Music 2000
VJ mode
ps1-audiovisual
I welcome you to first VJ-mode guide ever made in the world for Music 2000 / MTV Music Generator!
It's one of niche features of Playstation Music 2000 (MTV Music Generator for US peeps) and it might have been pretty cryptic to understand well - No wonder!
Finding out about VJ mode was like discovering a goldmine, with so much various objects/props to use, together with countless effects and theoretically limitless slots inside 4 main clips (till it crashes!)
Terms being used:
-Clip: Equivalent of riffs;
-Main Chase: First main component of video clips;
-Timeline: Allows for clip transitions/animations;
-Effect/Element/Chase: rest of components in video clip;
-Video Track: 1 of 4 red channels for your visuals;
-Camera Track: Separate track for the camera;
-DVE (Digital Video Effect): Global special FX!
BASICS FIRST
If this is your first time using video track mode, let’s create simple basic animation and see how it all works!
Place your first video clip on one of top 4 tracks, and you’ll be greeted with screen below to choose your main chase type of that clip:
Let’s go with “Shape” for now! Then you’ll be inside that clip you just made, greeted by “Andy”
Press “X”, and you’ll see that position “Animated” got highlighted in red - that’s your cursor, and you can adjust it going left or right!
Go to “Club” category, and find “4 arcs” there:
Once you done that, press “Triangle” once to go back to left side of that menu, and press “L2” or “Add Chase” in menu, which will make this screen appear:
Choose “Rotation”, and you’ll notice how your object started to rotate… and it also goes dark as it rotates: if we add another chase called “Color”, and make set Light 0 Color to 0, and Light 3 Color to 15 so it’s fully lit from each side, and there you go, your first animation!
If you go back to main Video Track screen, and make video clip at the very bottom, but in the same column where our object is, put in “Kaleidoscope”, and you should see in preview window how whole thing changed!
you can press “R2” anywhere to bring up fullscreen mode of your visual, admire it fully!
From there you can go back into your video clip with that 4 arcs object and change Axis of rotation to see how it reacts, or maybe change color of that 3rd light in Color, or maybe add another video clip to fill up the screen with more objects!
The world is your oyster!
Centering
Music 2000 / MTV Music Generator is weirdly moved to far-right side. Go to Options at the top of the screen, press “Center Screen” button and move it all the way to the left - now it's fixed!
CENTERING CAMERA
By default, you're looking at objects from the side, and they will be facing bottom-left corner of your screen. In order to have your objects facing the camera, place “Camera” clip, and change “Moving” to 0, “Speed” to 0 (leave it at 4point/Path8)
PATHS
With M2K you cannot drag'n'drop your objects carefully on the screen, you need to use predesignated paths
if you set Movement to 0, then speed parameter allows you to precisely position your objects
on a still object, if you got camera facing it:
2pointPath1 goes left<->right
2pointPath3 goes top<->bottom
2pointPath16 goes very close<->far away
(0 goes behind the camera!)
With Speed0 object is on the left side, Speed16 right!
You can use combinations of those to position your object where you want!
Main Chase "Particles" seems to be off centre by default: 2pointPath5speed11 brings it to centre
"Path I'm trying to use is too big!"
There is a trick for that: use “Scale” effect to make object super small, then place “Path” chase right after, and then another “Scale” to bring the object back to normal size - Adjust the scaling before and after that Path chase to finetune the size of that Path!
D.V.E. Explained
Kaleidoscope
this effect takes top-right corner of the screen and mirrors it across rest of the screen (on low number of Kaleidoscopes, it takes right side of the screen)
Number
Number changes the amount of Kaleidoscoping happening... setting it to 4 will kaleidoscope in 4 symetrical parts, 6 will yield 6 parts etc etc
Rotation
Rotation... rotates the kaleidoscoping in clockwise motion, but it's only even on values 0,8,kinda 12,16,kinda 20,24,kinda 28,and 32 (though 32 and 0 look same?)
Color1
Changing color 1 splits your kaleidoscope into even bits, one of original color, one of modified color - paired with rotation you can adjust positions of colored parts, and looks like every Kaleidoscope Number that has Color1 changed will align with a screen in some way when you reach proper amount of Rotation
Example: set color1 to 18, Number6Rotation12, Number7rotation24)
Color2
Color2 feels glitched, because it affect all parts unaffected by Color1... except for one single part... but this can be also desired effect I suppose, for example Number4Rotation14Color1-18Color2-76 keeps the odd bit in the bottom middle, not breaking the symmetry
FEEDBACK
Enabling feedback makes your shapes leave smeary-dreamy effect emanating from them outwards - make sure you don't have any Backgrounds (except for the last Category "Feedback"), and set your Tunnels to Transparent in order to see this effect)
It also works best when your objects move around, and/or are of bright color, or have Palette effect applied to change color constantly!
Scale
Scale adjust how big the feedback effect will appear: from 15 and below it's gonna radiate from the middle outwards;
16 and above will only leave this dreamy effect where shape is (16 is still gonna radiate little beyond original shape, where 32 is gonna stay tight with the shape)
Rotation
Rotation adds like a whirlpool that's turning around your feedback effect, anticlockwise, but on default scale 15 Rotation values 7-57 will leave some gaps in the corners where there's gonna be nothing feedbacked. from 58-70 there's no gaps, and on 64 or around that the rotating seems to visually slow down. 71-121 has gaps again,but 122-128 has nothing like that. It's all obviously Scale dependant, so feel free to experiment
High scale and high rotation go really well, like Scale21Rotation127
Red/Green/Blue
By default colors are set to 14. Changing those values will control how much original color will be sent into feedback. Lowering the value will remove some of that color from feedback, but going 16 and higher will leave pernament marks on feedback! if all colors are increased equally, color emanuated will match shape's color.
Scale32Rotation1Red14Green14Blue17 will leave beautiful blue mark that's gonna be slowly rotated to the edges of the screen
POP-ART
Popart takes the image and then squeezes it in multiple windows - it reminds me of some old music videos where you could see 10 windows at the same time showing same thing
Number X/Y
Number X adjusts how many instances can be seen on X axis (left-right)
Same deal with Number Y: this changes amount of windows on Y axis (up-down)
Therefore setting X and Y both to 1, you will see only one screen
X-2,Y-3 will show us 6 screens
Rotation
This one looks funny: it just rotates entire Pop-Art multiscreen effect clockwise, with 8 being on its side, 16 is upside down, and 32 being what it normally was
Mosaic
Mosaic setting pixelates the content of windows, but probably because of the bug it also shifts up the object it's displaying
High Mosaic values also break entire visual depending on how high NumberX is
NumberX1Mosaic31 works, increasing mosaic breaks it;
NumberX8Mosaic27 works, increasing mosaic breaks it;
Color
Colors affect specific windows separately in specific pattern like this:
| 1 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 |
and it grows like this: setting NumberX4,NumberY4:
| 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
and it grows like this: setting NumberX5,NumberY3:
| 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Setting Color to -1 will switch off that window, making it pitch black
SPEED
Speed changes the speed of shapes moving - it doesn't affect speed of feedback spreading though!
AUTOMATION
Let’s say you want some values of your effects to change during song, maybe increase “Scale” values rhythmically on beat, or maybe you want to press a button during video playback to manipulate “Speed” DVE? Automation let’s you do that!
First of all, When dealing with automation, SAVE OFTEN! sometimes when playing back our object with automation while inside video riff can... mess up parameters? playing from Video Track view should be safe, but nevertheless just save often, and check your saves!
Timeline(R1)
This is where we set up different states of our Chases, like at beginning of Timeline our Path is set to Speed15, and if you hold down “X” while in Timeline, and while the green cursor is flashing, you should be able to move it.
Notice how at the very left there's red mark - that's where we made our changes to the timeline of our animation.
If you move it to the very end, press “Triangle” to exit Timeline and edit Path to Speed0
Now in Timeline hold down the green cursor again and move it from left to right - you should notice how your object is moving from one end of the Path to the other!
If you want to get that green cursor onto red mark, then use ->| or |<- to move to next/previous red mark! We cannot change those settings while song is playing, but that's what Globals are for, so we can sequence such changes!
Globals: Top Row
(Track select)
This will choose one of our audio tracks, and will use sequenced notes as triggers for our viz!
Nothing means that no audio triggers are selected;
M takes from every channel
Globals: Middle Row
(Rhythm and Button triggers)
Here you can choose more triggers for our viz, this time tied to either our BPM, or button press
Black slash with white ends: no damn clue
9 circles: Send 2 triggers per beat
White square & black lines: Send 1 trigger per beat
Number 1 on grey square: Send 1 trigger every 4 beats
Question mark: random triggers, it just goes bonkers
Joypad buttons: send a trigger when chosen button is pressed/held
Globals: Bottom Row
(Reactions)
Here we select how our green cursor below will react when receiving the trigger:
/\: Go forward from left to right, and going back
Stairs: Move to next red line, and after last one quickly go back to the leftmost one on the Timeline.
When it receives trigger before it's finished with moving to another point, it will start going from the next one like it just reached the previous one.
|\: Start all the way on the right side and immediately start going left.
/|: ignore all triggers and sync the timeline to size of the riff, reaching the end of the timeline with end of current video clip
Globals: Slider
This slider is adjusting sensitivity of triggers, or rather response to them - having the slider low will make timeline cursor move more sluggish when receiving the trigger, and having the slider high will make transitions between red marks/keys much faster
### Globals: 1,2,3,4
This is only for bottom video track, one responsible for Digital Video Effects - enabling one of those numbers will make it go red, and also allow that specific Video Track to bypass currently set DVE
Glitches
Even VJ mode is not free from glitches!
1.Previewing problem
when you press play inside video riff, you will see the playback of last thing you selected in video track screen, not the currently viewed riff - to fix it you have to select riff you want to edit, copy it, then go into it
2.Automation previewing problem
Sometimes when previewing things you have automated, red marks might appear in places you don’t want them - simply delete them before they’ll make a mess!
TIPS
the order of effects is extremely important: it makes a huge difference if you place "Path" effect before or after "Rotate" effect!
Another important fact I wanted to share: I ran same intense animation on both Music 2000 and MTV Music Generator: PAL version will always perform worse than the other!
