Long or short video clips in Show Buddy Active?
If you wish, you can create presets that only play long videos and do nothing with your lights. Then you can trigger videos and lighting independently as follows:
- Make sure your video preset doesn’t control your lights by disabling the “Lights” option in the “Effects” tab
- In all of your lighting presets, disable the “Effects” tab by changing “FX ON” to “FX OFF“. This will prevent your lighting presets from stopping the video
- This of course means your lighting presets need to be designed entirely from the “Controls” tab
However, things get much more interesting if you add short video clips to your lighting presets like this:
We recommend you think of your projector as an extra intelligent fixture in your lighting rig, and think of each SBA preset as being a cohesive look, containing both DMX lighting and video content. This way, when you crossfade between SBA presets the video clips will automatically crossfade to match your lighting. When you move or copy presets on your timeline, your video content will instantly update to match. You will also be able to reuse full looks (with lighting and video content) across songs much more easily.
Some of the advanced SBA video techniques also work best with short clips. You can layer multiple clips and images into a single preset. For example, you could have an “Intro” preset which sets up your pre-show lighting, and plays a short video loop with your band logo layered on top. You can even animate video layers to match the tempo of the current audio.
Another fun technique to try out is pixelmapping – that is, sending video clips to both the projector and your DMX lights. This can make your entire DMX rig react in realtime to the video clip. Here are a couple of real examples: