Resolume Avenue 4 was announced last week, and I have to say that I'm thrilled to see it upgraded. I used to use Resolume heavily but had to move on to more stable and functional tools. However, having been greatly improved, Resolume Avenue is looking a lot better and possibly ready for serious use in production.
The release notes identify some features that are of particular interest to me:
OSC and MIDI Input/Output for syncing across all your software and devices. This means that Resolume no longer has to sit and listen. It can be the head of the chain sending out commands and acting as the command center.
Clip Transitions and Effect Clips: When you're triggering clips in version 3, it always makes a hard cut between the clips. With the clip transitions in version 4, you can automatically fade between clips. It's super nice and easy to use: just set the transition time with the slider on the layer, and optionally choose what blend mode or transition you want to use.
Compositing Order: You can now change the order in which the effects, masks, and transformations are rendered. This means that you can now, for instance, scale a clip without scalings the mask or apply an effect on a clip but not on the mask.
More Advanced Media Server Features: The advanced version of the software comes with screen warping, video mapping, and soft edge features, plus SMPTE timecode input and DMX input for control. There is a new way to deal with compositions and adjust and distort them with transform controls, just like in After Effects/Photoshop, which can help you get projection mapping onto complicated surfaces just right. There are even familiar bezier curves for those of you who like that sort of thing. The Soft Edge feature is a welcome addition and Resolume finally catches up to the other media servers that have had the ability to blend multiple projectors' edges for a long time.
I'm excited to see how the new Resolume stacks up in actual use, and with the beta scheduled to release on September 19, I don't have to wait very long to test it, at least at home.
