circuitb: but do you think it’ll be easier with Live8 to receive these informations?
http://www.ableton.com/extend
It may be, I just don’t know enough about it to be sure one way or the other. Nobody knows much, it’s mostly speculations. However, I shared my view on this topic here http://groups.google.com/group/liveapi/browse_thread/thread/ceb078e02787adb3/cfdeec70e3339677?hl=en#cfdeec70e3339677
So that also kind of answers defetto’s question about the official LiveAPI page. There is none. Some time ago, there was something like that, but it was closed. Even then it wasn’t endorsed, you know. It was just a test to see what kind of response they would get, I think… Today, there are two main places for LiveAPI info: http://groups.google.com/group/liveapi/ and http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/live-api and that is what mdk says as well here: http://forum.ableton.com//viewtopic.php?p=815420#815420 (the ableton forum is not so active on this topic as the google group is)
On the assembla site you can download some packages people created, or you can “check out” the most current code directly from the SVN repository. (Tortoise SVN is good for that) The original package is aslo in the SVN.
Now that I said all that, I can report some news. I managed to get something out of Live. Using a modified version of the LiveOSC, I succeeded in getting the clip names. One user posted his modified version which finally helped me get something: http://forum.ableton.com//viewtopic.php?p=653039#653039 I think it required me to install python. However I cheated. I installed 2.5, and only renamed the folder python25 to python22. It was great to see it working! Unfortunately, it only worked when I send the message without arguments, and then the script sends all the clips’ names. When I specify which track/clip I want, it does not send anything. Maybe it was because of my cheating with the python installation, or the Live version was newer and some part of the LiveAPI changed (I used 7.0.3).
OK! So that’s as far as I have come. I haven’t worked on that more, no time, and also the party for which I was preparing that patch has passed, so I felt less pressure to make something work.
I am still interested because I think song names can be nicely integrated with animation and other visual effects in vvvv, to provide a better connection to music for the audience.
There are other possibilities. There is a new folder “_Framework”, in some newer version of Live (7.0.14 and newer?), which has some new python code, better organized etc. And also, there is a MIDI interface to LiveAPI, called ApiMidi. I wanted to try that too, but was very dissapointed when I could not find a way to send sysex MIDI messages from vvvv. Some people have created Max patches which use ApiMIDI! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_pHkF376s At least I think it was ApiMidi, again not sure.
I hope I shed some light on this subject.
For remote control of some of Live’s functions LiveAPI can still be used. Max 4 Live will probably allow the same stuff, but using special Max elements. I still think the primary Max 4 Live feature will be sound creation and manipulation, not control. We’ll have to wait and see. It should be out before summer, or at least during this year.