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If you are into media servers, you know what layers are. You could use a different desk per song, for example. Within the Composition, a collection of layers and clips you’ve set up, that you can toggle between from the desk if you like. The file/workspace you are working on at the time and the final output of your combined content.
RESOLUME ARENA 5 PREVIEW SIZE CODE
The thing that is different is the way it organises content, something you do at the terminal, not from the lighting desk, as it’s extremely flexible which is code for saying “You are likely to get yourself into a muddle.” It does have the usual Play Modes: Forward, Backward, Bounce, Loop etc. Unlike some other lampie media servers, it’s a little different to simply picking a media folder between 0 and 255, the picking a clip between 0 and 255. Resolume 4 Arena plays stuff back as you would expect. The ability to pick and mix video files and play them back whole, or in loops, or backwards or in a specific order. So what do us lampies really want from a media server and how does Resolume stack up? We’ll start with our typical Lampie Demands and see where it gets us. Resolume has a setting to Hide Audio Controls, which clears thing up for us. We will completely ignore the fact that it does quantised audio playback for simplicity today.
RESOLUME ARENA 5 PREVIEW SIZE SOFTWARE
Resolume is in the software camp and the interesting thing for us about Resolume 4 Arena is that they have added features to their Avenue VJ platform that are relevant to what we do. They come as hardware/software or simply as software that you run on your own machine such as a decent spec laptop or desktop PC/Mac. To precis, media servers are used on all kinds of show to play digital media which is then either projected on screens, the set, the floor, or even pixel mapped to starcloths or other low resolution outputs.
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What might we want from our media server? If you didn’t get that joke and have little experience of media servers in show production, read on anyway after checking this media server primer from a few years ago. If you have some experience of media servers or the complexities of current projection and mapping trends, you’ll find some ideas on using Resolume 4 instead of your more familiar Arkatalyst Hippo Box software (see what I did there?). This article simply looks at Resolume 4, which is in Beta 2 at the time of writing, from the point of view of a Lighting Designer/Programmer and asks if we should give the new Arena offering our attention. In order to give you a look around the software, we finish up with a video poke about under the hood. Here at OSL, we don’t really do product reviews and the following piece continues that tradition. In a world where both traditional lighting and digital visual media are the domain of the modern lampie, On Stage Lighting considers the forthcoming release of media software Resolume 4 Arena which looks like it has potential in the small to mid scale show visual market.
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