This might be sort of a far out question. But I've been tasked with coming up with some visuals for a local musician. Just some stuff that's colorful, looks cool, and can be played on screen while the musician is performing. Anyone know of any programs that specialize in this? I was thinking of stock footage I could film and just mess around with different effects or whatever. But what about for more of the sorta psychedelic stuff that you can't really film? Any help would be appreciated.
There's some trippy screensavers at http://www.reallyslick.com/ Not sure how good it'd look if you filmed them off the monitor then layer and mix between them. The only other thing I can think of is to film a lava lamp/plasma ball and mix some of that in and play around with some effects. Don't know of any good music vis software. Anything i've seen tends to look like the stuff migraines are made of.
Well, one of the first things I thought was to take some LSD, but then only you'd be seeing the visuals LOL. This is complex stuff and you're going to need to probably understand some decent level of mathematics and definitely programming. I know that Apple includes tools for making screen savers and visualizations with their Mac developer tools. Otherwise, you could do anything from programming an OpenGL visualization or use direct drawing and SDL. It's all about algorithms and effects processing. Possibly programs like AfterEffects or some 3D software would be enable you to create these sorts of things without coding or lots of math, but either way you're probably going to have a steep learning curve to get into this. I've seen bands make cool, trippy visualizations with composited footage and heavy effects processing, so you probably could make something with just video software. It all depends on what you're going for.
Eh? The likes of Pink Floyd pioneered the visual backdrop in the 1960's with Syd Barratt at the helm. You don't really need to know complex mathematics, you just need to have a decent video editing package, lots of time on your hands and loads of imagination. You could also use something like Herzlichter Fractal generator. http://www.chaospro.de/scripts/related.php?PHPSESSID=1449cb31359ce48b2d6ef5e809232519 There must be a pile of stuff once you start searching. Also look up sound to light software & music visualization - mostly Windows based.
Winamp has a vast library of visualisers - might give some inspiration. Check out VJing as well, I know a few people who do it if you have any specific questions. Creating music program visualisers would take some pretty good maths, but as a pre recorded video, as parris says, an imagination and some inspiration is all you need.
I remember back in the days of my Winamp love that some of the plugins had standalone counterparts - they visualise based on the music 'heard' by the PC via mic / line-in. These may help: http://www.plasmavis.com/faq.html http://www.soundspectrum.com/whitecap/standalone.html http://www.softwarevj.com/ Hmm, seems you can also use Winamp's plugins live with Winamp itself - can run from line-in - http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=64973 - this opens up some awesome opportunities - Milkdrop and Geiss are epic - just run a monitor output to the PC seperate to the PA. Winamp Vis plugins - http://www.winamp.com/plugins/visualizations/1
