Visibox Terminology

A Visibox Project holds Songs, and each Song holds Clips. Nearly everything else in Visibox is a setting on one of those three.

This page defines every term the rest of the manual uses, and points at the page that covers it in full.

Project

The Project is the top level. It holds your Songs and their order, the Clips inside them, and the settings that apply to the whole show. A Project is one file, so you can carry a show from one computer to another. See Working with Projects.

Song

A Song is the container for a group of Clips. It usually stands for a piece of music, though it can be any unit of a performance: a scene, a segment, a talk.

A Song does not need an audio track. It holds the visuals that play while you perform, and you attach audio only if you want Visibox to play a backing track. See Adding Songs.

Clip

A Clip is what you trigger, and usually what the audience sees. Clip is the general term, and every Clip is one of six types: a Video Clip, an Image Clip, a Camera Clip, a Color Clip, a Visualizer, or an Audio Clip. The type decides what the Clip plays. Everything else about a Clip, from its Launch Mode to its Effects, works the same whichever type it is. See Adding Clips.

Audio Clip

An Audio Clip plays a sound file. It is triggered like any other Clip, so it is how you fire a stinger, a sound effect, or a second track on cue. That is different from the one backing track a Song can have attached. It plays black unless you give it a color or pair it with a Visualizer. See Audio Clips.

Camera Clip

A Camera Clip shows a live video feed from a connected input: a USB webcam, an HDMI capture adapter, or a virtual camera. If your computer sees it as a camera, Visibox can play it as a Clip. See Cameras and Video Inputs.

Color Clip

A Color Clip is a solid color, most often black. Visibox has to be playing something to play a Song’s attached audio, so a black Color Clip is how you play “nothing” during a track that needs no picture. An Audio Clip is the other way to have sound with nothing on screen. Color Clips also make good canvases for Effects.

Image Clip

An Image Clip is a still picture, added the same way you add a video: drag the file in. Animated GIFs are the exception. Visibox converts them on import, so a GIF arrives as a Video Clip. Working with Projects lists the formats Visibox reads.

Video Clip

A Video Clip plays a video file. It is the type most people mean when they say “clip”, which is why this manual writes “Clip” for the general idea and “Video Clip” when it means this one in particular. If the file carries audio, that audio plays unless you mute it, and In and Out points trim the Clip to the section you want. Working with Projects lists the formats Visibox reads.

Effect

An Effect is a real-time visual transformation applied to a Clip: motion, color shifts, glitch, distortion, or animation that reacts to the music. Effects never touch your original media files. See Effects.

Visualizer

A Visualizer is a Clip that generates live, audio-reactive visuals instead of playing a file. Visibox has two engines, MilkDrop and ISF (Interactive Shader Format). See Visualizers.

Playing several Clips at once

Several Clips playing at once is polyoptic playback, and Polyopsis is the ceiling on how many. The words come from synthesizers: a synth that plays one note at a time is monophonic, and one that plays several at once is polyphonic, from the Greek poly, many, and phone, sound. Visibox plays pictures rather than notes, so it needs the other Greek word: opsis, sight.

Term	What it means
polyoptic playback	Several Clips playing at the same time in one Song. Triggering one Clip no longer stops the others.
Poly Mode	The per-Song setting that decides how simultaneous Clips share the stage.
Mono	Poly Mode’s one-Clip-at-a-time value, and the default. A new Clip replaces the one playing.
Blend, Mosaic, Stack, Horizontal Stripes, Vertical Stripes, Spots	The six Poly Modes that let Clips co-play, each laying them out differently.
Polyopsis	The ceiling on how many Clips can play at once, from 2 to 8. One setting for the whole app.

Starting and stopping a Clip

Term	What it means
Launch Mode	The per-Clip setting for what pressing and releasing its trigger does.
Trigger	A Launch Mode: press starts the Clip, and the release does nothing.
Gate	A Launch Mode: the Clip plays only while you hold the control down.
Toggle	A Launch Mode: press starts the Clip, and a second press stops it.
End Action	What happens when a Clip’s media runs out. Loop is the default; Stop (One-Shot) is the value that ends playback.
Retrigger Action	What a second press does to a Clip that is already playing.
Resume Action	Where a Clip picks up when you come back to it, including Sync to Song Position.

The three settings above are covered on Clip Playback Options.

Shaping a Clip

Term	What it means
Fit Mode	How media fills the frame. Its values are Crop, Letterbox, and Stretch.
In Point / Out Point	The trim handles on a Video Clip or an Audio Clip. Set them to play a section of a file instead of all of it.
Loop Crossfade	A slider that blends the end of a loop into its start.
Transition In / Out	The shape a Clip uses to arrive and leave: Fade, Wipe, or Push.
Velocity Sensitivity	Maps how hard you hit a MIDI pad to how loud the Clip’s audio plays.
Tweak	The panel holding the Effect parameters one Clip has changed, so a shared Effect preset stops changing everywhere at once.

Everything in this table lives on Clip Playback Options, except Tweak.

Organizing a show

Term	What it means
Setlist	A saved running order of the Songs in a Project. A Project can hold several and switch between them.
Overlay	A logo or lower third that sits above everything the Output shows. Assign one to a Project, a Song, or a single Clip.
Song Timeline	A timed list of cues attached to a Song, written as a script.
Timeline Editor	The window you write a Song Timeline in.
Lyrics	The chord-and-lyric sheet feature, shown in the Lyrics Window on its own screen.
Project Settings	The window holding the settings that belong to one Project: its title, Uppercase Titles, Default Fit Mode, and its Controls.

Controlling Visibox live

Term	What it means
Real-Time Control	Named Controls pointed at Clip and Effect parameters, so a knob or fader can ride them during a show.
Control	One slot in the Control Bus. Name it, point it at a parameter, and drive it from MIDI, OSC, or an on-screen fader.
Control Bus	The set of Controls a Project has, and the Project Settings tab where you name and shape them. Every Project starts with eight, lettered A to H, and you can add more.

The Output

Term	What it means
video wall	The Output spread across several displays arranged in rows and columns.
Video Wall Controller Compensation	Pre-distortion for a hardware wall controller, set per display in Canvas Settings.
Record	Capturing what the Output shows to a video file.

Next, take a look around the Visibox interface before moving on to the detail.