Interactive Musical Video System: Recording Tests
This past week, I focused on using every program and MIDI device together that I planned to use, and trying to get the best camera quality possible through OBS with the cameras I have.
Offloading the CPU power of playing songs through Ableton Live to my MacBook worked well and nearly eliminated all the latency my SPD-SX had while using it in Ableton Live with visuals from Zwobot. I successfully integrated the Synesthesia VJ program into OBS while using my phone as a webcam, which had my Logitech webcam mounted to it. This is because I cannot use my phone as a webcam input for OBS and Synesthesia at the same time, so I need to switch to using the Logitech webcam in Synesthesia.
In addition, I am using a phone desk clamp mounted to an old tripod to mount my phone to the tripod, which works surprisingly well.
It took around an hour to set up and test that every MIDI device was working and controlling Zwobot and every device worked at first. However, the Dubler Studio microphone randomly stopped sending MIDI signals to Ableton Live after working for around a half-hour. Also, I had to use a computer keyboard to switch to the Synesthesia OBS scene because OBS does not accept MIDI signals for switching between scenes unless I use a MIDI to keyboard shortcut translator such as Bome’s MIDI Translator which also did not work upon testing it with my MIDI keyboard.
Thankfully, all the audio was stable, but there is a glitch in OBS that sometimes causes all audio to drop out upon switching scenes.
Additionally, I spent hours testing different iPhone webcam apps such as EpocCam, IVCam, Elgato’s Screen Link, OBS Camera, and the trial version of iCam Pro. In my opinion, IVCam was the best quality with OBS Camera as a close second. I am also using a Window Capture Source in OBS to capture the IVCam PC software rather than using my phone as a direct Video Capture Device Source in OBS. This is because I think it is a little bit better quality, but this may not necessarily be true. I also spent a long time testing my Yi Action Camera as a webcam, which would be the best quality, but I could not get this to work unless I stream through an RTMP server, which I think will have a lot of unwanted latency. I may still test this though.
Furthermore, an unexpected issue I encountered was that every time I hit my electronic kick drum trigger, the tripod holding my webcam(s) vibrates causing the video to noticeably distort and lower the video quality. This problem was always present but is amplified now due to using a makeshift iPhone tripod.
For my 2-minute video submission, I think I will do a minute of demonstrating/performing the system and then a minute of explanation. Because of the video quality issues, I may have to pre-record everything and edit the OBS scenes into the green screen afterward. Using my phone as a video camera rather than a webcam has much better quality than all the webcam apps I tried.
