With TubeChopper you can now play YouTube like a sampler! You can add cue points and play/sequence them from a hardware MIDI controller.

How to use

General use and Performance mode

Paste a YouTube video id in the provided field (looks a little like this: WF6Ei5PTti8). TubeChopper will automatically slice the video and map them to the twelve notes in a chromatic scale. When the pads are solid gray you are in Cue mode or Normal mode. Now you can play the slices from a Midi controller, sequence them, or manually play them from the pads in the web interface. Performance will depend very much upon your internet speed, but generally the response is very fast with very low latency. If you are having trouble you can try to disable DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) in your browser. This will enforce YouTube to buffer the entire video.

There are three modes that alter the function of the pads. Performance mode or Normal mode allows you to play or sequence a video from the pads or from external MIDI events. Set mode allows you to modify the cue points, and finally Clear mode allows you to reset cue points or erase memory.

Keyboard access

You can press the "M" key to toggle the side bar, and the main pads are accessible from the following keys:

The side bar

Access the side bar by clicking on the hamburger menu icon in the top left corner of the interface. In the side bar you can configure MIDI control and access memory content.

Set mode

Click on the Set button to enter Set Mode. Memory pads will glow green while in this mode. Hitting a note in Set mode (both in the UI or from MIDI note events) will map the current time from the YouTube player to this note. You can leave Set mode by pressing Escape or clicking the Set button again.

Tip: You can enter Set mode momentarily by holding Ctrl/Cmd while hitting a note.

Clear mode

Click on the Clear button to enter Clear Mode. Both the note and memory pads will glow red. In Clear mode you can reset cue points to zero, and erase memory slots.

You can leave Clear mode by pressing Escape or clicking the Clear button again.

Caution: Changes will be made to memory without second warning!

Nudge mode

Click on the Nudge button to enter Nudge Mode. The time code on the pads will change to a more precise value in seconds rounded to two decimal places, and there will appear left and right arrows to nudge the cue points with a value of 0.05 seconds backward or forward. In this way you can get very precise with your cue points. Whenever you are satisfied just leave Nudge mode by pressing Esc or hit the Nudge mode button again to toggle it off.

Memory functions

Up to twenty video's along with their cue points are tracked for changes and automatically saved in a single volatile memory slot in your browser, but you can store an unlimited amount of video's in four Memory Slots using the memory buttons underneath the note pads. For storing a video in one of the available slots you simply click on the desired memory slot. Used memory slots will have a bright green dot in the right corner of the pad, while the last memory slot that was saved to will have a darker green dot as a reminder. If you want to retrieve the saved state from memory you can click the title of the video in the memory contents of the side bar. From this point all changes will be saved in volatile memory again while keeping the saved state intact. At any time you can go back to your saved memory state by going back to the side bar and choosing the desired memory state. Whenever you come back to the app or load a video you chopped before you will find your work restored.

Tip:Keep in mind the four memory slots are completely independent from each other. It's possible to have the same video in different memory slots, each with different cue point states! However, when you save a video to a Memory Slot that already contains the same video you will effectively overwrite the cue points with the current state of the pads in the user interface.

Troubleshooting

Development is ongoing so it's likely something breaks once in a while. If you have saved memory states from a previous version it might help removing all data by clicking this link. Also it might be beneficial to clear the browser cache if something seems off. Then go back to the app and start over!

Warning:You will loose all saved cue points 🙁 I promise to provide and upgrade path in the future when things get more stable.