LET THERE BE LIGHT MAESTRO: The MilkDrop Music Visualization Studio - Conduct Light Shows With Sound and Movement

For those who don't know of it, WinAmp includes a now legendary Music Visualizer called MilkDrop. Over the years, more than 8000 visual Presets have been made by its users, many of which are totally unique.

I used this beast as the engine around which i constructed a revolutionary vehicle. MilkDrop is now a "visual musical instrument", a scripted music video generator, and concert lighting system.

Presets can be bound to any number of "Keysets" using a mere "Alt+[letter]", making each letter on your keyboard trigger a favorite visual pattern. The number keys switch Keysets, making up to 260 visuals accessible with just 1 or 2 keystrokes. Screenshots of each preset are drawn onto a "virtual keyboard", and switching to the "Keysets" panel shows any number of Keysets on the screen at once. If you're using a touch screen, dozens of presets are literally at your fingertips.

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This is the graphical interface for programming Presets, with fader controls for every main parameter, and a color coded text editor with built in keyword help, for MilkDrop's simple yet powerful programming language.

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The Message Player allows playing synchronized, word-by-word lyrics, animated in any way imaginable, thanks to an ingenius re-use of MilkDrop's programming language. The Sprite Code programmer allows creating any number of Sprite Functions, which even configure up to a dozen graphical fader controls. Only one function is needed for each general animation style, relying on the graphical parameter faders instead of rewriting any code.

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Also included is an Image Player, with a standard bounding-box cropping utility. An elliptical fade-out gradient can be drawn over the image before it is played, removing solid edges to play images at any size. The Video Player uses FFmpeg to rip any video into a stream of images to feed into MilkDrop, whose Image (aka Sprite) engine can use each pixels brightness to control transparency, MilkDrop's psychedelic colors to seep through darker background regions.

The newest feature is live WebCam support with a recording ability. This combined with MilkDrop's uncanny beat synchronization will make every sound and every motion an artist or band makes conduct the lighting system in real-time, making it truly worthy of the name "LightMaestro".

And to top it off there's a chat room system, so Web Radio stations can include a live visual feed, and Preset Artists can collaborate on Presets in real time with an audience.

There's even more to it than that, like the dozens of global functions bindable to any keyboard comination or even buttons on a gamepad. But for now, a demonstration.


Eluveitie - Inis Mona

A 9-piece "Celtic Folk Melodic Death Metal" band from Switzerland. Nothing says 'death metal' like a set of bagpipes with a goats head. Just wait till the growling, shrieking, mandolin playing vocalist whips out a flute for the solo.



People wondered why i went with the fire theme, but to me this is obviously the band you will meet at the throne of Satan.


And now for something compeltely beautiful:

Shpongle - Once Upon The Seas of Blissful Awareness




As for how to finance this beast to completion, i've had no idea which route to take, as i am not a business man, i generally hate caring about or dealing with money, and i don't forsee a businessman handling this work of art the way it should be treated. I'm not asking for money yet, just your opinion on how i should acquire it.

I did finally find a company who was interested, and has the web hosting and marketing ability to make things happen. Unfortunately, i apparently took one day too long in depositing the first investment check, and the supposedly interested investor pulled it like it was my fault he didn't warn me it was gonna happen. But i'm very glad i can say "thanks for proving you have no faith in my life's work before i sell you my soul."

If anything, the whole fiasco gave me proof that this will go somewhere, and it's worthy of an investment. And proof that i probably don't want to go that route anyway.

For one thing, the company seemed to think that this needed a ridiculous amount of funding towards marketing, but in the case of this project, i'm assuming they're robotically following a standard process. I mean really, what's the most effective form of advertising? VIIIIIDEEEEEEEOOOOOOO? And what does this project generate? DUHHHHHHH-URRRRRRRR?


So besides stirring up interest in this project, i'm posting this to find out what you feel that this project is worth. Can i rely on the route of 'donations' and 'pay what you want', like some famous bands have started to do recently? It will eliminate my biggest fear, the fact that this will inevitably get pirated anyway, so the $200 a copy the company was planning on would rarely ever happen.

I know one things for certain: if everyone who is on this forum right now, about 1,400 users at the moment, were to send me just 5 measly bucks, i'd have like $7,000 already, which is over 10 times the initial investment check that i got-but-didn't-get.

I will may even encourage donations by making this go open source, that everyone will be collectively purchasing the project. And there's a lot of valuable code that can be re-used or learned from, as i've been coding for like 16 years, since i was about 12.

Believe me when i say that it's worth far more than that already. I can accurately say it's well over 90-95% complete and tested, as i am not only the developer, i'm the first user, and the beta testing was all too enjoyable.

So tell me, how much would you donate if this proves to be as valuable as i claim it is?

Last Edited by YRUFO on 07/14/2010 02:29 AM