Manufacturer	Videokonferenz
Website	Videokonferenz ES-X review
Platform	Windows OSX
Price	€ 70
Rating	Average: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome Your rating: None

UPDATE: new version ES-X 1.2 released
Here we go: ES-X 1.2 for Mac and Windows has been released, so its time to take a look at the new features and to bring this review up to date. Videokonferenz has brought some very usefull additions into this new version without breaking the paradigm of ESX - flexibility and ease of use. Many of the bugs present in the 1st version have been fixed and the performance has been improved dramatically.

So what's new?

My absolute favorite is the new live video input with frame buffer of 160 frames:
when the live input is activated and set up for the current track, 2 simultanous video previews are displayed for this track, the upper one is the realtime video feed as it comes from the camera, and the other one represents the current content of the frame buffer. To decouple the buffer from the live input, you can simply start scratching with cursor keys (as you would scratch a movie) or define in- and out points by pressing the appropriate keys (I,O) and then start scratching the selected loop. Without defining the in/out points, the last 160 frames are stored in the buffer and can be scratched. Even speed control can be applied to the buffer by pressing Q/W/E (this feature will be available in the next patch release). To refresh the buffer you can press R, which will flush the current buffer content and start filling it with live feed again. I really had a lot of fun with this new live frame buffer.

Automatic navigation through trackpoints:
Trackpoints are a very special feature of ES-X which i haven't seen elsewhere. As described earlier, clips can be chopped up into well defined pieces and these trackpoints can be triggered via midi. The new part of this is that you can use dsp (audio analysis) as well as tab (beat) or midi clock to trigger trackpoints. I found this feature to be a great addition, as it lets me fill up one track with prepared trackpoint-clips and switch automatically, not only the trackpoints, but also between clips. The mini sequencers (for trackpoint jumping and movie switching) help to set up a longer interval for clip switching and probably a shorter one for movie switching. All together a great automation feature with reasonable playback and switching intervals - one beer for the VJ, relax.

Mixer fader:
The mixer fader can now be synchronised to the beat and to dsp or clock. Together with the trackpoint/movie switching automation described above, you could use the 2nd bus for live feed and automate bus switching by dsp or the beat as well. Still hanging out at the bar, controlling live video scratching remote with your bluetooth handheld device.

New effects:
The LED effect can now be customised by creating your own templates. The templates are picture files in PICT or GIF format with certain aspect ratios which hold patterns (for instance stars) for the LED effect to display. Several templates for this are already included in the release. The new block effect (pixelate) turns out to be a great complement to the other ES-X effects. The tint effect now appears in every FX module in the program. The set of master effects has grown to a separate FX3 bus which now contains all effects, not only tint and blur. FX busses 1 and 2 can be fed by each other, also with a user variable frame delay (very nice when using the same track as input or when performing effect operations on the output of the other FX channel). All of the effects work nicely and fit together very well as an effects package, but as effects are a matter of everyone's personal taste, i have to say that not all of the ES-X effects are to my own personal taste.

Midiclock support:
A new feature to this release, but as of yet, i have not checked how it works - shame on me.

Processing resolution:
This can be switched between 320x240 and 640x480 on the fly (!) without any restart/reload. The only sideeffect you get is a brief pause in the output and then you are going again. Being able to switch between resolutions is very usefull for playing back some "scenes" at high quality and switching back to 320x240 when more performance is required.

Performance & reliability:
The performance of ES-X 1.2 has been greatly improved and together with it's stability ES-X can be relied upon for no-headache performances. I've tested ES-X on my Dual G4 MDD and had a hard time to get its performance to drop below 25 fps. If you should get into troubles, you can disable any of the previews at any time to get +25% performance out of it. In my experience, it simply doesn't crash.

The update to ES-X 1.2 is free for registered users, pricing has dropped to 70 euro (100 euro for two licenses). Give it a try and download the demo, the live video scratching feature alone is amazing enough! While writing this, the guys from Videokonferenz are already busy building the next version based on Jitter 1.5 with all it's gimmicks! Im looking forward to YUV processing and freeframe support :)

----------------- end of update -----------------

ES-X 1.0 review

Only a few weeks ago 'videokonferenz' (featuring John Dekron and Videoking) launched their new realtime video app called 'ES-X'. John Dekron and Videoking have been in business for quite a long time and have done their shows and installations so far by building patches with Max/Msp/Jitter. Over time they took another route, stopped building specialized patches for each event and instead created a single application to cover everything: ES-X. After working with ES-X for about 3 years (as well as conducting extensive testing) they have finally released a public version. ES-X has been built for the Mac, but a Windows version will also be available very soon.

So that's what we've got here: another application built with Max/Msp/Jitter. You might ask yourself what makes the difference to all the other patches which have become available within the last months, some of which are even freeware? We will have a look at the advantages of ES-X after covering the main components of the application ...

The tools we get are:
- 2 video busses
- 3 effect busses
- 1 mixer module
- 2 sequencers
- audio analysis
- tap tempo
- midi control with midi learn
- trackpoints

Video busses:
A video bus can hold 1 folder (OS level) of clips or be switched to video mode (life feed). Loading clips is straight forward, just hit the 'read' button, select a folder and the clips are available for playback immediatly. It seems like the clips are not loaded into RAM which makes the load process so fast. As with all Max patches, whilst the file dialog is opened, the output will be stopped. To improve performance it's recommended to use a ram disk, although its not essential for good performance.

Clips loaded into ES-X are shown using their filenames (no thumbnails) within a list and can be selected with the mouse or using the cursor keys, but unfortunatly no MIDI triggering here. Playback is controlled with start/stop buttons (not midi asignable) and a speed controller (-4 to +4).

For scratching you can use cursor keys (forward/backward) in conjunction with the speed control, or let dsp (audio analysis) or tap (bpm) control scratch points and speed/direction automatically. The video bus can be switched between 'feed' and 'scratch'. When in 'feed' mode, automatic scraching is applied playing the movie forward, in 'scratch mode' the direction is also changed. In automatic scratching mode playback speed can be controlled with the audio level (currently selected eq band) or values from one of the 2 sequencers.

Each bus has it's own preview window that can be switched off to improve performance - clever! You can get quite a speed bump when switching all the previews off, around 25% higher fps.

FX busses:
We've got 2 assignable FX busses and 1 master FX bus. Whereas the master effect bus is always applied before the final output, the other 2 busses can be assigned to either of the video busses or even to each other. This makes ES-X very flexible in a live situation: you could let each FX bus take it's own input, running both FX busses the same input (eg. video bus #1) and switch between FX busses, or make a chain clip A -> FX1 -> FX2 -> master FX. Everything with just 1 click. The effects within the fx busses are 'hardwired' somehow, as the don't allow to change the signal flow.

Each fx bus has 11 effects that are always present on the screen, ready for use. The order of those effects is fixed and cannot be changed. The main controls for a effect are a button to switch on/off and a slider for the effect parameter value. Additionally every fx has a set of controls for automatic triggering and controlling via dsp, bpm or sequencer. This 'standard control set' is consistent across the whole application: it has 1 'trigger' slot to select dsp/tap/off, 1 'value' slot to select from audio range/sequencer1/sequencer2 and 2 number fields that control if the effect takes every trigger event or only every 2nd and so on. Some fx have additional controls and even the possibility to store fx presets.

The effects list:
- duotone
- led (dots effect)
- grass (kind of horiz. lines distortion)
- tele/axis (kind of rolling picture)
- auto (rotate)
- zoom
- cross (kind of cross pattern applied to output)
- map (take a only a range from colormap)
- flak (flash)
- color (invert)
- blur

Master effects:
- tint (colored output)
- blur

Mixer:
What the mixer does is actually mix between the output of the 2 fx busses, not between the video busses. so if you do have both fx busses assigned to video bus 1 (with different effects), you'll fade between 2 effect settings of the same clip. The mixer preview ( main preview) can be switched off as the clip previews of the video busses. Mixing can be switched to one of the following:
- off
- fade (normal fading between fx ouputs)
- luma (adjustable luma key) with 'luma fuzzy' control
- light (transparence on light areas)
- dark (transparence on dark areas)
The crossfader can be assigned to a MIDI controller but it's not possible to use an EQ band for automatic fading.
In addition to the mixer with it's slider you get a 'x-change' button to flip between the busses (hard cut), and its also possible to trigger via dsp/bpm (every x/x) - one of my favorites.

Sequencers:
You get 2 sequencers to influence parameter values (alternative to dsp). The sequences are drawn with the mouse and can be stored in presets. A global speed control adjusts the speed of both sequencers. To reduce CPU usage, the sequencers can be turned off completely.

Audio analysis:
This is where ES-X is at it's best. when configured and turned on, dsp can be used to
a) trigger something when the treshold of an EQ band is reached (scratching, fx on/off, flip busses, ...)
b) control parameter values (movie speed, blur %, ...)

We've got a 11-band eq, where we can choose 1 band to create a trigger event when its treshhold is reached. The desired treshold value can be adjusted with the range slider. The signal strength can also be adjusted separatly. Audio analysis is a feature often left behind because many VJs just want to do everything 'by hand'. From my point of view this is a feature I don't want to miss any more.

Independent from the audio analysis we have a tap function to tap the beat by hand - just switch it on and tap the beat with shift-space. The beat can the be used as an alternative to the treshold events of audio analysis for triggering.

MIDI control:
When starting up ES-X for the 1st time you already find your current MIDI setup configured within the application. MIDI learn makes it easy to assign controllers to faders. You just enter MIDI learn mode, touch a slider with the mouse, touch the MIDI controller you want to use and accept the controller number which is displayed automatically. Repeat this for each fader you want to control and leave MIDI learn mode and its done.

One problem is that ES-X doesn't accept MIDI notes at all :-( so it's impossible to assign things like fx on/off, flip bus, start/stop movie to a MIDI key or a pad. MIDI clock is also not supported. It would be a big plus if that could be implemented so that you can leave your mouse and keyboard aside. The reason MIDI notes are not implemented for triggering yet is the following feature ...

Trackpoints:
They are a genius way to chop longer clips into pieces and trigger those pieces (subclips) with the MIDI keyboard within 1 clip. When you select this function from the menu you get a separate window where you can choose the clip you want chop. Then you can go through the clip with a slider and set a trackoint where desired. Finally you test what you've done by pressing MIDI notes and watching your movie jumping to the trackpoints you've set. When you save the whole thing, ES-X will put the information into one of it's own files (not the movie clip) and when you open this clip the next time, the trackpoints will be available again - cool.

So what are the advantages of ES-X over other Jitter-based patches? And why would someone pay money for ES-X when he can get other Jitter patches for free? In my opinion you'll see the difference immediatly after startup: the interface is not just put together with various Jitter 'widgets' spread across the screen, but built with years of experience in improvisational performance in mind:

User interface:
Everything is visable at a glance, all within 1 (main) window which makes a very clear and usable interface

Stability:
ES-X didn't crash for me at all. If it did crash you should be up and running again within 5 seconds (that's the time it takes for startup)

Performance:
i have been running my test on a 1GHz TiBook (last rev.) with 1GB RAM streaming the clips (320x240 PhotoJPEG) from the internal HD and the performance is definitly better the other apps in the same league. Around 25fps (PAL) in most situations, sometimes even better and it doesn't slow down over time.

Audio analysis:
Among the best implementations i've seen (besides visual jockey or VDMXX)

... and some other goodies like trackpoints for long clips.

Downside:
Things I didn't like were the 'hard wired' FX busses (fixed effects in a fixed order) and the lack of full MIDI control. The possibility of assigning MIDI notes to buttons would complete the MIDI functionality. The way it is right now you've got to keep mouse and keyboard besides your MIDI controller.

Summary:
If you consider ES-X to be a car, you'll find some Volkswagen in it (for the stability), some BMW (for the performance) and a lot of "Tschitti Tschitti Bäng Bäng" for it's flexibility :) People who like what VDMXX does, but find it to slow, overloaded with rarely used functions or too unstable will proably find that ES-X suits them. And people who run it on a 2GHz Centrino notebook (when the PC version is finished) will proably get an impression of what VDMXX could do on fast PC ;)

Future:
I didn't expect plans for future ES-X versions right now, before even the Windows version has come out, but here we go: i've heard the next version will have modular FX busses, a record function with offline high resolution rendering for post production and maybe enhanced MIDI support.