Video projection at gigs

[cornfarmer]

My band is going to try some projection/visual stuff at our next gig. Our main system for this is an HD projector, playing 1080p video from a laptop (either Mac or PC).

Is there a good way to remotely start / stop / change video clips during a live performance? i.e. at minimum, start a specific video for a specific song, then stop it if necessary after the song is finished, wash / rinse / repeat. Bonus points for being able to change the current video midstream, switching to a different one to sync with a significant song change. It should be kind of stealth, i.e. no one wants to have to walk over to the laptop, dick around for a minute to start the new video, while ruining the flow of the gig, etc.

A band member wants to be able to control the video via some kind of unobtrusive remote control (the singer who has a free hand to do this).....ideally a 3rd party off stage could do this from the laptop, but they would have to be trained on any software and know the music enough to trigger cues for the video changes.

I know that in Micro$oft PowerPoint you can remotely play videos as part of a presentation file, but I don't think that is well suited for this. Anyone know if there's a better system out there for doing this?

 

[garp]

.....ideally a 3rd party off stage could do this from the laptop, but they would have to be trained on any software and know the music enough to trigger cues for the video changes.

In my experience, this is the best option. I've seen projection handled by the same guy who's running the mixing board, and I've also seen it handed by a dedicated video/graphics person. I'm a musician and not a tech guy, but it just seems like there's so much that can go wrong ("Why is the projector suddenly projecting a 'blue screen of death' and the words 'NO SIGNAL'?" "Why is the remote control not working?") that you wouldn't want any on-stage band member to be responsible for troubleshooting.

 

[Chains]

My 2 cents. Keep it simple. Run 1 long video (the length of each set). Press start before the first song, then don't worry about it.
We often use some trippy video from youtube during our sets. Fade to black during our breaks.

 

[happycat]

I used to create a slide deck using PowerPoint and then save it as a .mov or .mp4. I tried to time the slide transitions based on our rehearsal timing and was quite surprised when key slides appeared at the right time. Using a movie file keeps it real simple - I certainly did not need to have the worry and hassle of changing the images all the time. Of course if you have someone you can dedicate to the task, that would be better