The Media Bin plugin handles loading, organizing and triggering clips.

Next in this series see how to set up Media Bin UI sync with hardware MIDI controllers such as the APC20.

Step 1: Drag files to a Media Bin from the Finder or import some of the built-in sources from the Import Media window.

Once loaded, click on a file to play it on the layer specified in the top-left of the media bin.

Dragging three movie files from the Finder to a media bin.

Add built-in sources from the file browser or contextual menu.

Step 2: Shift-Click on one or more clips to select them. Selected clips can be dragged to new locations in the bin.

Step 3: Right-Click on a clip and choose the 'Inspect Selected Files' option to preview and edit settings in the Workspace Inspector.

Also see this more detailed look at the File Inspector.

A selected clip in the media bin that has been inspected.

Step 4: To assign trigger shortcuts, inspect the Media Bin, click the 'Detect' button and then press a key on the keyboard.

Tip: Any available data-source can be used to trigger clips, besides keyboard presses, MIDI, OSC, DMX can be detected. Built-in providers such as audio analysis and LFOs can be assigned by the pop-up menu for each table row.

Media bin with loaded clips and its inspector.

Tips and Notes:

Preloading Media

By default when media files such as movies and still images are triggered in VDMX, they are read from disk on demand. When low latency triggering is needed, the Preload Media setting in the Media Bin can be enabled to prepare disk based media for playback in advance.

The “Preload Media” setting can be found clicking the magnify button in the tittle bar of a Media Bin to reveal its inspector and then switching to the “Options” tab. Once enabled, media on the current page that is preloaded will be noted with a green dot.

Because the preloading option can use up a lot of system resources, VDMX may not preload all of the clips on a page – in the VDMX Preferences under Files, the maximum number of clips that will be preloaded can be specified.

Echo Mode

In addition to using shortcuts for triggering clips in a media bin, when using MIDI or OSC messages with hardware / software that supports bi-directional communication, VDMX can 'echo' the current status of a media bin back. See the tutorial on using Echo Mode With TouchOSC or Echo Mode With APC20/APC40 for an examples of how to configure this.