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Hi I'm Damian from Visual Mash and I'm going to give you quick beginner's guide
on the MagicHD system from Chamsys
so let's go and have a quick look
this is the magicHD hardware version
it's available in three different versions. A hardware version
A standalone software version and
it's also part of the MagicQ PC system. This is the MagicQ console
This is an interface for the MagicQ PC system.
The MagicQ PC system is
free to use software, you don't need these interfaces but
they will make your life
a lot easier.
Lets download
the MagicQ PC system
There are three different versions. A windows,
Mac and Linux Version. Just click on the one we want.
and this will take us to the download site. Just create a login.
to download the software.
Once you've downloaded the software we can then go a head and install it.
Let's move on to the next step.
Now want to do is run through how to add
your own custom content to the MagicHD system.
Navigate to the install directory for MagicQ PC.
in this case its
C:\Program Files (x86)\Chamsys Ltd\MagicQ PC
and inside the folder we have a directory called "convert"
This is where we need to put our custom content to be converted
for use with MagicHD
So I have some stock footage from
Visual Mash
There is a
certain way we have to Number our content.
This will make more sense later in the tutorial
You just need to know that folders need to be numbered starting at 10
up to 255
and video files start at 1 up to 245
Folders 1 to 9 are for
Magic HD or MagicQ PCs own use.
So we can create a new folder, our folders can have names
but they must start a number
So I'm going to call this zero ten.
The number must be followed by an underscore if you wish to have
a file name as well
Now we will copy our custom content over.
If you notice here we also have a PNG file, this is a "mask" file.
I will explain more about masks later on.
as you say none of these are numbered so we need to put numbers at the beginning of the file names.
to do that I'm using a bit of software called Better File Rename
there's a lot of re-naming
software out there, this is just the one I use. I've created this little thing called
a droplet, and I'm just going to drop my files onto it to add numbers to the file names.
Click on rename all.
I will now delete the renaming droplets from the convert folder.
as we've all ready got these saved elsewhere.
Close the windows down as we are done here.
Now we are ready to start MagicQ PC
As you can see it looks like a lighting console.
That's because
that is what it is :)
In order to get the media player running we need to make sure "View Media Output" is checked.
Once we have it checked check we get the output screen pop-up.
normally would drag this window onto a second output screen
and hit "F11" function key to go full screen
We can then co on to tell it to convert our media
You can see the progress in the status window here.
also if we type anything on the keyboard like "hello"
it's also displayed in this area.
Normally we patch magicHD is a lighting fixture, like any other lighting fixture
into the desk.
but for simplicity, and to get an idea of what you can do this system
it's definitely recommended to take a look at the demo show, and what that will do is set up magicHD
and load the demo show for you
without having to worry about any of the configurations
Normally at this point you will get a pop up asking if you want to download the demo content
if this is the first time
then its recommended to select yes
if you're connected to the Internet it should start downloading
and you'll be ready to go.
So lets have a look at what we've got
If we select our Magic HD
we can then see on our output layers
what's going on
If I select Playback 1 This is what we call a "Playback"
and if I click on my "Play Button"
you can see I'm changing
the media being played on Playback 1
each layer can also have a mask on it
and the mask can be
programmed as part of the same layer So we could run Magic HD
all from one playback fader
We can also invert our mask.
Masks can also have
different level of transparency depending on their
grey levels, you also have Black and White and depending on how
we set it up, defines if black is transparent
or white is transparent.
We also have colourisation, we can colour layers
important if you trying to match colours with the lighting system
It also works with your
masks too
we also have a text layer
it's a really easy way to add text
without having to create content
We will talk more about text layers in another tutorial
We have also got an output layer I will show you this in a moment.
What we have here is
different layers with different positions and scale etc.
These values are being manipulated
to create movement.
You can see up here whats going on with the different media layers.
We have a different video clip on each layer.
Now we can see our output layer
controlling everything.
So it's like a master layer that controls all layers relatively.
I will also to show you the info output layer (HUD).
Because magicHD is seen as a lighting fixture
it has no settings
everything is controlled like it's a lighting fixture.
So this is a overlay to preview system information.
This is setup under "MagicHD" "Output"
"media" tab. We can change the output info overlay
here.
Now what we're going to do
is show you how to program MagicHD on the MagicQ
using some custom content.
so we'll just remove the information of these playbacks.
The "Remove" function can be thought of like a delete.
It's called Remove because we are not removing the data from the system,
we are just removing the "Cue Stack"
off the "Playback".
We can use double-click as a
short cut way of confirming that it's actually
what we want to do.
As you can see it's not going to let me remove off this Playback,
Its flashing me a message telling
me what's going on and the reason. It's because the
Playback is what we call active, it's still red, this is because
I still sending out information which is the information on the screen here
So
We just need to
release the Playback by bringing the fader down
and now we can remove that
so when I said
we wasn't deleting and just removing the data off the playback
they are still kept in what we call the "Stack Store"
so if you want to bring some
back onto a fader we can just
copy that back.
So we just copy whatever one we want,
click on it and select a destination. As you can see here it's telling what I need to do.
We can also use the "move" command as well
So we just click on, and select our destination.
Copy, select source, select destination.
so
they haven't actually disappeared they're still there if you want to get
them back.
So lets just remove those "Cue Stacks" from the "Playbacks"
So now we have removed the information from the Playbacks and freed them up
we are now going to add some of our custom content to them
I just need to explain a few functions
we've got what we call the programmer, if I click
and hold on the programmer button it temporary shows me the programmer
if I click on it, and release quickly then the programmer comes up and stays up.
I get back to the Media window by clicking on the Media button here
We also have a function here called "Record"
It takes whatever information is in the "programmer" and stores the information on a "Playback"
First thing we are going to do is put some information on our output layer
So we select "MagicHD"
and select "Output"
if we look, we've got nothing in our programmer
If I select these different
parameters here, you see that
none of them have got any values
when I press "Locate"
you see now that every thing's been given
its default value. This is a handy way to set everything to default
and a good starting point.
If we now look in our programmer,you see you've got a spreadsheet style
with all our default values
of our different functions / attributes
I'm just moving around using
my cursor keys
we can click on these as well and we can
use "Page Left" "Page Right" "Up" "Down"
all the usual spread sheet controls you'd expect.
if we look over here we can see that's telling me that I'm looking at the
"Mask" file and it has a value of 3
And that will change to whatever one I have highlighted
we can uses this encoder to change its value as well
but we wand everything at its default so I'm just going to hit "Locate" again
to take everything back to its default
then all do we do is hit "Record" and select a destination Playback
Lets just run though that again. I'm going to clear the information from the programmer
I'm going to click this button here (clr) to clear the programmer
If there is information in the programmer
you get a little red indicator come on here. So I'm going to clear that and go back to our media window
So, we click "MagicHD", and we select "Output" and click "Locate"
Now I'm going to give it a name, We will call this "Output"
Then I click
"Record"
and select one of our "Playbacks"
where we want to put our Output.
Now our output controls are on Playback 10
Now we can go on to program
some of our custom content.
As we've still got information in our programmer
if I was just to "Locate" this
looking in our Programmer
you can see we have values for our Output and Layer 1
So if I was to hit Record and a Playback
We would record "Output" information as well, but we don't want to do that
So lets just
clear our Programmer, and go back to our media,
Select our media server and our layer,
and select "Locate"
now earlier, if you remember, we put our custom content in media folder 10
So we need to go to folder 10
and here we can then select
some of our custom media.
and if we look here
we can see the numbers we gave our media
This is handy if you have
pre-programmed a show, we can change or adjust our source footage
and as long as the footage starts with the
correct number it will be updated through our show.
Let's select
this liquid effect. If you look here at layer 1
you can see its shown here. The reason we are not outputting anything
the screen is because we need to bring our output layer up
we can see our liquid effect now.
Lets add a Mask
So we go to magicHD and select the MagicHD Mask.
Just to quickly run through that with you again: I'm selecting "MagicHD"
I'm selecting "Layer 1"
I'm selecting "Locate"
Selecting media, actually let's stay on our "Mask", and select the MagicHD Mask.
Now lets go to "Media" and select our custom media folder
and I can also click here to to select
the content I want
and yeah we like that so we'll just hit "Record"
now we'll type magic HD
If you remember last time I typed
before I hit record and you can do this either way round
As long as its before hitting the Playback button
so click on the Playback And it's now called Magic HD.
We will stick with this same video clip but we will change our mask file
SO
we can carry on and just make changes to the layer
we'll select our media folder, and select our Visual Mash Mask
Tip: Normally we would put our masks in a separate folder
but it up to you,
it doesn't really make a difference.
So we now have our VisualMash Video clip
So we will call that "VisualMash"
and hit "Record"
and select our playback 1 again
now at the moment this is not appearing to do anything, and the reason it's
not
is because we still have information in our programmer
because we was adjusting layer 1 in our programmer it's overriding
the information on the Playback 1 that also has Layer 1 information
So we just need to remove the values from our programmer
so we'll click "Clear" to remove the information from the programmer
you will see the little red light go out.
Now if we move the fader up you will see we have our Magic HD
and our Visual Mash
but it's cycling between the two and we don't really want that.
We just want to hit our "Play" button to make it change.
so to change that I'm going to double click on it and that's going to bring up
our "Cue Stack" and here we have see our two "Cues"
incidentally if you did want to cycle between the two cues
and you just wanted to change the speed you can do that be
moving this encoder here, you can
also double tap on the "Cross Fade" box For certain functions you can
use cross fade but its not going to
work out well with our masks.
you can also do things like changing chase type and direction
various bits and pieces here as well.
Going back to what we was saying, We want this to work
with what we call "Cue Timing"
This is where we hit our Playback "Play" button to make it change
So is we select "Cue Timing" select "Yes"
and now we see that each time
I hit the play button we are changing our content
we are changing our mask
okay so,
less do something else, less add something to layer 2
So, we select our Magic HD
We select Layer 2
and we "Locate" it
Lets add some media,
so go back to media folder 10
and
less put some Fireworks on there
now
If I change my blend mode, at the moment layer 2 is overriding Layer 1,
you may want to also see what's on Layer 1.
We want to see Layer 1! So if we just change the blend mode,
that looks good,
So lets hit "Record"
and lets call this "Fireworks"
So we are recording is information for Layer 2.
So we hit "Record" and selecting our "Playback"
and now we have fireworks on our second Playback.
So if we just "Clear" the programmer
so we can bring our fireworks in as we like and
do the same with our VisualMash
The reason why its nice to
have a separate
Output control
Even though we have a separate "Grand Master"
We can still control
our levels for only MagicHD
When bring the Grand Master down would affect everything sometimes we just want to
affect our video. The Output control lets us just fade out all the MagicHD visuals
we can just fade it in and out
So thats our basic magicHD Quick Start Guide
If you found this useful please 'like' it so we know if to make more tutorials.
MagicQ and MagicHD are very powerful systems
and we have only just scratched the surface
There are other tutorials out there on the MagicQ
so go have a look as they are all relative to how to use MagicHD
All the controls and FX generators can be used
with the values on the at Magic HD as well.
I'm Damian thanks very much your time, thanks for
listening and
hope to catch on the next tutorial