. Plus I gotta refresh my coding at the same time as its been a while, ardour is not what I like to jump in on;) Useful things in CURRENT playback software I can think of right off hand... 1. The ability to have a number of cues start instantly, and seemably random points in time, but in a consecutive order most of the time. To give an example... I build a thunderstorm sequence. In this sequence are 5 cues that loop back to each other and fade between each other an indefinite amount of time, killed by a sixth cue. Also in this sequence are other specific sound effects that do not occur at set intervals, but are actor motivated, or otherwise dependant on other factors than just time. For example, a phone might ring, thunder might crash(And have to be sync with a lighting console for lighting effects), lightning might strike and blow out the lights on stage, whatever. And then we have the cue that fades out the 5 cues of the background ambience of the storm. The ability to mix in more ways than Ardour currently does. Matrixes in particular, but an equivalent to a VCA would also be good, as well as post fade aux sends. Some of this from a playback perspective might be addressed by the addition of ambisonic panning to a variety of different sources in ardour, which has been discussed. The ability to launch multiple cue lists, each one might do different sets of effects like are described above. For instance one cue list might contain all the thunderstorm ambience, and one might contain the otherwise motivated effects. The ambience cue list might be launched(Fire and forget) from the initial cue list, that might also contain the set effects, and a cue to stop the ambient cue list. Now I have not looked to much into playlists in ardour to see if they might be modified to handle things like this. My ideal would be a very modularized system, and I would love to be able to do it in Ardour itself, however (And the devs can correct me if I am wrong) this is not a direction I believe Ardour should take as IMO it should probably concentrate on one thing, and that is being the best multitrack audio recording and editing solution it can be. Get to fragmented in the direction it takes and it will suffer as a result IMO. Things like post fade aux sends(Which in themselves could be the basis for a matrix if attached to a bus) and VCAs I could see being implemented eventually into Ardour, though I am currently not holding my breath as there are other things with higher priority. If that did happena nd playlists got modified to be able to be launched independantly, as well as a functions to control other things, like sequencers or whatever via Midi/OSC it might get there. But then the question is, from a standpoint of accepting there is limited time for people to spend on these things, which is going to create a better product for it, one that is dedicated to a single use, or one that is modified for multiple uses? I am certainly not against digging into Ardour and submitting patches after I finish refreshing my memory and going through the simple APIs I have been dealing with audio(IE Jack and libsndfile) but at the moment I am not sure it is the best way of handling things. But dang being able to run a show and record it in the same program would be amazingly nice for me;) Seablade

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Thorsten Wilms wrote: Now that is a feature I'd be interested in: multiple jack transports - guess that solves loop-playing as well. now that sounds just like an ardour-midi-light-automations-track - Cool! like freewheeling.sf.net ? that wold be awesome. - i never quite got the hang of freewheeling sync with the F1 laptop key-mode and it opens up much more possibilites.. #robin

Lee Revell wrote: i've once hacked somme code to "sequence" jack-transport. ie. define breakpoints, do jumps, but failed abysmally. well it works - kind of. (jack is so cool) @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! maybe the ardour punch-in/out and location marker concept can be extended in a suitable way.. - depending on the level of interaction during the show one might want to use pure-data. How do you prepare the show? do you edit audio/video or only arrange the live performance automation? 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. 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. 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! #robin

Most theater productions don't have those hours once tech week hits;) Seablade

In case you werent aware of this, the reason I was fairly sure you could do it in Pd, was because someone already did it in Max/MSP. Cricket is a very popular theater sound playback software written in Max/MSP, and while I am not out to duplicate an interface, that one is pretty decent for examples of functionality. Unfortuantly it is not open source, though I have not contacted the author about seeing if it might run in Pd, but the GUI I am fairly sure would not unfortunatly, which would be a limiting factor of course. But at any rate, the thing is, in my ideal situation something using Ardour would be what I would want, it is just as I mentioned, I don't think at this point it is the best idea. Seablade