First VJ Gig...! Complete nightmare

[humanclimate]

Well after using Resolume 4 for about six month I thought it was time I played my first gig.
I was asked by a local live minimal techno group to project in front of them while they play there 1 hour set. They where really happy with the footage I have put together so we decided to do something a little different by putting up a huge white sail in front of the stage. I will be projecting from the front and we put a light from behind so you could see the shadows of the guys playing. It looked amazing. When the time came to play the small room was packed and everyone was really enjoying the first 20 mins...this is the point were it all went wrong! Looked down at my screen and to my horror it had frozen!!! spinning wheel of death...there was nothing I could do but to close the program and reopen it...big ugly blue screen for two minuets then I was able to jump back into the set. 5 min later the same thing happened. This time the program fully crashed my mac book pro and I wasn't able to get up and running again till I did a full shut down and restart...ugly blue screen again....! The group were now staring at me and the crowd became restless and even making boo sounds at me. I got the system up and running again only for it to crash a third time!!!!! minuets later...
One of the band members then asked me to pull the plug!!! and take down my screen so the crowd could at least see them! Resolume you completely let me Down! and I am left feeling completely stupid!
I dont know what happened...I have been having stability problems with the program a few months ago and reported it to the guys at Resolume we went back and fourth for a month or so and they could not find anything wrong with my set up! they even had me send them the videos I was using...After I cleaned out my applications folder and re installed the program I havn't had any more crashes until the gig...! I was using a new Mac Book Pro i7 with 16 gigs of ram, I have two hard drives installed with the low res video running off the second 7200 rpm drive. I have an OHM64 rgb which I use to trigger the clips with and apply the effects. The only thing I did different that night was have the band send me a clock through midi via the OHM64 from one of their drum machines.
Has any one else have this happen? do you think it was because of the clock sent through midi? I am super bummed out about this, it was to be a regular gig in my home town! and I dont think I will get a chance to try again

[4eyes]

Ouch, sorry to hear that man. That's the thing about live performance, it's a different kind of stress than you get when say when facing a deadline. Live event stress is immediate and intense, some people are cut out for it and some aren't.

It sounds like the Midi clock might have been your culprit. I've had weird instability from external midi inputs before (from things like lighting desks and midi clocks).

Are you using the latest version of Resolume? Some midi related bugs have been dealt with in the last few releases.

Lastly man, don't give up. These guys liked your work and sounds like they liked your ideas. Technical foulups happen, as a minimal techno group I'd hope that they'd understand that. You should talk with them rationally about what happened and see about doing some tests with the same setup you had that night. Be active about dealing with it, and they should give you another shot.

Good luck!

[humanclimate]

yeah thanks 4eyes for your kind words... I have spoken to the guys since this post and they have invited me back to play at next months show. ffffeeewww. I am running the latest version of Arena, and after running through what happen at the gig it does seem like it was the clock source that may have contributed to crashes.Their set up was super complicated with like 7 devices linked up in a star config. Its funny at the gig I handled the situation way better then when I woke up the next day! there were a lot of people at that gig I look up to and admire in the industry... I Just wanted it to work, but thats the nature of the beast! I have been a electronic music producer for about ten years and use Ableton live when performing music...VJ'ing is new language altogether for me. But its just like snowboarding! if your not falling down your not trying hard enough...

[synapse_gh]

Lots to be learned from the gigs that crash and burn, usually more so than from the gigs that go well.

Nice to see you've located the problem - always a risk involved in doing anything on the day of a gig that you haven't thoroughly stress tested beforehand...

[Stickygreen]

next time do a complete run thru before the show as a practice run.

don't let any band member say, of it will be OK. make them set all there shit up and try it out.

[bart]

auw, that hurts ;-(

I hope it was the MIDI clock that caused it, we will release version 4.1.4 next week which includes a couple of improvements there.

[philmcrackin]

it was probably the midi clock. the only times i've had resolume crash is on a macbook pro that was receiving midi information over ethernet while I was simultaneously editing a composition. also when I tried to use airbeam as a syphon input, after the ipod touch or iphone lost connection with the macbook it would crash resolume.

you should've just used the tap tempo feature instead of receiving a midi clock, it's not that difficult as it's just a minimal techno group.

[drazkers]

How hot was this venue? In the past my macbook would start having FPS issues that would cause crashes until the whole system locked up and needed to reboot. I now use a laptop stand with fans to fix the issue. It sounds like the midi clock could be the problem, but if you have a packed club thats hot, you could of had a overheating laptop.

[humanclimate]

thanks every one for the support, the club wasn't overly hot, though I do notice my mac book does run hot with the two hard drives installed. I will look into getting a stand for it with a fan though...I will have a chance next week to rehearse with the group again. I will try and recreate the session from the weekend and see if I can get the problem to happen again in a controlled environment...I will post back with my results...thanks again!

[disconappete]

Sorry to hear that! I often run a backup through a bangbox/switcher and just have some content rolling on that incase of a technical fail(these WILL happen at some point) that way i have something to put up so that A-people are less likley to notice, and B. so that the projectors dont go to sleep while im fixing the issue. Hope this is helpful.

Also the comment about doing a full setup and test is very important, be in charge of your setup, because everyone will be on you if it fails. Also, just reading and learning as much technical info about projectors, cables, signals, cards, everything that way if there is an issue, you are on it, checking your signal flow, finding the issues, if you cant fix it you are out of buisness and the show is over. I do a lot of DJ events in denver that I would call ameture hour because their DJ setup fails for whatever reason(mostly user error) and they cant fix it, and so their set is over. I do a lot of these shows for free so I can test various configurations out live, but no one gets pissed if there is a hickup, or a total meltdown.