Review: Hands On with the Spark D-Fuser
By now we all have figured out that analog video connections are not the way forward. Being limited to SD resolutions is just one thing. Those of you that ever tried to do a pixel mapping on a LED wall via a scan converter and an Edirol V8, you will know that pixel perfect digital connections can be better than free beer and pizza under a hot shower.
Trouble was that up until last year, there was no hardware mixer available that could mix between two digital sources. None that a normal person could afford anyway.
[fold][/fold]
If you've been keeping your finger on the VJ pulse as close as we do, you couldn't have missed the arrival of the Spark D-Fuser. However, we appreciate the fact that some of you are busy touring or designing wicked content. Or even may actually have a social life. Either way, you could have missed it getting that elusive 'Buy Now' button earlier this year.
Or it could be that you've seen the button and the hype, but are wondering if it's really all that it's cranked up to be. It could be that you want to know more about this mysterious magic box that will solve all your problems, before you part with your hard-earned VJ cash and actually press that 'Buy Now' button.
Either way, we've had the pleasure of working with that little bad boy on various occasions, as well as seen it in use by quite a few touring VJs. So we figured it was high time to give a first hand experience of what the D-Fuser actually defuses.
What it is
The Spark D-Fuser is basically a remote control for the TV-One 1T-C2-750 Scaler. That sounds a bit 'un-glorifying', but if you ever had the displeasure of working with the TV-One bare bones, you know that it is in dire need of a better user experience. This is what Toby Spark thought as well, and it became his ten year odyssey to create exactly this. Braving sirens, cyclopses and sleepy toms, this finally resulted in the Spark D-Fuser.
Put simply, it allows you to connect two DVI sources, fade between them with a crossfader, and send the resulting mix as one fresh, crispy DVI signal. In the words of Toby himself: "Boom…"
Looks good on paper. But let's get to the meat of this burger, how does it actually perform?
Look and feel
The overall look of the D-Fuser is very smooth. It's black and yellow color scheme is pleasing to the eye. We know it doesn't count for anything when it comes to how well it works, but hey, who doesn't like to look good in pictures?
Toby kept the actual product to a minimum. The D-Fuser itself is a small separate box which connects to the TV-One scaler via an included RS-232 cable. This means that the total weight of the D-Fuser is less than a kilo, and fits snugly in your backpack. Anyone who has ever played the game of "how-much-extra-weight-can-I-fit-in-my-hand-luggage-before-they-kick-me-off-the-plane" can appreciate this. So can everybody that ever rode their bike to a gig with two laptops and a projector balanced on their baggage rack.
The choice to have the TV-One box separate however, results in 2 extra cables on the table, and on an already crowded space, this can get messy real quick. Also the control panel is still exposed, which can result in accidentally activating something on the processor during a changeover. Trust me that that results in hilarious panic all around.
On the up side, the separation does mean that if you do need to dive into the TV-One menu itself, it's easily accessible. Also it keeps the clutter of connection cables out of sight behind the laptops, where they belong. The controller is what matters, and this can fit easily on any table.
The controller itself feels a bit plastic, and does not really feel meant for quick mixing. For VJ use, on an already messy table, it can be hard to quickly find the right knob to fade out when you missed a musical cue. Any attempt to get some rhythm going with the crossfader results in the device making laps around the table.
But perhaps that's an old-fashioned way to approach a mixer. During the days of the V4, we used the mixer as an additional instrument. Computers were struggling to keep up with 3 layers as it was, so doing some quick invert flashes or cross cutting on the mixer improved the overall performance in ways not possible in software.
The Spark D-Fuser is a new mixer for a new age. Compositing and layering are done in software, where we have blend modes and effects that actually look good. We're capable of running the entire show of one laptop with 8 layers of 1080p steamrolling along at 50 fps. The actual performance happens in the software and on the midi controller. The mixer just needs to provide a stable output for that performance.
Instead of being a 'anything-goes-VJ-mixer', the D-Fuser is meant for people who take their art seriously. It feels at home with a touring visual artist where the intended use is a smooth fade from A to B for the next artist, or a quick cut to the backup laptop in case of emergency.
Setup
This is where the D-Fuser really shines. It's very clear that Toby spent quite a few nights with his baby, coming across every problem and thinking of a good way to fix it. Setup is very intuitive, and once you get the hang of the onboard menu screen, you can setup everything you want without reading the manual. Which is good, because none is included. Extra info can be found online however.
The onboard menu itself is very well designed. It gives direct feedback on the important bits, and has an easy to navigate menu structure for the harder bits.
The TV-One does not have a preview output, which can result in it being a bit of a black box. The D-Fuser solves this issue by sending a Spark logo as long as no inputs are found. This is also reflected in the onboard menu, where the word Logo is displayed. This is actually very useful, because you can be sure that at first start up, a logo is always shown on the output. If this is not the case, you know the problem lies somewhere in the signal flow behind the D-Fuser.
The moment an input is detected, it changes it's status to Live. When said input is lost, the output is frozen. This makes it a very useful piece of kit for setting up before showtime. Once the signal is correctly detected and set up, you can take your laptop back to the hotel while leaving the D-Fuser running as an active input. When the time comes to plug back in, everything is handled smoothly without loss of signal.
The D-Fuser, or rather the TV-One, has one big drawback when it comes to connections: when for some reason the input is not recognized correctly, you're out of luck and have to figure it out by trial and error. No additional info as to why you're not getting a signal is to be had, which can be extremely frustrating when setting up in a stressful environment. This is purely a limitation of the TV-One, and if you really can't live with this, you're going to have to spring for a V800.
Choosing the correct output resolution is quick and painless, and has support for the most common digital resolutions, as well as dual head and triple head resolutions. Once the output resolution is changed, the inputs are scaled automatically to this new resolution, which results in quiet sighs of relief when struggling to get things set up correctly with the promoter breathing down your neck. For fine tuning, there are additional options for fit, fill and 1:1.
In case you're completely lost, there's also a hard reset option, that walks you through the key presses needed to reset the TV-One itself. It's little things like this that make the D-Fuser feel very user friendly and thought out.
Features
The D-Fuser has the basics down pat: it has a crossfader, cut buttons and a fade to black. As a testament to the work that Toby put into this, he managed to talk the TV-One people into making a custom additive blend mode, which allows the D-Fuser to mix without a dip in the brightness when the crossfader is in the middle. It's awesome to see a company like Corio actually take the VJ industry seriously in this way.
It also supports luma and chroma keying. I'm actually quite surprised by the luma keyer. It can pull an especially clean key when using alpha channels on the source laptops.
After this it pretty much ends for the D-Fuser. Personally, I think it's a shame Toby hasn't come up with an elegant way to control the scaling functions of the TV-One. For most users, the Fit/Fill/1:1 scaling options on the D-Fuser cover 99% of the bases when it comes to scaling issues. It's a very elegant and quick solution to a process that is nail pullingly gruesome to fix on the TV-One itself.
But if you regularly come across weird LED processors or use uncommon inputs like an iPad, the scaler can really come through. The TV-One is capable of pixel level positioning, and allow you to adjust even a single misaligned pixel. Of course, these functions can still be accessed via the front panel, but they are horrible to use.
Then again, you can also get lost in the scaling options. More menu options, buttons and dials do not necessarily make the product better or easier to use. All in all the features of the D-Fuser are minimal, but they do what they need to do, in an intuitive and easy to understand way.
Extras
A very powerful feature is the support for two-way OSC communication. This means that the device can both send OSC messages and can be controlled by them. The implementation is relatively straightforward. Both the fade to black and crossfader output their values and can be accessed using fixed addresses.
The D-Fuser has the additional benefit of being DMX capable for either input or output, so you can fade the house lights with it. Perhaps even more useful, it can be used in a cue controlled theatre setup to have control over projector brightness levels from the lighting desk. This makes the D-Fuser a very powerful tool outside of the VJ circuit as well.
Overall
If you're looking for a relatively cheap way to mix two laptops while on tour or just at your local residency, the D-Fuser is the way to go. It has plug-and-play appeal and fits in your backpack.
Functionality wise the D-Fuser doesn't offer much in terms of customization unless you want to get deep and dirty by editing .ini files and uploading to the device, which can be a bit daunting to most users and impossible to improvise on the spot. As a tool to work with many changeovers or guest VJs during a long festival day, the TV-One has too many quirks. Instead, the D-Fuser is mostly meant as an addition to an already existing visual setup. Once you get your kit working correctly with it, it will keep working, reliably and solidly.
In the end the D-Fuser is being marketed as a DVI mixer. In that it does what it says on the tin, which is a good thing. Toby really spent a lot of time on it, which he used to narrow down the TV-One functions to what a user would actually need, and what they shouldn't be bothered with. You can argue about some of the choices he made, but the result is an easy to use and intuitive product, that does what it needs to do.
In this, the D-Fuser is very much like Resolume, where we sometimes have to choose usability over feature. Believe us when we say this is often a much harder task than actually writing the code.
In the end, we can do nothing but applaud Toby for the crazy amount of hours, blood, sweat and tears he put into giving us this very useful tool. It's this DIY spirit that makes the VJ community what it is.
Toby, here's to you! You rock because you rule. Now go press that button, everyone.
http://sparklive.net/dfuser/
Trouble was that up until last year, there was no hardware mixer available that could mix between two digital sources. None that a normal person could afford anyway.
[fold][/fold]
If you've been keeping your finger on the VJ pulse as close as we do, you couldn't have missed the arrival of the Spark D-Fuser. However, we appreciate the fact that some of you are busy touring or designing wicked content. Or even may actually have a social life. Either way, you could have missed it getting that elusive 'Buy Now' button earlier this year.
Or it could be that you've seen the button and the hype, but are wondering if it's really all that it's cranked up to be. It could be that you want to know more about this mysterious magic box that will solve all your problems, before you part with your hard-earned VJ cash and actually press that 'Buy Now' button.
Either way, we've had the pleasure of working with that little bad boy on various occasions, as well as seen it in use by quite a few touring VJs. So we figured it was high time to give a first hand experience of what the D-Fuser actually defuses.
What it is
The Spark D-Fuser is basically a remote control for the TV-One 1T-C2-750 Scaler. That sounds a bit 'un-glorifying', but if you ever had the displeasure of working with the TV-One bare bones, you know that it is in dire need of a better user experience. This is what Toby Spark thought as well, and it became his ten year odyssey to create exactly this. Braving sirens, cyclopses and sleepy toms, this finally resulted in the Spark D-Fuser.
Put simply, it allows you to connect two DVI sources, fade between them with a crossfader, and send the resulting mix as one fresh, crispy DVI signal. In the words of Toby himself: "Boom…"
Looks good on paper. But let's get to the meat of this burger, how does it actually perform?
Look and feel
The overall look of the D-Fuser is very smooth. It's black and yellow color scheme is pleasing to the eye. We know it doesn't count for anything when it comes to how well it works, but hey, who doesn't like to look good in pictures?
Toby kept the actual product to a minimum. The D-Fuser itself is a small separate box which connects to the TV-One scaler via an included RS-232 cable. This means that the total weight of the D-Fuser is less than a kilo, and fits snugly in your backpack. Anyone who has ever played the game of "how-much-extra-weight-can-I-fit-in-my-hand-luggage-before-they-kick-me-off-the-plane" can appreciate this. So can everybody that ever rode their bike to a gig with two laptops and a projector balanced on their baggage rack.
The choice to have the TV-One box separate however, results in 2 extra cables on the table, and on an already crowded space, this can get messy real quick. Also the control panel is still exposed, which can result in accidentally activating something on the processor during a changeover. Trust me that that results in hilarious panic all around.
On the up side, the separation does mean that if you do need to dive into the TV-One menu itself, it's easily accessible. Also it keeps the clutter of connection cables out of sight behind the laptops, where they belong. The controller is what matters, and this can fit easily on any table.
The controller itself feels a bit plastic, and does not really feel meant for quick mixing. For VJ use, on an already messy table, it can be hard to quickly find the right knob to fade out when you missed a musical cue. Any attempt to get some rhythm going with the crossfader results in the device making laps around the table.
But perhaps that's an old-fashioned way to approach a mixer. During the days of the V4, we used the mixer as an additional instrument. Computers were struggling to keep up with 3 layers as it was, so doing some quick invert flashes or cross cutting on the mixer improved the overall performance in ways not possible in software.
The Spark D-Fuser is a new mixer for a new age. Compositing and layering are done in software, where we have blend modes and effects that actually look good. We're capable of running the entire show of one laptop with 8 layers of 1080p steamrolling along at 50 fps. The actual performance happens in the software and on the midi controller. The mixer just needs to provide a stable output for that performance.
Instead of being a 'anything-goes-VJ-mixer', the D-Fuser is meant for people who take their art seriously. It feels at home with a touring visual artist where the intended use is a smooth fade from A to B for the next artist, or a quick cut to the backup laptop in case of emergency.
Setup
This is where the D-Fuser really shines. It's very clear that Toby spent quite a few nights with his baby, coming across every problem and thinking of a good way to fix it. Setup is very intuitive, and once you get the hang of the onboard menu screen, you can setup everything you want without reading the manual. Which is good, because none is included. Extra info can be found online however.
The onboard menu itself is very well designed. It gives direct feedback on the important bits, and has an easy to navigate menu structure for the harder bits.
The TV-One does not have a preview output, which can result in it being a bit of a black box. The D-Fuser solves this issue by sending a Spark logo as long as no inputs are found. This is also reflected in the onboard menu, where the word Logo is displayed. This is actually very useful, because you can be sure that at first start up, a logo is always shown on the output. If this is not the case, you know the problem lies somewhere in the signal flow behind the D-Fuser.
The moment an input is detected, it changes it's status to Live. When said input is lost, the output is frozen. This makes it a very useful piece of kit for setting up before showtime. Once the signal is correctly detected and set up, you can take your laptop back to the hotel while leaving the D-Fuser running as an active input. When the time comes to plug back in, everything is handled smoothly without loss of signal.
The D-Fuser, or rather the TV-One, has one big drawback when it comes to connections: when for some reason the input is not recognized correctly, you're out of luck and have to figure it out by trial and error. No additional info as to why you're not getting a signal is to be had, which can be extremely frustrating when setting up in a stressful environment. This is purely a limitation of the TV-One, and if you really can't live with this, you're going to have to spring for a V800.
Choosing the correct output resolution is quick and painless, and has support for the most common digital resolutions, as well as dual head and triple head resolutions. Once the output resolution is changed, the inputs are scaled automatically to this new resolution, which results in quiet sighs of relief when struggling to get things set up correctly with the promoter breathing down your neck. For fine tuning, there are additional options for fit, fill and 1:1.
In case you're completely lost, there's also a hard reset option, that walks you through the key presses needed to reset the TV-One itself. It's little things like this that make the D-Fuser feel very user friendly and thought out.
Features
The D-Fuser has the basics down pat: it has a crossfader, cut buttons and a fade to black. As a testament to the work that Toby put into this, he managed to talk the TV-One people into making a custom additive blend mode, which allows the D-Fuser to mix without a dip in the brightness when the crossfader is in the middle. It's awesome to see a company like Corio actually take the VJ industry seriously in this way.
It also supports luma and chroma keying. I'm actually quite surprised by the luma keyer. It can pull an especially clean key when using alpha channels on the source laptops.
After this it pretty much ends for the D-Fuser. Personally, I think it's a shame Toby hasn't come up with an elegant way to control the scaling functions of the TV-One. For most users, the Fit/Fill/1:1 scaling options on the D-Fuser cover 99% of the bases when it comes to scaling issues. It's a very elegant and quick solution to a process that is nail pullingly gruesome to fix on the TV-One itself.
But if you regularly come across weird LED processors or use uncommon inputs like an iPad, the scaler can really come through. The TV-One is capable of pixel level positioning, and allow you to adjust even a single misaligned pixel. Of course, these functions can still be accessed via the front panel, but they are horrible to use.
Then again, you can also get lost in the scaling options. More menu options, buttons and dials do not necessarily make the product better or easier to use. All in all the features of the D-Fuser are minimal, but they do what they need to do, in an intuitive and easy to understand way.
Extras
A very powerful feature is the support for two-way OSC communication. This means that the device can both send OSC messages and can be controlled by them. The implementation is relatively straightforward. Both the fade to black and crossfader output their values and can be accessed using fixed addresses.
The D-Fuser has the additional benefit of being DMX capable for either input or output, so you can fade the house lights with it. Perhaps even more useful, it can be used in a cue controlled theatre setup to have control over projector brightness levels from the lighting desk. This makes the D-Fuser a very powerful tool outside of the VJ circuit as well.
Overall
If you're looking for a relatively cheap way to mix two laptops while on tour or just at your local residency, the D-Fuser is the way to go. It has plug-and-play appeal and fits in your backpack.
Functionality wise the D-Fuser doesn't offer much in terms of customization unless you want to get deep and dirty by editing .ini files and uploading to the device, which can be a bit daunting to most users and impossible to improvise on the spot. As a tool to work with many changeovers or guest VJs during a long festival day, the TV-One has too many quirks. Instead, the D-Fuser is mostly meant as an addition to an already existing visual setup. Once you get your kit working correctly with it, it will keep working, reliably and solidly.
In the end the D-Fuser is being marketed as a DVI mixer. In that it does what it says on the tin, which is a good thing. Toby really spent a lot of time on it, which he used to narrow down the TV-One functions to what a user would actually need, and what they shouldn't be bothered with. You can argue about some of the choices he made, but the result is an easy to use and intuitive product, that does what it needs to do.
In this, the D-Fuser is very much like Resolume, where we sometimes have to choose usability over feature. Believe us when we say this is often a much harder task than actually writing the code.
In the end, we can do nothing but applaud Toby for the crazy amount of hours, blood, sweat and tears he put into giving us this very useful tool. It's this DIY spirit that makes the VJ community what it is.
Toby, here's to you! You rock because you rule. Now go press that button, everyone.
http://sparklive.net/dfuser/
Resolume Blog
This blog is about Resolume, VJ-ing and the inspiring things the Resolume users make. Do you have something interesting to show the community? Send in your work!
Highlights
Coming Back From the Dead - Night of the Living HD Mixers
Just when you thought it was safe to drag out your old analog MX50s again...
A little while back (okay, a big while back), we posted about the current state of affordable HD mixing using the TVOne box. At the time of writing, only one of those projects was in an actual released state. The iMixHD is a great piece of software, not in the least because it's free and open source. But deep inside, the idea of a physical standalone mixer with a T-Bar was still nagging.
Flash forward to a year later, all of a sudden there's not one but two such projects that are both finished and actually in production!
First off, there is of course Toby's Spark d-Fuser. The d-Fuser is an elegant piece of kit, both the functionality as well as the box itself are amazing. It is a clutter free interface that does what it needs to do: mix between two sources. Being fans of intuitive design that doesn't get in the way of your creativity ourselves, we have to tip our hats to Toby on this one. Currently the first run is sold out, and the latest news is that the casings have arrived and look beautiful.
Then, out of the blue, the boys from CarrotVideo come with their own take on the TV-One, the tentatively titled 'HD Rabbit'. Focussing more on giving you access to everything the TV-One has to offer (it actually does a lot more than fade or key between two sources), they've made what Edirol should have done a long time ago: an HD V4.
In their own words:
Especially interesting for Resolume users is the customizable OSC output. As you can see in the video, the HD Rabbit is preconfigured to send BPM info to Resolume already, but all its other knobs and buttons can be assigned OSC commands as well. This could very well be the next step in hardware controllerism.
We've actually been lucky enough to see this gizmo in action, and have pounded those cut buttons to see if it they held up. We were pleasantly surprised so rest assured that we'll be following this one with great interest.
A little while back (okay, a big while back), we posted about the current state of affordable HD mixing using the TVOne box. At the time of writing, only one of those projects was in an actual released state. The iMixHD is a great piece of software, not in the least because it's free and open source. But deep inside, the idea of a physical standalone mixer with a T-Bar was still nagging.
Flash forward to a year later, all of a sudden there's not one but two such projects that are both finished and actually in production!
First off, there is of course Toby's Spark d-Fuser. The d-Fuser is an elegant piece of kit, both the functionality as well as the box itself are amazing. It is a clutter free interface that does what it needs to do: mix between two sources. Being fans of intuitive design that doesn't get in the way of your creativity ourselves, we have to tip our hats to Toby on this one. Currently the first run is sold out, and the latest news is that the casings have arrived and look beautiful.
Then, out of the blue, the boys from CarrotVideo come with their own take on the TV-One, the tentatively titled 'HD Rabbit'. Focussing more on giving you access to everything the TV-One has to offer (it actually does a lot more than fade or key between two sources), they've made what Edirol should have done a long time ago: an HD V4.
In their own words:
The HD Rabbit is a HD mixer and controller based on the TV-One 750.
We know what you're thinking now: 'Really? Another TV-One based mixer project? Really?'.
And we feel you on that one. There have been some awesome projects based on that little gadget, some of which turned into very well designed, thought out, and most importantly, very real products. So who are we to come up with yet another one?
Truth be told, we feel that you can do a lot with the TV-One. The AB mixer and keyer are its primary functions, but it has some very powerful scaler and image adjustment functions as well. It's just that its interface is so ridiculously clunky.
So we designed a more user friendly interface. All the useful functions of the TV-One are accessible in a more human way. Having grown up bashing our V4s to bits back in the 90s, all we really wanted was a similar experience, but not limited to crappy PAL resolutions. Let's face it, there was something innately satisfying about spamming those cut buttons, or strobing the output until the light engineer gave you the evil eye.
So we were dragging this piece of kit with us to shows, where it took up valuable space on our already crammed table. It did the job, but it was lacking something. Then it hit us. Why not make it a software controller at the same time? Besides OSC input for the main TV-One functions, we added fully customizable OSC and DMX output from the buttons and rotaries. Basically we made one big box with the flexibility to mix and control our favorite applications.
No more eighties looking hardware effects, instead we're controlling realtime effects in glorious HD at 60fps. No more overtaxed CPUs, instead we're cutting back and forth between two HD sources like it's going out of fashion. What more could you ask for?
We don't know either.
That's why the HD Rabbit is currently being produced in its 0-series run, contact us at http://www.carrotvideo.com for more info.
Especially interesting for Resolume users is the customizable OSC output. As you can see in the video, the HD Rabbit is preconfigured to send BPM info to Resolume already, but all its other knobs and buttons can be assigned OSC commands as well. This could very well be the next step in hardware controllerism.
We've actually been lucky enough to see this gizmo in action, and have pounded those cut buttons to see if it they held up. We were pleasantly surprised so rest assured that we'll be following this one with great interest.
Mixing two HighDef sources?
Welcome to VJ'ing the year 2011. Composite outputs are disappearing, computers are becoming faster and faster, HD projectors are becoming more common. Some of these developments can be considered good, others less so, but whatever your thoughts are on it, your trusty old V4 is just not cutting it anymore.
These days everyone is looking for that holy grail: affordable HD mixing. The V8, boasting two VGA inputs, but no mixing between them, and no VGA out, is not really a contender. Sure, if you got the €9200 to dish out on an Edirol 440HD -interestingly advertised as 'affordable HD mixing'- that's just peachy for you.
The rest of us would like something cheaper. Luckily the worldwide VJ community is not afraid of a little DIY, and it has come up with a few alternatives.
It's all about this little gizmo, the TV One 1T-C2-750 Dual DVI mixer. It's quite a handy little device, that straight out of the box allows you to switch or fade between two DVI sources, and can output up to 2048x2048 in resolution. With some tweaking/tinkering it can also be pushed to TripleHead2Go rez. Aside from that, it also supports luma/chroma keying, and picture in picture. And all this for a list price of around $900.
Now of course we don't want to just cut or autofade between our sources, we want full crossfader control like on our V4s. Enter VJ community!
First off the bat was Toby Harris, who first started mentioning an out of the box, all hardware mixing solution based on the device. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the product is still in the prototype stage. The glimpse some of us were fortunate enough to catch at the Visual Berlin Festival in 2010 was great, and we can only hope it goes into production soon.
Image by Andreas Apelqvist
So then, just when you thought it was time to drag out your Korg KrossFour again, VJ Leo and VJ Fader appear on the horizon. Running a simple but effective Midi to RS232 conversion with the help of a Processing sketch, all you need for full on crossfading mayhem is a simple USB-RS232 cable and your midi controller of choice. More info at neuromixer.com/imixhd/ and direct download here. The code is left open source, so other artists can add their own functionality if desired.
Although an all hardware solution has plenty of appeal, a lot can be said for running the conversion in software as well. Since the overhead of the conversion is pretty low, and a computer very likely to be present anyway, a few other people have gone in this direction as well.
Tom Bassford, aka SleepyTom has made working versions of the conversion for Quartz Composer and VVVV. Also Anton Marini, aka Vade has gone the QC route, with source code available here.
With all the accessible coding platforms covered, there's no reason we shouldn't see the venue screens covered in glorious HD pixels this year! If you have any experience with the device and/or the software to control it, please feel free to share via the comments!
These days everyone is looking for that holy grail: affordable HD mixing. The V8, boasting two VGA inputs, but no mixing between them, and no VGA out, is not really a contender. Sure, if you got the €9200 to dish out on an Edirol 440HD -interestingly advertised as 'affordable HD mixing'- that's just peachy for you.
The rest of us would like something cheaper. Luckily the worldwide VJ community is not afraid of a little DIY, and it has come up with a few alternatives.
It's all about this little gizmo, the TV One 1T-C2-750 Dual DVI mixer. It's quite a handy little device, that straight out of the box allows you to switch or fade between two DVI sources, and can output up to 2048x2048 in resolution. With some tweaking/tinkering it can also be pushed to TripleHead2Go rez. Aside from that, it also supports luma/chroma keying, and picture in picture. And all this for a list price of around $900.
Now of course we don't want to just cut or autofade between our sources, we want full crossfader control like on our V4s. Enter VJ community!
First off the bat was Toby Harris, who first started mentioning an out of the box, all hardware mixing solution based on the device. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the product is still in the prototype stage. The glimpse some of us were fortunate enough to catch at the Visual Berlin Festival in 2010 was great, and we can only hope it goes into production soon.
So then, just when you thought it was time to drag out your Korg KrossFour again, VJ Leo and VJ Fader appear on the horizon. Running a simple but effective Midi to RS232 conversion with the help of a Processing sketch, all you need for full on crossfading mayhem is a simple USB-RS232 cable and your midi controller of choice. More info at neuromixer.com/imixhd/ and direct download here. The code is left open source, so other artists can add their own functionality if desired.
Although an all hardware solution has plenty of appeal, a lot can be said for running the conversion in software as well. Since the overhead of the conversion is pretty low, and a computer very likely to be present anyway, a few other people have gone in this direction as well.
Tom Bassford, aka SleepyTom has made working versions of the conversion for Quartz Composer and VVVV. Also Anton Marini, aka Vade has gone the QC route, with source code available here.
With all the accessible coding platforms covered, there's no reason we shouldn't see the venue screens covered in glorious HD pixels this year! If you have any experience with the device and/or the software to control it, please feel free to share via the comments!
*Spark D-Fuser DVI Mixer Official Announcement Video
Checkout this video where Toby presents the DIY DVI Mixer he is working on. He tells the tale of it's creation and then spills all the details: Two channel DVI mixing up to 1080p including "odd" TrippleHead resolutions like 1920x480. We can't wait to get our hands on this, it looks like a perfect mixer for VJ's. As more and more laptops are not equipped with analog TV-out anymore, DVI mixing becomes more and more a necessity.
Checkout all the details on tobyz.net.