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gigasaurus
Inspiring
June 4, 2025
Question

Interested in software to trigger videos for live performance

  • June 4, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 356 views

I'm a heavy Premiere user, and I need software for a specific project, and I'm not sure if there are any Adobe products to help with this, or if not if anyone has any suggestions for what I should use. I have 30 videos I have made for a live performance band. These songs sync precisely with the music the band will play, and are intended to play on a large screen behind the band. I need to be able to trigger each video on the first downbeat of each song, so the videos play along with the music. This will be a very specific show, so the order of the songs will not change. I use a PC (not a mac) and plan to do this on a PC laptop. Can anyone recommend a good software package for this? I see various programs out there targeting theaters, but they seem to emphasize Audio. I am not on a Mac, so Q-Lab is not for me. Any ideas please?

1 reply

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 4, 2025

Sounds like you want to look into the various VJ applications used to mix and manipulate visual content in real-time.

I've delivered motion graphics for Resolume (https://www.resolume.com/), but never run the app myself.  You might also want to check out Notch (https://www.notch.one).

For a non-profit event that was very low-tech (three projectors each showing the same video) and low-budget, I made use of a Premiere Pro Sequence with Mercury Transmit is enabled - starting and stopping playback from Clip to Clip (Mark Clip and Play In to Out with Loop disabled helped).  This also works from the Project panel, but it's clunky and you'll want to make sure that Hover Scrub is disabled.  


G
gigasaurusAuthor
Inspiring
June 4, 2025

interesting. so mercury transmit you send the output to a separate monitor.  So for my purposes I'd have 40-50 clips. I'd need to start each clip at a precise moment (like pressing a key when the song starts.) When the song/video ended, I'd need to press a key at a precise moment to start the next clip.  Is there a way to assign hotkeys for that?  For songs of indeterminate length, I'd need a way to pause/stop a clip (if a song ended early). In a dream world I'd have the ability to "scrub ahead" or "scrub back" - but I could live without that.  I wonder if I could do this with premiere.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 5, 2025

Have you had a chance to work in the Premiere Pro Timeline?

You would assemble all 40 to 50 clips in a Timline and then play that as the live event happens.  It wouldn't be too different from a client attended edit session - except for it being presented to a live audience.

The Timeline would have the clips groups for each song.  You'd also want to place a slug (Black Video) that's about three second long at the head of each group or before any clip that shouldn't be showing right away.  It might also be helpful if each clip faded up from black and out to black or to whatever imagery you want to be shown when a song isn't being played.   For songs that end early, you could also add edit points to jump to right before the fade to black.

Unfortunately, there are no hotkeys to press to trigger playback, but Timeline markers could help.

You'd use down arrow to queue up a clip and the Spacebar to play it.  You could also use X to mark a clip and option/alt K to loop that playback.  While it's looking, you can press ption/alt X to clear the In to Out (it'll still loop the marked clip) and then press down arrow to jump to the next clip immediately followed by Spacebar to continue playback.


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