VisualJockey

VisualJockey, also known as VisualJockey Gold or VisualJockey SP1 is a program by Mavrick and Green Hippo made for generating visuals for VJ sets.

The program has been discontinued by its developers, who have made the program free of charge.

http://www.visualjockey.com/

Usage

Building compositions

To start off, open the program and create a new composition by clicking the "New Composition" button (white file with the VJ logo) in the top bar. Name it whatever you want.

From here, you usually want to start by adding in some sort of source footage. This can be either generated, or any sort of photo/video (must be AVI).

Importing Media

To import media, this is best done using the resource effects in the Green Hippo -> Resource folder. Effects are added by dragging and dropping them to their respective spot on the flowchart in the top right of the view.

• To use a photo, import Picture Manager and add the photo of your choice.
• To use a video, import AVI Loader and add the AVI format video of your choice.
• you can also use the Live Video effect to record from your webcam or similar source. This requires the VideoLab driver to work.

If you did everything right, the flowchart should only be the "picture loader", and a preview of your footage should appear in two places at the bottom of the screen; one of these is the final output, the other is the output up to your current selection on the flowchart.

Adding Effects

Now that you have media imported, let's add a cool effect! For this example, we'll add the Green Hippo -> 3D Effect -> Voxel Landscape.

• This is an example of a plugin that takes more than one input. The image defaults to the "surface texture" of the landscape - we still need a height map and a background!
• To quickly fill in the other two slots, add the Green Hippo -> Generic -> Texture Generator effect to each of them. The preview should now load again, and look something like this:

Pretty cool, huh? From here, you have endless possibilities on what you can do.

Editing Effects

As effects are a bit more rudimentary than what you would see in other video editors, they often give you more control... at the tradeoff that you need to know what you are doing.

• Most effects have a configuration menu which can be accessed by right-clicking -> select "Configure..." (or Alt+Enter with the plugin selected).
• However, some effects may not have a configuration window, and must be modified manually. This can be done by right-clicking -> select "Variables..." (or Ctrl+Etner with the plugin selected).

The dynamic variable window lets you choose a variable and its reference point. This point can be:

• A single, static value
• A function, which can be set in the "Define" menu
• Null (nothing)

You can also combine these with a collection of "controllers and parameters" that range from RNG values to other special functions.

This example modifies the camera angle of the voxel landscape. It is by default a simple sine wave, however it has been mixed with a random number generator to make the wave "fuzzy". This reflects on the final product by making the camera shake around violently as it pans in a sinusoidal manner.

Exporting Compositions

To render/export a composition, click File -> Export Movie. From here you can set how long you want the video to last, its resolution, and anything else. Keep in mind the default resolution is 80x60! It will render as an AVI file, and can be up to two gigabytes in size.

Unless you have an audio file you want to sync with your visuals time-wise, make sure to set "AVI Length" to "Seconds" and then specify how long you want it to render for (5 seconds usually is good).

From there, you are done! You can now import it elsewhere or do whatever else you intend to do with it.

Effects

Effects are listed based on their appearance in the folder tree.

Green Hippo

Resource

• AVI Loader
• AVI Loader+
• AVI Looper
• AVI Loader Advanced
• Flash Loader
• Live Video - requires VideoLab to work
• Picture Loader
• Picture Manager
• Picture Flood
• SoniqueVis Loader

Misc

• Bubbles
• BIG Input
• Double Screen
• FreeFrame host
• Freeze
• Interlace
• Input 4
• RGB Plasma
• Rotate
• Smooth
• Symmetry