Download the completed project file for this tutorial.

One of the data-sources available within VDMX for controlling playback, FX, and composition parameters, is the current playhead position of each movie playing on a layer. Like an LFO or audio analysis value, you can assign this to any slider, button, or other UI item by using the UI Inspector or from the right-click contextual menu.

In this tutorial the movie “normalized time” parameter (time as a percentage, ranged 0.0 to 1.0) will specifically be used to synchronize the playback of multiple movie files – this can be a useful technique for working with batches of clips that have the same duration, and high-end projects that require more than one computer to run all of the displays or projectors.

For this example, we'll begin by syncing two HD movies for output by using the timecode from one of the videos used to control the time position of the other. In the second half, the master time value and clip triggers from our media bin are sent as OSC messages to control movies playback on a second computer connected over Ethernet for low latency communication.

After completing this tutorial, see how to slave a movie in VDMX to MIDI Timecode from another application.