I suggest using a player which can be controlled with midi message such as ShowCueSystem or Qlab.
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Since I have an interest in this topic I looked it up and played with it and found the command line text that works with Torsten’s binding example. Actually since I have Solo, I don’t have the Transport binding so I tested it with a simple Windows keypress binding and it works quite well with very little latency to open the clip.
Note the full path to the executable in single quotes and full path to the clip in single quotes, with a single space in between.
“C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” “K:\Videos\Sequence 01.mpg”
You do end up with blank VLC on the screen once the clip finishes, so that probably has to be dealt with somehow. I’ll check to see if a command line exists to auto close after playing the clip…
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This works, but no video fade in/out:
“C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” “K:\Videos\Sequence 01.mpg” “vlc://quit”
note the quotes and spaces
Found the command line reference and fade is probably in there somewhere:
https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_command-line_help/
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@sekim thanks a lot for checking this out and found the right info. Gonna test it here… Thansk again, much appreciated.
After messing with it, the best I could get it was “not polished”. There is some screen flashing when it starts up and apparently there is no way to fade except in the video itself.
“C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” “–qt-start-minimized” “–video-on-top” “–fullscreen” “K:\Videos\Sequence 01.mpg” “vlc://quit”
I suppose if that’s not a deal breaker it works fine as a rudimentary player that can be fired from inside Cantabile.
But for something polished I agree with oktogon that ShowCueSystem is probably the way to go. I saw that they have one month rental of their software for $20.
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@sekim thanks again for your tests and feedback. I’ll check deeper ShowCueSystem and how to integrate it with Cantabile. Do you know if it allowo to achieve what we’re aiming to in this topic?
I’ve never used it, but since it is midi controllable, it should be straight forward. I might get their demo in the next week or so to try out. Will post if/when I have time to mess with it.
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OBS is popular for streaming but also is a great media player too. I have used OBS Studio for this very thing. It is open source and very able but there’s a bit of a learning curve. It has plugins that provide MIDI switching of scenes and a VLC Video playlist plugin as well. You can mix all sorts of media in it. It does video fades and transitions on scene changes as well.
Dave
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@dave_dore thanks for your feedback, and yes I do use OBS already. So can I use it to sync with Cantabile? Do you have any directions about how to setup Cantabile and OBS for the purpose of this topic? Thank you.
Hi Mistheria,
What version of OBS do you use? It affects the MIDI plugin because of changes after version 28.
Dave
The latest .
OK, Sorry in advance for this long post but I hope it helps people who want to interface with
OBS using Cantabile and the latest version of loopMIDI.
So first you need to install OBS Studio 28 or later & this OBS Studio 3rd party MIDI plugin into the OBS plugins folder.
Then you need to have a loopMIDI port set up for connecting Cantabile to OBS.
In Cantabile you would have basically 2 bindings that would send the commands to OBS. Here they are shown as sending to loopMIDI port A.
In OBS Studio you set up a single Scene and assuming you the 64 bit version of VLC video player installed there will be a listing for it in the Source list in OBS.
Leave the name and go OK to the configuration window.
In the configuration window click on the “+” button to add files and it will bring up file browser to select one.
Pick your file
If it’s good then click OK to save your choice
Now you have the video player section finished. You will need to hit stop on the VLC media player source. Select the VLC source to show it’s transport controls. If it’s not highlighted you will not see the transport controls.
Next, assuming the MIDI plugin is installed for OBS you need to configure the MIDI bindings on the OBS side of the connection. To access the MIDI configuration click on the tools dropdown menu and select “obs-midi-mg Setup”.
This is a bit tricky so I will demonstrate how to configure MIDI bindings for OBS. It is a pretty new system and is not necessarily very intuitive but here goes.
First select your loopMIDI port that Cantabile is transmitting on & be sure it is activated by clicking on Set as Active Device.
It will show itself as active after that.
Click on Edit Input Bindings
Click on Add …
and rename to Stop
A MIDI binding in this OBS Studio plugin is programmed in two parts. MIDI CC or Note Messages and corresponding OBS Studio Actions. First we will set up the MIDI CC part by first clicking on the binding “Stop” we made to make sure it’s selected and then clicking on Edit Messages.
Click on Add… and rename the message to “Stop”
Set the type to Control Change
and use the arrows control field to set it to 1
to set the CC number to 1
click on Require Value
Set value field to 127
So that finishes the message setup for stop you click on return to get back to the bindings menu. Once you’re there make sure Stop is selected and click on Edit Actions.
It will open up a similar menu to the messages where you need to Add and Action and name it Stop.
set category to “Media Sources”, Options to “Stop” and Source to VLC Video Source.
Click on Return and go back to the Bindings menu and you are done with the Stop binding. You click Add… again to start making the Play binding. It will be the same procedure as the the Stop binding was setting both the Message and Actions areas
but the MIDI message CC number will be 2
and the VLC Player Action will be Restart.
This Restart is used because VLC player auto plays as soon as the OBS scene loads. Set this way pressing Stop on the Main transport in Cantabile stops the VLC and Play restarts the video file from the beginning.
I noticed that you mentioned Photos, I know that if you play them in VLC there is a default of ten seconds if they are arrayed in a playlist. So, I assume this what you are doing but if not you could also set up a Scene in OBS that used the Slide Show Source built into OBS. It allows you to set the delay and to load whole folders or singles. It also allows manual advance via a MIDI binding too. There is also another separate Source plugin built into OBS for static images on a per scene basis.
Set up your Projector View for full screen view.
Again, sorry for the lengthy explanation but your question required a detailed response. In my use it works well once it’s set up. I used the MIDI bindings to change Scenes so I could do fade ins and transitions between static images and videos. It could also allow Cantabile Transport Timeline bindings to serve as an Live camera Scene Switcher.
So with the MIDI control you can do a lot with OBS Studio.
Dave
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Outstanding Dave!!
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A little late to the party, but in WelshFloyd I used ShowCueSystems 11 on a separate laptop for video; I did not want the video load to affect the backing tracks and DMX cues on the audio laptop, but maybe now performance is good enough for one laptop to do both.
SCS11 is a little clunky but does the job and it was the only software I could find for PC that supported MIDI triggers for video clips and which did not cost a stupid amount of money.
I used RtPMIDI to connect the two computers via a network connection via a small hub as it gave better connection reliability (or at least my laptops needed it).
Cantabile triggers on song play where used to trigger the appropriate video for the song. Transport stop was used to cut the video.
Worked pretty well. The start latency of the video was a little variable and I never worked out why, but it was not so late that it caused problems in the show and we only had one song/video that needed to be tightly synced.
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@dave_dore thanks so much for this detailed tutorial, so kind of you and just amazing! I’ll try to set it up and test it. Thanks a lot again, much appreciated!
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@Derek thanks to you as well for this interesting feedback, although I’d prefer to work inside a single laptop. However, I truly appreciated your suggestion, good option.
Dave, since VLC is playing the video clip, did you notice any screen flashes or flickers upon start? I’m seeing them even just loading VLC and clicking a VLC hotkey to start an already loaded video. Not sure what the issue is…
Hi Sekim,
No flicker here, when stopped it’s black screen and on start it’s instant with no flickering. It might be because in the case of the OBS plugin the file is already opened & loaded in a cue vs loading the file from scratch from disk & then playing it. Anyway that’s my best guess …
Dave