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Is Catalyst for Me?

Hi,

I was told about Catalyst by a collegue who recently worked on a tour using it.

I am producing a UK tour of a musical next year, and need to run 2 projectors with quite complicated projections - for example going from day to night on a cue, then back from night to day. A building fine one minute, then the next it starts setting on fire.

What I need is a system that will let me layer videos (so, using the example above of the building on fire, I have the sky and other buildings as one layer, then the main building as another, and when I hit the cue a new video clip takes the place of the main building with is starting to burn). Also I need to use various transitions from 1 video to another.

As the musical director (as well as the producer, and CG animator, and and and.... :09: ) I need to cue all the videos from a MIDI keyboard.

I would alos, if possible, like to play back multichannel audio with the projection. If this cannot be done within Catalyst, I will need to sync the triggering with a soft synth on a PC system to play back the tracks...

I will be doing the projection sequences in various programs - Maya and 3DS Max for the photoreal 3D sequences (using Mental Ray and RenderMan to render), Manga Studio for the manga sequences. Post work and compositing wll be done in AE, Premiere, and Vegas.

Ok - basically, is this possible? :D

Cheers!

Martin
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  • I would say that catalyst would do very well for you. It could do the layering of video for you and cross fade between multiple files. Catalyst handles audio, but not multichannel audio smoothly. What I would suggest using is the Midi trigger built into catalyst that would send Midi show control commands to a PC running something like Sound Cue System (www.soundcuesystem.com - I've used it for several shows and works great). As for running cues on Catalyst, you can run cue lists with a midi show control input. Catalyst 4.0 is a powerful tool. Make sure to find someone that is familiar with showcontrol protocols if you want to run this the way you are proposing. Check out Richard Bleasdale at richard(at)samsc.com. He's on your side of the pond and is the software developer.

    Hope that helps
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  • I would say that catalyst would do very well for you. It could do the layering of video for you and cross fade between multiple files. Catalyst handles audio, but not multichannel audio smoothly. What I would suggest using is the Midi trigger built into catalyst that would send Midi show control commands to a PC running something like Sound Cue System (www.soundcuesystem.com - I've used it for several shows and works great). As for running cues on Catalyst, you can run cue lists with a midi show control input. Catalyst 4.0 is a powerful tool. Make sure to find someone that is familiar with showcontrol protocols if you want to run this the way you are proposing. Check out Richard Bleasdale at richard(at)samsc.com. He's on your side of the pond and is the software developer.

    Hope that helps
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