Often when working with a DJ and other musicians, it is the job of the VJ to keep the visual events in sync with the BPM of the music that is playing back. In some cases it is possible to get this information directly from the software they are using as MIDI Clock or MIDI Time Code, but otherwise to keep a beat clock in sync requires tapping out a tempo or manually dialing in a value.

By enabling the “Waveclock” beat tracking feature in the VDMX Clock plugin, the music from a microphone or line input can be analyzed to automatically handle the adjustment of the BPM and measure position to ensure that the timing of changes in your video are perfectly in sync with the bands and DJs that you are working with.

For this introduction tutorial we'll begin with simply activating the Waveclock detection in the Clock plugin and playing some music to watch the beat sync indicator and BPM read out lock on. Then from the Templates menu we can load the example project to see the sync in action. In this basic demo setup, two step sequencer and LFO plugins are used to automate the controls a generative Quartz Composer composition playing on a layer.

After watching this read up some more on using color tracks in the sequencer, or try adding an Audio Analysis plugin to the template for even more A/V sync.