Introduction Learn Usine Tutorial : The Video Engine

Tutorial : The Video Engine

Usine has a powerful video engine which can play and modify video in real time.

Note: Several videos in Usine library are included courtesy of Johan Deletang.

Precautions

The video engine can use a lot of resources of your computer, CPU and GPU. We give you few tips to improve performances.

framerate

You can choose the Usine's framerate in setup-tab-video. For low values, Usine will take less CPU but you'll have less fluidity and higher latencies. Choose it according the CPU you have and the fluidity/latency you want.

audio sound card buffer size

The clock of Usine is given by the audio driver in the setup-tab-audio. For high buffer size, the clock will be distended, less precise and the fluidity very bad. Try to set the buffer sise to 128 samples or 256 if you don't have audio glitches. If you only do video processing without audio, set the audio driver to no audio.

hide all controls

All displayed controls share the same CPU and GPU. So the less you have things to draw on screen in your workspace, the more you have time to calculate the video. Try to hide all controls you can in your workspace (minimize patches, racks, hide the grid, etc.)

disable unused cameras

If you don't use a camera disable it in the setup-tab-video. It use CPU/GPU for nothing.

video resolution

It's not necessary process 4K videos and display them on a 720p video projector. Take a look on the size reduction factor of the video-player to reduce the resolution of video flows.

pC vs MAC

We are sorry to tell you that PC is often much more efficient to handle video than MAC.

Setup the Video engine

To enable the video engine in Usine you have to open the setup-tab-video and turn video-active ON.

Play video files

To add a video file in Usine, [Drag&Drop] videos from the browser-panel into a rack, a patch or anywhere in the workspace.

Usine will create a patch to play the video.

If you turn the main engine of Usine ([Space Bar]), nothing happens because Usine doesn't know where to stream out the video. So we have to add a video output device in the rack.

Open then devices-panel and [Drag&Drop] a video output devices into the rack-output-panel.

Now the video out is visible in a small window.

Note: Windows : To display in full-screen mode [Dbl-Click] inside. Note: Note:

Note: OSX : To display in full-screen mode use the OSX button. Note: Note:

make a screenshot

To make a screen shot of the output video use the shortcut s. The screenshot will saved in the default video folder of the computer. Generally the folder is C:\Users\myname\Videos on Windows and /Macintosh HD/users/myname/videos/ on OSX.

Multi-Screen display

Usine can send videos to any number of monitors at the same time.

To create a new monitor open devices-panel and [Click] on add video out in the contextual-menu.

A new video output device is created.

You can rename the device with [Alt-Click]

Finally just drop the new device into a rack (the same rack or a new one) to display two video flow at the same time.

Add effects

Usine contains around 40 ready to use video effects and 80 video-modules.

To use a ready made patch of the library, open the browser-panel library tab and drop any patch of the video section into the rack.

To obtain something like

You can add any number of video process patches in a rack to get a more complex result.

Patching modules

You can get more interesting things if you use directly video-modules in a patch.

Add a new patch in the rack and [Dbl-Click] on it to display its structure.

In its structure [Right-Click] and create a video-input and a video output modules.

And connect them to obtain something like

This patch does nothing, because the video flow is just copied from the input to the output. But you can insert easily any video-modules from the browser-panel modules tab.

Just [Drag&rop] the module onto the center point of the wire.

To obtain

Now you are able to patch inlets of the new module with, for example, a random generator.

Send video to another rack

You can send the video played in a rack into another rack very easily. For example if you have a rack which contains players and another which contains effects.

For that, just [Drag&Drop] the header of a rack into the rack-input-panel of the other.

To finally obtain

The video is loaded and played in rack-1, then processed in rack-2 and displayed in the device Video Out.

Use Cameras

If you want to use WebCams activate them in the setup-tab-video and choose the best resolution for you.

For each activated camera, Usine will create a new video input device, as you can see in the devices-panel.

Now to have the input video flow of the camera, [Drag&Drop] it in the rack-output-panel of the rack.

The video comes from the camera, then goes into the rack, is processed by the patchs of the rack and comes out on the Video Out device.

Note: To use an IP camera, you must create a patch with a video-ip-camera module.

Record Video

To record video in Usine you have to use the video-recorder module inside a patch.

The video-player-image can also record video as a set of separated images.