tools
Utility Software and Protocols
External Links
FFmpeg The universal video swiss-army knife — every datamosh and codec trick eventually goes through it. ffmpeg.guide Visual FFmpeg command builder. ffmprovisr Recipe book of FFmpeg commands from the audiovisual archiving community. Videomass Cross-platform GUI for FFmpeg. HandBrake Open source transcoder — the easy way to normalize weird footage. DMX512 (Wikipedia) Lighting control protocol — shows up in AV-rig integration. MIDI (Wikipedia) The musician's control protocol; most VJ software maps to it. NDI (Wikipedia) Video over your LAN — route sources between machines with no capture card. Understanding NDI (Datavideo) Plain-English explanation of NDI and its compression options. Dicaffeine NDI playback and streaming for Linux/Raspberry Pi. VIDEO WAAAVES + NDI Feeding the VSERPI/Waaave Pool ecosystem over the network. Open Camera Open source Android camera app with full manual control. Blackmagic Camera (iOS) Free pro camera app — clean footage from a phone for capture or rescan work. Blackmagic Camera (Android) Android version of the same. Filmic Pro Long-standing paid pro video app for phones.
The unglamorous tools that hold a video workflow together: FFmpeg and friends for conversion and repair, the control and streaming protocols you’ll meet when wiring software to hardware (MIDI, DMX, NDI), and phone camera apps good enough to feed a capture chain.