vdmx alternative

when VDMX is the better buy

• You are building a Mac VJ rig and you want the application that has been doing that job for years. VDMX6 is $199, or $349 for VDMX6 Plus, paid once. It is the long-standing Mac-native choice for VJing. kott is not a replacement for it and this page does not pretend otherwise.
• Video has to leave the application. kott has no NDI, no Syphon and no virtual camera output, so nothing in it can hand a frame to another program. If that is your requirement, do not try to solve it with kott at any price.
• Your set is built on cueing clips. kott has no clip grid, no cue list and no timeline. It is not a mixer and not a media server; it plays one look, live. Shopping for a full VJ application is the right instinct there.
• You want visual range. kott plays one language on purpose — dither, halftone, print, ASCII, engraving, glitch, CRT — and will not reach past it. No 3D, no generative geometry, no procedural systems.
• $199 once is simply not a problem for you. For a tool used at work, on a Mac, that is an ordinary price, and buying the established one is a defensible decision that needs no argument from me.

where kott is a different instrument

it locks to the clock, not to a guess

kott reads MIDI realtime clock off the port — 0xF8 at 24 PPQN, with start, continue and stop — and derives BPM and quarter-note phase from that clock. The beat tracker can instead run autocorrelation off the incoming audio, or hold a BPM you set by hand. When the tempo has already been decided by something else in the booth, the visuals follow it rather than chasing it.

audio is a bus you patch, not a set of reactive presets

This is the part worth reading twice, and it is the reason to consider kott next to a mature application at all. Spectral-flux onset, a phase-locked beat pulse, downbeat on the first beat of every four-beat bar, build and drop detection, tempo tracked from 60 to 180 BPM, bass, mid and treble, plus up to 8 EQ bands you define yourself, each with its own window, gain and gate. Any of those signals lands on any effect parameter through a modulation node with its own gain and smoothing. The filter moves to the beat because you wired the beat to the filter.

a live camera, processed on the device

Camera and mic run on your machine and nothing uploads. That is what makes a live camera usable in a browser tool rather than a demo feature.

one licence, web and macOS, offline when it matters

The payment covers the web studio and the macOS app. The app runs fully offline, which is the answer to venue wifi.

stills and vector output, not only video

REC writes the canvas to MP4 with the audio in sync, and there is a second-window mirror for the projector. Stills come out as PNG or as vector paths for print and plotters, which is a different job from a VJ set and the reason some people buy it.

questions

What is the best VDMX alternative?

For a Mac VJ rig, the honest answer is usually VDMX itself — VDMX6 is $199, VDMX6 Plus is $349, paid once, and it is the long-standing Mac-native choice. Resolume Avenue at EUR 299 is the alternative if you need a media server and want Windows as well. kott is the alternative only if you want a browser instrument rather than a VJ application: MIDI clock lock, a live camera, and audio signals patched onto individual effect parameters, for $39 once until 13 September, covering the web studio and the macOS app together. Hydra is free and open source if you would rather write code than move a fader.

Is there a cheaper alternative to VDMX?

Yes, and the cheaper tools are cheaper because they do less. kott is $39 once until 13 September, covering the web studio and the macOS app together. Mosh-Pro is $49 once or $24 a year. Magic Music Visuals is about $69.95. Hydra is free. VDMX6 is $199 and VDMX6 Plus is $349, both one-time. If what you need is a VJ application, the cheapest way to have one is to buy the application, not to buy a smaller tool twice.

Can kott replace VDMX?

No. VDMX is a mature Mac VJ application; kott is one instrument with one visual language. kott has no NDI, no Syphon and no virtual camera output, so it cannot route video to another application, and it has no clip grid, no cue list and no timeline. If any of that is in your set, kott is not the tool.

Is there a VDMX alternative for Windows?

VDMX6 is macOS only, so on Windows the question is which application to buy instead — Resolume Avenue is EUR 299 and Arena is EUR 799, both Windows and macOS. kott's web studio runs on Windows in any browser with WebGL2, but its offline native build is macOS only, and it has no NDI on either platform.

How much does VDMX cost?

VDMX6 is $199 and VDMX6 Plus is $349. Both are one-time purchases, and it runs on macOS only. Anything else about how VDMX is licensed or updated was not checked for this page, so it is not stated here.

Do I have to pay to try kott?

No. Every effect previews free with no account, and a free set exports without paying. The rest need the one-time licence.