VJ Deck: a live VJ deck that plays your song

VJ Deck works the way a VJ's loop deck does at a show: layers of looping clips blended on top of each other, a master effect over the whole deck, and clips that change on the beat, with each layer driven by its own band of your song. It is the first visualizer of our v6.0 generation.

Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look. The preview, the still and every export draw the same deck, so what you see while you set it up is what you get.

• Open the VJ Deck template

Each look is a full deck in its own style; the deck's own settings work in every one of them:

• Neon Tunnel: Fly down a curving tunnel of neon light strips: a chase runs round every frame, each strip lit by its own band, a pulse of light races down the walls on each kick and an energy portal at the far end throws lightning on the snare. Every few bars the deck launches a new shape: hexagon, square, triangle, octagon or star.
• LED Wall: A stage LED wall of round diodes in cabinets: plasma, a spectrum skyline from the middle out, ripples off the kick, a liquid checkerboard that flips on the beat, chevrons and pixel rain play across it, a projected grid flows over the top and a light bar sweeps the wall once a bar.
• Isometric Pulse: An isometric field of neon-edged blocks rising and falling in waves: ripples from the middle, sweeps, spirals, a checkerboard that swaps on the beat, rings that are the spectrum and towers that spring up on the beat, with light tracers running the floor grid and hollow cubes floating up and inverting the colours.
• Chromatic Wireframe: A spinning wireframe, a torus knot, a geodesic sphere, a twisted torus, a supershape or a lattice cube, split into red, green and blue that the snare pulls apart, with specular glints running its edges, orbit rings round it and glitch slices and blocks on the beat.
• Particle Plexus: A rotating 3D network of points shaped as a sphere, a torus, a double helix, a wave sheet or a galaxy: lines join every close pair, the triangles between them glow, data pulses run along the links on each kick and shock rings pass through the cloud.
• Glitch Circuitry: A circuit board routed new on every clip: data pulses race along its traces, the processor flares on the kick and lights its traces outward, chip lights blink on the hats, scanlines roll over it and the snare tears it into glitch slices.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the other settings every look has, the deck has its own, in Classic's look settings, in Studio's layer settings, on a Timeline clip's look, in the Layers tool and on a deck layer in Generate visualizer:

• Deck layers: How many layers the deck stacks: 2 is the backdrop and the main loop, 3 adds the overlay, 4 adds the accent on top. From 2 to 4.
• Master effect: The effect on the whole deck: a mirror, a kaleidoscope, the red and blue pulled apart by the kick and snare, or feedback trails that echo the picture into itself. Each look starts with its own. Choose None, Mirror, Kaleidoscope, RGB split and Feedback trails.
• Clip change: When the deck launches new clips on its layers: every 4, 8 or 16 bars, or only when the song moves to its next phrase. Choose Every 4 bars, Every 8 bars, Every 16 bars and On the song's phrases.
• Strobe: How strong the beat strobe is, 0 for none. It is fuller in the song's big moments and never flashes more than three times a second. From 0 to 1.
• Main layer band: Which part of the music drives the main layer: the whole spectrum, or only the bass, the low mids, the high mids or the highs. Choose Whole spectrum, Bass, Low mids, High mids and Highs.
• Main layer blend: How the main layer mixes onto the backdrop: the look's own, normal, screen, add, multiply or difference. Choose The look's own, Normal, Screen, Add, Multiply and Difference.
• Overlay blend: How the overlay mixes onto the layers under it. Choose The look's own, Normal, Screen, Add, Multiply and Difference.
• Accent blend: How the accent on top mixes onto everything under it. Choose The look's own, Normal, Screen, Add, Multiply and Difference.
• Backdrop opacity: How strongly the backdrop loop shows, on top of what the music and the Ambient bed do to it. From 0 to 1.5.
• Main layer opacity: How strongly the main loop shows, on top of what its band does to it. From 0 to 1.5.
• Overlay opacity: How strongly the overlay shows, on top of what the mids do to it. From 0 to 1.5.
• Accent opacity: How strongly the accent shows, on top of what the beat does to it. From 0 to 1.5.
• Effect amount: How much of the master effect is mixed over the picture: 0 is the dry deck, 1 the full effect. From 0 to 1.
• Feedback length: How long the feedback trails are: how many echoes and how slowly they fade. From 0 to 1.
• Clip crossfade: How many bars a new clip takes to fade in over the old one: 0 is a hard cut on the beat, 0.25 is one beat. The song's first clip fades in the same way. From 0 to 2.
• Hue drift: Turns the deck's colours round the colour wheel with the song: at 1 a whole turn every sixteen bars. From 0 to 1.
• Variation: Another take on the same deck: which clips launch, and where the sparks, bolts, boards and blocks fall. The same number always gives the same set. From 0 to 99.

The deck changes its clips after the number of bars you choose, counted from the song's own beat, or on the song's phrases, so a change lands where the music changes. The band setting chooses which part of your song drives the main layer: the whole spectrum, or one band (the bass, the low mids, the high mids or the highs).

The number of layers sets how many play, from the back: the background loop, the main layer, the overlay and an accent on top. Each is blended onto the ones below the way its look was made, and the master effect is drawn over all of them at once: mirror and kaleidoscope fold the deck into a pattern, the RGB split pulls its red, green and blue apart, and feedback leaves trails of the frames before.

The strobe flashes with the beat, as hard as you set it. It is flash-guarded: however high you turn it, the deck limits how often and how brightly it flashes, so the video stays safe for people sensitive to flashing light. Turn it to zero for no strobe at all.

Layer assets and the Layers tool offer each of the deck's layers on its own (the backdrop, main, overlay and accent loops, the master effect and the beat strobe) for every look, to add to any project. Playlist has a VJ set package that plays a different deck for every song, Screensaver a VJ wall starter for a club screen or a DJ booth, the Stream studio puts the deck in its rotation, Generate visualizer can mix it over your picture, and Music video puts it on screen when your words ask for VJ loops or an LED wall.

The deck's settings go wherever the look goes. Background Motion shows them on a deck layer; Generate visualizer on a deck layer over your picture; Motion graphics in Customize; Screensaver under Settings on each look in the rotation; Playlist's VJ set plays its decks with clips every 16 bars and a gentle strobe for a long set; and a music video's deck shots take the deck's words from yours ("kaleidoscope, clips every 8 bars"), with no strobe on the quiet parts unless you ask for one. A look you save with its settings plays with them on the Stream and in a screensaver.

• Build a playlist
• Make a screensaver

Ask for it by name or by what you need ("make a VJ visualizer", "a neon tunnel VJ loop", "LED wall visuals for my DJ set", "glitch circuitry" or "plexus particles"), and SW Agent builds the project with that look. Say how the deck should play in the same message ("four layers, a kaleidoscope, clips every 8 bars, no strobe, driven by the bass") and it opens with those settings; a setting the deck cannot take is left out, and SW Agent says so.

In an open project, say it the way you would to a VJ: "mirror the deck", "strobe on the beat", "change clips every 8 bars", "drive it from the bass" or "no strobe"; or name the setting: "set the deck layers to 4", "turn the strobe down a bit". The same words work in Classic, in Studio and in SW Agent's editor, each change one step of undo.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists each of the deck's settings with what it takes, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio with them already set (its deck setting). Each value is held to its setting, the same way the editors hold it.