Live-triggered video inside your music host is about to get a lot more popular. Daniel “Herb” Herbert writes to let us know that his Mabuse Software, an “experimental audiovisual software company,” has developed a new AV plug-in for mashing up video. It’s a VST plug-in based on the now-defunct Pluggo, with a Max for Live port coming later this year as that is released. Of course, that does reveal some of the trouble with Cycling ’74’s decision to dump Pluggo. You’ll be limited to running this kind of cool software in Live, and from what they’ve said so far, you’ll also have to pay for Max for Live to do it – no free run-time is planned. But I can tell you that all of Jitter’s video and 3D output capabilities work from inside Max, including in full-screen mode, so there’s no question you’ll get some power out of the combination. I just hope people find some creative stuff to do and not just more of the same YouTube mash-ups.

Herb describes the software and promises more AV tools to come:

The beta version won’t save, but is otherwise fully functional.
A full screen add-on will be available soon, as well as a number of other plugins to expand the Mabuse AV range.
Features include:
Run video within a VST plugin
Automatic Tempo matching
MIDI controllable video fx
Easy to use browser
Record to Quicktime Movie

A PC version will be available if there’s enough interest through the forum and you could be in with a chance of winning a copy by joining the mailing list before the full version is released.

Short 1 min demo video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9TGDrkJh6A

5 min tutorial video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ_xDptp-ws

17 responses to “Mash-Up Video Inside Ableton with a MIDI-Controlled Plug-in”

  1. phil says:

    seems really cool. but its a shame pluggo
    is being ditched. Anyone know if they're going to sell this?

  2. baby says:

    ahh! just what i've been looking for!

  3. J. Phoenix says:

    Sweet.

  4. Steve says:

    Dog n bass?

  5. Mythmonkey says:

    It's incredible the thing you can do with modern software.

  6. I for one welcome the domination of Dog-Wave in the current scene

  7. Robotkid says:

    Anybody get this to work with Live 8? Crashes Live for me…

  8. Too bad its for mac only. Sad face.

    It's lonely out here for us PC users.

  9. Mudo says:


    Future is now!

    PDforLive… 😉

  10. baby says:

    @Robotkid,
    I got it to work with live8, but just as well as with live7, which meant not playing any video.

  11. Phillip Washington says:

    So far it just crashes live 7

  12. DJ Pippins says:

    I do not understand, the reason, or use of this. If the video needs to be downgraded to such and extent, it can't be used for good VJ display, even at full screen. Why can this not use normal HS.264 or a normal video file?

  13. @dj pippins I think this is more just a rough proof of concept, not a complete functional plugin. Also the idea seems to be less focused on vj performance, and more on YouTube mashup/remix kinds of stuff.

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