How do I sync a Video Player to the master clock?

[Vidamus]

Hello Everyone, new user here and this is my first post. Hi!

I want to use HH4 to control a video + lights show for a band on stage, synced to LTC Timecode coming out of Ableton Live.

Getting the two apps to sync was easy, In the Device panel I selected the audio input reciveing the LTC and checked "receive linear timecode (LTC)" in the properties box. When I press play in Ableton Live, the Master Clock at the top of HH runs and is at exactly the same time. Excellent.

Now I want to have a Video Player, in which I've loaded my backdrop video, and I want the playback of that video to be controlled by the Master Clock. When the Master Clock plays, I want the video to play, and I want the play position aligned with the position of the Master Clock.

This seems like a fairly simple request, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get the video to anything but just free-play independent of the Master Clock.

So, as the title says, how do I get the video playback to be to synchronised with the master clock?

Many thanks in advance for any help.
Cheers

[joffo78]

It's a complicated question. What kind of synchronisation do you need ? how many video files ?

[Vidamus]

The kind of synchronisation I need is where the current "time" position on the video is the same as the current time position of the Master Clock.

When I say "Master Clock" I mean the SMPTE time that is displayed in the status bar at the top of the main HH4 window.

So for example, if the Master Clock jumps to 00:02:00:00 and starts playing, then I want the video to jump to position 00:02:00:00 in the video and start playing.

If the Master Clock then jumps to 00:30:00:00 then the video will jump to position to 00:30:00:00 and continue playing.

If the Master Clock stops playing, then the video stops playing.

So, by the behaviour described above, the Master Clock controls the position and playback status of the video.

What I am describing is a basic "timeline transport" situation you'd have in just about any "Non Linear Editing" DAW or Video editor app. I know HollyHock is not an NLE, but for controlling a stage show I had hoped that controlling video on a timeline would be a fairly normal thing to do.

As for how many videos, ultimately I have 13 different videos that I would like to have play sequentially, spread out along the time line, But for now I just want to figure out how to have a single video with play back control synced to the Master Clock. After I've achieved that I'll figure out how to do it for several.

Hope that makes it clearer.

Cheers

[Vidamus]

On the front page of the Brain Modular website it clearly states:

A powerful timeline

The Grid is perfectly adapted to create complete projects for a solo performance, a band, an interactive installation, or even to create a full score for a video using SMPTE synchronization with our new Video Player.

I have read through the manual page "Tutorial: The Grid", but I still cannot understand how to have video playback synced to the Grid's timeline, or how to have the Grid's playback synced to the Master Clock.

According to that description, I would expect to find that the Video Player module has a "SMPTE In" port, and that I would be able to plug a SMPTE Get module into that port and have the Video Player be synced to the SMPTE it is receiving on that port, but alas, no such port exists.

So then I thought, "Maybe there is a module that converts the output of SMPTE Get to another set of Play/Stop/Pos Outputs that could be connected to the inputs on the Video Player, but it's not clear how to do that either...

[x.iso]

doesn't seem like that's how it works though, 'master SMPTE' inlet is a 1/0 option type, when on it replaces smpte time with this video player's time.

[Vidamus]

"master SMPTE" is a switch that makes the Master clock follow this video's clock. When you enable this option you indicating you want this video to be the master clock source.

What I want is the other way around, I want the video to FOLLOW the master clock! Not BE the master clock.

[nay-seven]

oups, my fault, answer too quickly, sorry for that. Answer deleted

[x.iso]

I've kinda figured out how to calculate % position of the video from Get SMPTE, but it won't progress smoothly, even if I try to push frames specifically. it probably depends on video format though, as some support frame-by-frame control, others rely heavily on keyframes that are too far apart.

So I think 'slave SMPTE' option is needed for video player, either with simply stopping video at the end if current time exceeds video length, or option for it to loop relatively.
Also, having SMPTE output of the video would be helpful too. for instance for making overlay text with current video time.