March 23, 2006

EN: Revolution in Soundanalysis?

Scrambled.pngThere is this hype around the net that I tried to ignore as another fancy "installation" type vjing wallpaper tool thingy. Yet I had to succumb to the over-reporting and had a look at the highly entertaining first part of the video explaining the technology behind the "humanbeatboxmusicvideocutuphackztool" -> why they claim its a "hacker tool" I am not sure for me it looks like a fancy sound analysis with an automated backend database and a "hacker" metaphor slapped on to it to make it sound cooler then it is. What is ultra cool so is the soundanalysis that it sports - the "automatic database cue" that pulls "matching samples in realtime from a database" is nice but has only "more semi random moving wallpaper" implications.
Yet again I want to highlight the sound analysis as this has dire implications to any future video mixing tool. It can detect a beat - ok you say nothing to see here - about every and all VJ apps today can do that - yes it can detect a beat AND can make sense out of it:

automatically split up an arbitrary amount of audio material into small musically and rhytmically meaningful snippets.

means making full, half down to 16th notes. The beatmatching dream of any VJ. So the website doesnīt have the "Open Source Software" available nor any code nor does it say if that "analysing process" is in realtime as well or if that is a time consuming thing -> the video just shows a graphical representation of the process.


A note to the author of this program: Its a wonderful concept, from judging the videos its nicely executed BUT donīt stick the "hacker" metapher on it when its just a new video database experiment - there are hundreds out there like this who are also not "hacker" tools per se. And I leave the comment about the "Skulls and Bones" logo to others....

Posted by fALk at March 23, 2006 08:47 AM | TrackMeBack
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