HECTOR Public Beta Launches!

04 August 2017

After a 7-month development period, HECTOR is finally out of alpha and ready for a public beta. It's still early days, but I'm pleased with the progress so far. HECTOR has a fairly complete web-based UI, multiple HECTOR servers can be networked together, and the base code is capable of extremely fast data processing. I've had it running here with live HD video being run through several effects processes, graphics with dynamic text overlaid on top and then sent out via SDI to an external source, all with very little CPU load.

One of the great things I've been very happy with is the ability to easily add control surfaces to the mix by listening to incoming control sources (such as USB MIDI devices) and assigning the various controllers to controls within HECTOR. It's really easy to set up and opens the door for HECTOR to be used in a variety of live production environments.

Another thing I'm really happy with is the modular system, whereby you download the modules you require for your particular workflow, connect it up however you want and then just let HECTOR run in background from that point onwards. Currently, the available module list is quite small. I've actually made many, many more modules but they have a lot of test code that needs stripping out before I'm ready to put them live. Over the next few weeks, I expect HECTOR to be capable of doing much more than it can right now.

A final point - this week I actually coded up a DMX control module for HECTOR, which shows how adaptable the system can be. Since audio and video can flow through the system as well, this would make it easy to monitor a video or audio signal and run a bank of lighting that automatically takes cues from these signals. More on this soon!