High-level Preview Question

[amcjen]

Hi there! Quick question for you layer experts.

I’ve done a few live VJ sets, busking with VDMX6 and an APC40. So far so good. Everything works great. However, I’m running into a problem that probably has a really simple solution, but I’m just not seeing how to go about it.

In short, I use a 2 channel mixer plugin tied to the crossfader of the APC40 to mix between an underlay layer and overlay layer. And I have 5 buttons on the APC40 that I use to change blend modes between things like multiply, dodge, addition etc.

The problem is sometimes a blend mode looks terrible and I’d like to preview it before it’s shown on the main screen.

I’ve gone through some iterations of layers, preview windows, and the like, and I haven’t yet found a way to preview, say a permanent 50% mix of underlay/overlay layers, that I can view on the computer screen before actually doing a crossfade on the main display.

I’m about to try using Syphon to route stuff around and see if I can get something going, but before I did thought I’d ask the crew here.

Thanks!

[Jernej]

I thought this would have been more trivial. I ended up realising that doubling the layers and using Syphon was indeed maybe the “lightest”.

You can even go as far as to tie up the type of blending together.

Hide the Group 1 - you can still preview it just fine

and this is how I made layer 1 and layer1Syphon use the same blending:

send out from the layer 1 as float. Then in Layer1Syphon change use the float in navigation. Then it will select the same type of blending.

I hope there is an easier way, though.

[amcjen]

Thanks Jernej. I’m glad to see I wasn’t just missing something obvious. I think one of the more important aspects of your approach that I wasn’t familiar with was the concept of hidden layers. That seems like it opens up a lot of options.

I’ll keep experimenting. Thank you for the reply!