About

The idea for the VM-1

In the work with students at the "Ernst Busch" Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, as well as in the work with the independent theater scene, we see a constant and ever growing need for accessible video technology. This mostly involves the usage of pre-produced video material, often mixed with live cameras. Multiple projectors and large screens are used as output media, on which the different video sources are shown.

Software for live video (OBS-Studio, MadMapper, Isadora, TouchDesigner, vvvv, ...) is often too complex for these "simple" applications, do not quite meet the needs or has a high price tag.

Out of this need the idea for the Video Mixer "VM-1", based on a Raspberry Pi, was born at the Labor für Digitalität within the "Ernst Busch" Academy of Dramatic Arts. Together with software developer Nils Zweiling and an initial research funded by Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre, the VM-1 will be further developed into a usable device.

Technical details

We checked many ressources on how to properly play back and capture video on the Raspberry Pi. The best solution seems to be GStreamer, which Nils compiled with the respective libraries for Raspberry Pi. The software for the VM-1 itself is written in Python.