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[John Roll]

I have a small light "show" consisting of 8 ADJ MegaPar Profiles, to be expanded upon at a later time. Should I go with a controller or a MyDMX type S/W? Is there other S/W out there I should consider other than the MyDMX, if the controller is not the way to go? I already have a laptop and will have to invest in either a controller or the S/W...


John

[Kyle Leonard]

I have a small light "show" consisting of 8 ADJ MegaPar Profiles, to be expanded upon at a later time. Should I go with a controller or a MyDMX type S/W? Is there other S/W out there I should consider other than the MyDMX, if the controller is not the way to go? I already have a laptop and will have to invest in either a controller or the S/W...


John

John, what do you want to do with your show? Do you want it to run automatically, or are you going to control it?


I'd say you should try both first to see what you like. Personally, I use an Elation Show Designer when I need to control things. It takes some time to program, but I can use a volunteer to operate it once it's programmed.


Software is the easiest to use once you know how to program it. Our church is currently using Light Factory. I'm not a big fan. It's got too much functionality for a small church. But it is easy to program scenes and such.


Kyle

[duane massey]

Yep, it all depends. Dance music with little operator control requires little upfront. Dance music with hands-on operation works better with a hardware controller. Live performance which can be completely pre-programmed can be handled by either platform. Live performance involving actual live control of the fixtures is definitely an application for a hardware controller.
This is of course dependent upon your budget and personal preferences. I would not consider anything less than a Show Designer 1 for a hardware controller. Software is not my area of expertise, but I have been extremely un-impressed with the free/cheap software I've come across.

[Mark Chrysostom]

I have both - a small Chauvet controller (OBEY10) and the MyDMX. If I need to make the lights do something specific, I use the MyDMX. If they just need to go changing colors and stuff, which is 99% of the time, I just use the controller.

[Rob Spence]

I have used MyDMX and the limitation of only being able to have a single chase running (and not being able to manually make level changes while a chase is running) were very limiting.
We now use MagiQue which was actually less expensive than MyDMX.

[Steve Hurt]

I have used MyDMX and the limitation of only being able to have a single chase running (and not being able to manually make level changes while a chase is running) were very limiting.
We now use MagiQue which was actually less expensive than MyDMX.

Is that ChamSys (sp?) 
Do they have a virtualizer?

[Rob Spence]

The base software (or desk) doesn't have a virtualizer (I think) but I believe there is one available or so I have heard.

[John Louis Griffin]

I would honestly recommend software controller as opposed to a hardware one. I personally use an anyma uDMX to interface with Q Light Controller (http://qlc.sourceforge.net/) which is free flexible and cross platform. I havent looked back on my days of analog controllers since. QLC uses the keyboard as a sort of analog controller so you can assign any combination of keys to any function or command. also you have the ability to have 2.4billion scenes and 1.2billion chases in the latest version, and you can run a multitude of different functions at the same time. Additionally should you start using moving heads/scanners, QLC allows the complete control of the fixtures moment through pre programmed patterns like line/diamond/circle/fig8/etc. Very versatile, very free, and the uDMX costs about $300 which is about what toy would pay for a decent lighting desk that doesnt do half of what this can. and QLC has support for some cheap generic controllers so that you can control sliders in the software via the analog controller.

Hope this helps,
-JL Griffin

[Thomas Bishop]

I used to own a couple of myDMX interfaces.  They worked, that's about it.  Not being able to stack cues is a HUGE drawback and led me to sell them.  I ended up going the Chamsys route (MagicDMX dongle with MagicQ software) and have been very happy about it.  I have two setups and plan on purchasing a third soon.  The software is free and the dongle is $100, really can't beat the price.  It's a little finicky using a mouse, but MagicQ supports touchscreen monitors so I am about to buy one to make control easier.

[Nick Pignetti]

I run Chamsys MagicQ and its fantastic. I like it especially for a few reasons:

The PC version is the same software in their consoles. Many companies water down, or re-configure their software to optimize use on a PC (a la light-jockey). In regards to Chamsys, this could be seen as a drawback in some respects, and it can be somewhat cumbersome (definitely a bit of a learning curve), BUT it is so much more scalable than many of the other options.

Instead of a full sized console, I opted to run it on a touchscreen all-in-one, then added another monitor for visualization, and finally a PC wing. This has 2 advantages- you can by it piece by piece if you're on a budget (it will work perfectly fine on a laptop, and as you grow you can add the touchscreen, extra monitors, wings etc) and two, you don't have to bring the console out for small jobs- a laptop and widget will do.

This really depends on the scope of your work. Also, Chamsys is really very powerful. If you're familiar with programming on a Hog you'll pick it up quickly. I know this is probably beyond the scope of what you're doing, but you said you'd like to expand at a later time so I thought it was relevant. Hope it helps.

[Arjan van Gog]

I have a small light "show" consisting of 8 ADJ MegaPar Profiles, to be expanded upon at a later time. Should I go with a controller or a MyDMX type S/W? Is there other S/W out there I should consider other than the MyDMX, if the controller is not the way to go?

I think you might like Chauvette ShowXpress (also available as SweetLight). I've been 'using' it (testing really) for some time and quite like it. It was the only software that I tried that I was able to understand how to use to a reasonable extent within an hour and had two things going for it: integrated 3d visualizer and quite reasonable MIDI control. I find it very simple to use.

There is one thing that I don't like about it, but that is very specific for to use: MIDI responsiveness and DMX frame rate is not quite where I would like it to be. Mind you, it's not bad but I bought this for the specific purpose of integrating this with my own MIDI->DMX software which, among other things, starts sequences based on specific chords being played, sound changes on my synths and other things like snare hits.

It all actually works perfectly but the responsiveness to the snare hits especially could be a bit faster, especially if you hit the snare in succession. To get around this I have actually ordered an ENTTEC USB DMX PRO which has an API available for it and am now writing my own software do handle the triggerind and actual DMX playback of sequences through the Enttec interface that I have created in ShowXpress (essentially replacing their 'Live' application with my own) to see if I can get it to be more responsive and squeeze more DMX frames out of my Netbook. Fortunately the ShowXpress sequence format was easy to reverse engineer because I sure as hell wouldn't want to write a full-fledged DMX software including visualization, programming etc.

If you are not as a**l as I am about DMX frame rates and the likes I'm pretty sure you will like ShowXpress as much as I do. I use it with their ShowXpress 512 hardware interface which has its own microcontroller built in (rather than the simpler version which has no buffering/micro controller and relies upon the PC to take care of DMX signal timing and has several limitations in terms of number of DMX channels and concurrent 3d visualization).

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