[pinkles]

Just to preface, I am not really sure where this should go, but it seemed most applicable in HTPC.

Anyway, I am having a party (around 30 16-18 year olds) and I am going to make the family room (fairly large room) a dance/rave area. We have a nice, read, super nice set of Klipsch reference series speakers so my music situation is covered! But, I really want to make this very rave-y, so I'm thinking fog machine or more likely warm water and dry ice to get the room all hazy, and then for the lighting effects I'll use strobe lights. Now, my dad works for HP so we have a few laptops and a few projectors laying around and I was thinking we could project some sort of psycadelic videos onto the walls and ceilings for that crazy rave atmosphere? Now my question is in several parts.
A. Will this work?
B. What program should I use to play the videos on a loop?
C. What videos should I play?

[mas5acre]

Just use the "visualize" option in windows media center with a laptop that runs MCE 2005 or windows 7. Don't forget its halloween coming and fog machines are easy to find. Dry ice is pretty pricey IMHO.

[Psycogeec]

get to much fog going and a projected image will be washed out fast.
but use the same idea without laser and shoot the projector into the fog is cool (not expecting it to finish on a screen).
dry ice isnt a very effective fog, and the quantity of fog will be relative to the quantity of people choking and acting different due to the excessive CO2 and lack of oxygen :-)

a fog machine can be rented cheap usually, then they use dry ice to keep the fog low, both dry ice and dry icing fog has a tendancy to stay low, a fog machine will float better into a whole room.

agree with the above, visualiser for winders media or one of the other media players would be great. when cutting through the fog sharper more colorfull images will give the best effect.
anything else pumped through the fog NOT going to music, like lame dance lights that do not go to music, soon become more ambient Noise than cool effect. going to the music is what can make it much cooler.

there are a few DVDs out in existance that are 'Visualisers" themselves, one i know of was made by tangerine dream, with some 3d Stuff, but combining it with the music that kids will actually want to hear would still have the "not to the music" problem.
Cartooney like images, with the color pumped up, then shot through the fog from the projector.
.

[Jmtyra]

I'm with Psycogeec on this one -- expect anything you put up with a project to be blurry and illegible. Plus you have the issue of range between the projector and the wall...projectors are bright, so you can't have it shooting at (and blinding) the "ravers" but you want the effect as well.

If you can manage to keep the fog low + clear LoS from the projector to the wall, then you'll be good.

[Psycogeec]

http://www.archive.org/details/elect...ck-244-32500-2
http://www.archive.org/details/elect...-flock-244-0-8
public available visulisations downloads
rather short and fast, but with a video editor like say even virtual dubb a person could assemble some colored noise stuff.
http://community.electricsheep.org/node/49
the program itself

[xoke]

Get two of the projectors on visualize WMC and I would over-enlarge the image...thus creating patterns of light that would be hard to distinguish. Put them in seperate corners of said large room and let her rip with the fog. A few cheap sound activated strobes from radio shack can be a real good time too.

[jason4207]

I've done this a few times before, but w/o all the fog and strobes (although there may have been some kind of haze in the room ). Just projector, turn-tables, and dancing!

We used Winamp's visualization, Milk Drop, and I cranked the settings up on it to what my PC was capable of while keeping the fps pegged at 60.

Enable the line-in function in Winamp, and use an RCA-to-headphone cord to plug the sound equipment into the line-in on the PC. Now the display will dance to your music!

You can also add in video clips and stills to Winamp for it to swirl into the mix, but I've always just used the standard psychedelic visualizations. Once you start staring at it you just can't stop!!!