PATCH YOUR
VISUALS LIKE
YOU PATCH
SOUND.
Patchframe is built on one conviction: visuals belong to the musician, not the media server. It's a modular visual synthesizer – you patch it, modulate it, and play it the same way you play an instrument. Every parameter responds to your signal. Every patch is a score you authored, not a clip you launched. If you think in signal flow, you already know how to use it.
Built from
performance practice.
Patchframe comes from years of playing live – in DIY basements, underground clubs, and on festival stages. I kept showing up to gigs with the same problem: the music was alive, responsive, built from signal, modulation, and years of practice. The visuals weren't.
So I built the tool I needed. One that treats visuals the way modular instruments treat sound – something you patch, modulate, rehearse, and perform. Not a media server. Not a clip launcher. An instrument.
The philosophy is simple. Parameters don't animate on a timeline. They respond to your music in real time, shaped by curves and ranges you dialed in yourself during rehearsal. You tune a patch the way you tune a filter envelope – slowly, deliberately, until it feels right.
By the time you're on stage, every parameter has been thought about. Nothing is on autopilot. The visual system knows the music because you taught it. That is all Patchframe is here to do – make visuals as playable as the instruments beside them.
Six Pillars.
Build in the studio. Trust it on stage.
Prepare patches, rehearse scenes, and recall them in the dark – with MIDI, Program Change, Ableton Link, and fast output control.
Patch sources, effects, and modulators.
Sources, transforms, blends, feedback, keying, LFOs, audio followers – all wired together with the signal-flow logic you already know from synths.
Audio-reactive, tempo-aware, musician-first.
Drop the Cable AU/VST3 plugin on any DAW track. Route audio and MIDI into Patchframe with shared memory. Sync to Link.
Metal-accelerated, honest about latency.
Metal rendering pipeline, live MSL shader editing, Syphon + NDI out. Hot-reload compiles without stopping the frame loop.
From projector to festival screen.
Preview + fullscreen on any display. Route out via Syphon, NDI, or local recording. Run reliably on club systems and touring rigs.
Import ISF. Write live Metal shaders.
Import any ISF patch or open the LiveCode editor and write MSL shaders that hot-reload without interrupting the frame loop.
Read the system.
Getting Started
Install, open a first patch, preview, and send fullscreen to a second display.
Read startup guide →Cable Plugin
The AU/VST3 bridge that brings DAW audio and MIDI into Patchframe as modulation.
LiveCode Manual
Writing MSL shaders live, hot-reload rules, and the 8 CV inputs.
Output Routing
Preview, fullscreen, recording, Syphon, NDI, and stage routing notes.
Control
Map CCs, recall scenes with Program Change, and speak OSC both ways.
Plugin + IPC Ref
Protocol details, MIDI event structs, ring buffers, and Cable IDs.
What's coming.
Write shaders live.
Full MSL editor with hot-reload. Shaders compile and swap into the running frame loop without interruption. Eight CV inputs route any patch parameter directly into your code.
Import any ISF patch.
Drop in any ISF (Interactive Shader Format) file and it becomes a first-class module in your graph – inputs, outputs, and CV modulation included.
Any resolution. Any surface.
Custom output resolution up to 4K. Projection warp and mapping built in – fit output to any surface without a secondary tool.
Group and reuse modules.
Collapse any collection of modules into a named group. Save groups as presets, share them, and wire them like any other module in the graph.
AU · VST3 · Max for Live.
The Cable plugin bridges any DAW – Ableton, Logic, Bitwig, or Max for Live – into Patchframe over shared memory. Audio analysis, MIDI, and tempo all arrive with zero added latency.
Patch and scene switcher.
Store complete patch states as scenes. Recall them instantly via MIDI Program Change, OSC, or on-screen – crossfade between them or cut hard on the beat.
Full module library.
Expanded source, effect, and modulator set: feedback loops, keying, chroma, displacement, analysis, convolution, and more – all following the same CV signal-flow logic.
Send and receive over NDI and Syphon.
Full IN and OUT on both protocols. Feed Patchframe from external sources – cameras, other apps, capture cards – and route the output to any Syphon or NDI receiver on the network.
See it performed.
People & places.
Development of Patchframe
wouldn't be possible without
help and input from
- Linda Arbanová
- Marek Čulen
- Jan Arndt
- Karlos Šimek
- Mikuláš Zelinský
- Marie Čtveráčková
- Jirka Vaněk
- Amador Artiga