Software Update: Resolume Avenue 3.1.3

Resolume Avenue is an application specially developed for live video, and can be used, for example, by VJs who are putting on a live video performance in a discotheque. By using different keys on the keyboard or midi device, you can alternate, play over or edit the images. There is support for most common image files, including avi, mov, mpg, swf, gif, jpg, bmp, and psd. In addition, a capture device such as a camera, webcam or TV tuner can be used. The developers have released Resolume Avenue 3.1.3 and provided it with the following announcement:

Resolume Avenue 3.1.3 Released

So, 2009 is coming to an end and we’re happy to present you a free Resolume update before Christmas. This version is again more stable, has smoother deck switching, improved MIDI clock, new effects & blend modes and loads of other improvements.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope you had a good 2009. For us 2009 had some stressful periods but we’re extremely happy with the direction we have taken with Resolume 3 and all the improvements we made. And we’re grateful that we could welcome so many new users in 2009. We’re looking forward to all opportunities that 2010 will bring!

Now it’s time for us to drink a glass of Champagne and for you it’s time to download Resolume Avenue 3.1.3.

cheers!

Stability Improved
Stability remains our main concern and we managed to fix a couple of potential crashes so this version is even more stable.

Smoother Deck Switching
We have spent a lot of time fine-tuning the deck system to interrupt the playing video as little as possible. Deck switching is now a little bit faster but (more importantly) it does not interrupt the video as much anymore so you can comfortably switch decks during your performances.

MIDI Clock Improved
Our audio programmer Tim spent a lot of time improving synchronization via external MIDI-clock. Avenue now follows the external MIDI clock signal more accurately so your clips play sync with Ableton Live, Traktor or any other software or device that can send a MIDI clock. To learn more about MIDI clock checkout this new video tutorial made by Joris on how to sync Avenue to Ableton Live using MIDI.

Z Rotation Fixed
Finally! Thanks to OpenGL expert Daniel Berio. We’re looking forward to January when he joins us full-time to work on new features and improvements. Check out his website: http://enist.org

Shift Glitch Effect
This effect copies a random slice of the video and puts it back in at a different (random) size and position. In Resolume 2 this effect was called Barshift. This version is more tweakable because it has extra Frequency and Size parameters.

Strobe Source
Does exactly what you would expect. The two alternating colors are black and white by default but can be adjusted. Including alpha! Please be careful with this one, high contrast, fast flickering images can cause epileptic attacks.

Strobe Effect
The Strobe effect flickers the video on and off, the “background” can be adjusted to any colour.

Static Effect & Source
Also does exactly what you expect, generate static noise 😉 3 different kinds actually, colour, two-tone and grayscale. Available as a source and an effect. The effect version is great for pushing some grain into a clip when you slide the opacity of the effect down to ~20%.

Thanks Matias!
Some of the new plugins (Shift Glitch, Strobes & Statics) are made by Matias Wilkman and are completely open source so you can modify them! We hope it will inspire many programmers to learn and create FreeFrameGL plugins. Checkout his blog: and the plugins source code: https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/ffgl/

TimeSwitcher
Due to popular demand the Timeswitcher is back. We never knew it was so popular in Resolume 2 so we have rewritten it to work with Resolume 3. You’ll find it among the blend modes and transitions on every layer. For all newbies, it switches the layer on and off at a frequency determined by the video opacity.

Mask Blend Mode
You can now turn any layer into a mask for all underlying layers. Because the masks for clips, layers and composition can only be a still image this is a welcome addition if you like to work with animated masks. Select “50 Mask” from the layer’s blend modes, slide it to 100% opacity and of you go. Works with any footage, does not have to be grayscale.

Cube Tile Effect
Crawl inside a cube where your video is tiled to all 4 walls, let it spin and you think it will look like a bad video effect from teh 80’s. Surprisingly, (most if the time) it actually looks great 😉 We’re surprised how this cheesy experiment turned into a versatile and useful effect that even 3D haters will like.

New Keystone Plugins for Video Mapping
We have seen a lot of architectural video mapping projects in 2009 and 2010 will undoubtedly bring even more. We have therefore created 2 new Keystone plugins. Keystone Crop and Keystone Mask. For cropping and masking the video without deforming it. The normal Keystone plugin now has a “Show grid” parameter so it’s easier to see the outlines and make precise adjustments. We’re looking forward to see your video mapping projects in 2010!

PNG Snapshot
We needed a fast way to grab a frame from a video so we can quickly create all the still for our footage releases. So we added this snapshot feature. We hope it’s useful for you too. Press Ctrl(Command)+Shift+P to create a PNG image from your composition.

Quickly load a LOT of videos
It’s now a lot easier to load a LOT of videos at once. Just select as many videos in the file browser with SHIFT and drag & drop them on one of the columns. (Column 1, Column 2, etc) This will make Avenue load all of them and distribute them to all layers. It’s these small things that make your life as a VJ much easier 😉

OSC Improvements
Some main menu items are now accessible through OSC, the most important are the items in the output menu. To set the output to fullscreen on your second monitor do this: /application/fullscreen/ 1

The mapping of lists has changed, cuepoints, beatloopr, clip triggerstyle, mixers etc are actually lists. It will make it easier to just send an index instead of a value that actually corresponds to one of the values ​​in the list. So instead of passing in a real value you should now send an index.
:
/activeclip/video/position/pointsofinterest 2 (sets the third cuepoint)
/activeclip/video/position/jumptopointsofinterest 2 (jumps to the third cuepoint)

This means that your current implementations might be broken because the behavior of for instance direction has changed as well.
/activeclip/video/position/direction 1 (sets the direction to forwards, 0 = backwards, 1 = forwards, 2 = pause, 3 = random)

This change has opened some more possibilities, for example use the following message to change the blend modes of the active layer.
/activelayer/video/mixeroption1 0 (Changes the blend mode to the first one in the list, 0 to n-1 options).

Other Additions and Improvements

• Added Distance parameter to SHIFT RGB effect
• Added support for FFGL Text parameters
• Redesigned audio device setup code this fixes problems with ASIO drivers and audio playback on Vista.
• Right click on enabled RGB button switches them all on
• Enabled mouse wheel on clip tempo and layer opacity (layer transport panel) Thanks to the Kijkbuiskinderen!
• Rectangular textures (NPOT) is now turned on by default on NVIDIA cards. This makes rendering a bit faster, especially on HD resolutions.

Fixed Bugs:

• [fixed] Decks stay in composition although they are cleared.
• [fixed] Remove all composition key mapping also removes menu shortcuts
• [fixed] MIDI mapping is displaying strange character strings
• [fixed] Drag an audio clip on an audio clip that is being previewed causes crash!
• [fixed] Shortcuts on RGB switches only turn on
• [fixed] Resync not working correctly (on xp)
• [fixed] Cannot change audio sample rate on 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
• [fixed] Avenue won’t start with some capture devices
• [fixed] Time indicator not visible for Audio clip in timeline mode
• [fixed] Composition level shortcuts are not cleared when a new composition is created
• + many more