(almost) random-access video playback through osc

vvvv beta question
1

Hello vvvv list,

I don’t use vvvv, only Pd. But I wanted to make some questions to know if vvvv would be a suitable plattform for the video part of a project I am involved in.

The issue is how to playback 3 videos (in 3 different windows or all in the same window) from the same file. Although the file source is the same, each window is independent of the others (each video can be in a different frame from the others). The control of the displayed frame is made through osc, coming out of Pd. That is the general concept, some details are:

  • the video file(s) are hi-q video, around 1024x760 pixels. Originally recorded at 50fps, are played back at 25fps. Afaik, the format is quicktime mov
  • the video is played with a kind of scrubbing method, going back and forth. Any buffer settings for this playback mode would be very helpful
  • there are several videos to be used, and ideally they would switch seamlessly (or with a very small pause). changes of video don’t happen that often, though.
  • systems used are windows xp or windows 7. The computer has 4 cores with high speed, and the disk is a good quality ssd.

My questions are:

  • I could make myself a patch to try out the possibilities of vvvv. But since I don’t have much time, I would like to ask which object would be more adequate for the video display; or, if there is any example patch that I can adapt (but knowing the adequate object, I should be able to get to that fast)
  • since there are several big videos to be used, I guess a “load into memory option” isn’t really feasible. Are there any buffer settings that help with the scrubbing playback mode?
  • is there any feature that enhances random-acess to big video files?

I tried already with Pd’s library GEM, but when the 3 videos are too far apart from each other, some freezes in the video display happen. We think that is connected with the disk access. Therefore we wanted to see if with vvvv there would be any windows-specific features that would have an improved playback quality.

Thanks for your attention,

jan

PS: I already went through the link video file playback, but would prefer to have feedback from experienced users

2

as it seems that you don’t need audio from the video, i would store the video as .dds frames on disc and load the frames with the FileTexture node or the dds-ring-buffer. since you have a ssd disc, that could work.