Hey all, was wondering if anyone on here was familiar with any music visualization software. i know the windows music visualizer is pretty legendary. has anyone heard of [Magic]? (https://magicmusicvisuals.com/) Seems pretty cool, but haven’t gotten to buying it yet. WOuld like to experiment with linking spectogram data with visuals. Anyone have any experience with Processing?
I actually just started playing with Magic a few days ago. Here’s an example of something I made with it:
If you hack the contents of their glsl directory, you could potentially add endless OpenGL graphics shaders into it. I haven’t figured out how to write a shader yet, but I’m planning on adding a full on Mandelbrot fractal zoom at some point.
I used to play with a VJ software called Module8 which didn’t use OpenGL shaders specifically, but had a lot more fine grain control over how you could modify your various photos/videos/models that you were layering in the screen. It also seemed to have better layering effects (and other effects) from what I can tell. Besides that, you could write your own modules if you know Python, and their interface for doing that was pretty great. Furthermore, you could control all your faders and knobs by mapping to midi controller. I just got annoyed with it because I tend to not VJ and therefore the audio routing felt like a hassle to me.
I have friends that play with processing, but I haven’t personally. I kind of want to play with Juce at some point, but my C++ is kind of weak, so we’ll see.
Oh yeah, here’s a pic of what Magic’s interface looks like:
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And if you’re looking for visualizers not for creating videos for your music but for listening pleasure, I’m really fond of the visualizers from soundspectrum:
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I have played around with Magic and some other dedicated visualization tools, but currently I am mostly using Hitfilm, which has some interesting but comparatively limited options - I am just more comfortable having normal video editing features directly available in the software.
Also, a cool free visualization software also available for linux is VSXu:
http://www.vsxu.com/
Winamp or go home!
Isn’t that a bit like calling your TV with remote a video production set?
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Fun fact, just noticed VSXu still has no integrated render options - when I chatted with one of the developers a few years ago (who was extremely friendly and helpful, even teamviewing me through setting it up on Linux since it didn’t work well at that time on my Windows system), he wrote that it was planned, but now they give a nice reasoning why they don’t even want to do it anymore:
I can’t really agree that Blender is a simple option for creating visualizations, but there are some tutorials for it and it seems to be a very flexible alternative, and with all the general 3D tools it has to offer this could be a real game-changer as they say, if you have some time to invest… Have to look into this for sure at some point…
I’m really tempted by the Teenage Engineering OP-Z and it’s Unity integration
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Had to google that, but sounds interesting! Might be especially cool for live shows with visuals. Not really that interested in the OP-Z personally, but Unity seems like a nice flexible alternative for visualization.
Also, so far I never tried to use controllers for video production, but I might give that a shot…
Milkdrop…
yesssss 
OK. So, um. (rant hat on)
A) Don’t flatter yourself. Not that many people on this planet will care that you exist; you’re not an Apple iPhone.
B) Youtube IS the definition of the spamming of videos; it relies on filtering to deliver what the user likes and reduce what the user doesn’t; you could have millions of these videos and it won’t make a dent in Youtube’s storage capacity…also…cat videos man…cat videos.
You’re not capable of hurting Youtube, or even remotely capable of becoming annoying to youtube viewers.
C) You’re choosing to make up reasons to not make a better product. Just say you don’t want to. Trying to be the savior of youtube eyeballs is laughable.
(rant hat off)
Cheers,
Jayson
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I use magic music visual.
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Nice work JvS! Very cool track! Visuals are so much subjective, but imho the small waveform looks a bit strange in the video and the backgorund could maybe use some more variation, but it already gives a nice support for the groove and it’s really cool in general that you work on audiovisual stuff!
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Magic is a really cool program for visuals, but I would love it much more as a Hitfilm plugin or sometihng similar, with full automation options. When I used it, at some point I switched to rendering multiple takes and versions and arrange those in some video editor, since the playlist thing Magic has was not really what I would like in terms of linear editing… Since then I mostly use the simple visualization effects in Hitfilm, but Magic is much more powerful in terms of pure visualization options. Have to get back into it when I find some time…
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Magic could be an interesting exploration even if I am not into the heavy beat hypnotic scene. There is the matter of whether my computer will run it.
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There’s a demo version you can give a spin! I think the program will run if your computer is not extermely old, but the number of modules you can use might have some limits.
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Man I can run it on 4GB of RAM, Which is the base minimum for most software supporting MAC 10+ and Win 7, 10. The demo is fully functional for 30 days but after that you aren’t throttled in terms of features however it does watermark until a license is purchased.
Thank you metaside and JvS for your replies. I am running windows 7 with 4 Gbytes so it might be worth a try. The actual licence fee might have to wait a few more weeks.
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If linear editing is what you’re into, Look into Vegas.