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Lighting Software for M1 Apple Silicon Macs?
Mike J Davis:
--- Quote from: Jeff Lelko on September 21, 2021, 10:30:08 PM ---Granted it's been 7(?) years since the last time I really used MagicQ PC but I never noticed any substantial lag with dragging faders on the screen and units responding. I know you can also command channel levels with "@" nomenclature if that helps. To me it was the bump buttons that were tricky to use effectively via software alone. Flying faders are still somewhat rare in lighting.
Like I said higher up in this thread, I use a fader wing with Nomad when needing any real tactile control of my rig when not using my full console. It's just really a question of what you're willing to spend on control. The way I look at it is that a console is my interface to my rig - a bad interface can really handicap me even if working with top-level fixtures, whereas a good interface (console, wing, etc.) lets me make the most of my rig and programming time, even if the fixtures being used are less than desirable. Programming/designing/operating is what makes me money and builds my reputation, so I budget for protecting that asset accordingly. Granted you're more on the hobby side of this, but I'd argue the same philosophy generally applies. The best fixtures in the world are useless if you can't control them how you want.
One other thing is that the wings hold their value pretty well, so if you change your mind at some point you can always sell the wing and make some cash back. Hope this helps!
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It's definitely not lag, it's just that, when I want to quickly bring up a cue, I tend to slide off the fader before it registers that it's at full output, so I have to go back and nudge it up to full brightness. And of course once I'm trying to manage multiple cues at once, that's basically impossible without a control surface. This is still very much in the learning/hobby phase for me, so I'm not in a rush to spend money. I'm enjoying learning the quirks and things of the software and slowly making progress!
Mike J Davis:
--- Quote from: Paul Johnson on September 22, 2021, 02:26:34 AM ---I’ve got a couple of touch screens in the store sometimes I’ve set up and discover I brought the laggy one. They other responds really well to slides. The bump buttons on a touch screen need more accuracy and deft touching than I have in my fingers. The smallest add on wings are fetching really good money.
For me the best bit is the keypad and syntax is very good at working out what you want to do. Often you see somebody type just a few buttons and interesting things happen, like adding a time entry to something that usually snaps. Like if you type a 3 then tap an on screen button you created with the label red, and it fades to that colour in 3 secs. Same thing with positions. You are always finding combinations
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I am falling in love with the [number] * [function] programming to pre-set fades into cues. That said, I hadn't really even spent time with just altering the speed and transition times of cues once programmed. That's a great way to make one cue look like two completely different effects in the room!
Still coming to grips with it, but lots of success so far!
Mike J Davis:
So I finally got my Chauvet DMX AN2 in - they appear to have been backordered for a bit. I then spent quite a bit of time struggling with getting it to talk to MagicQ. I'm using a router, which appears to block broadcast transmission (sending the ArtNet data to all IP addresses on the sub-net.) which makes sense - that's normally something bad-actors do on networks. After flopping around for a few days, I finally configured the associated universes as Unicast with a dedicated IP address, and it's working great! So despite my paltry selection of fixtures, I now have three universes of output available to me!
In MagicQ, it appears that you can set up to two dedicated Unicast IP Addresses per universe, so I have a question in to support to make sure that it is per-universe, and not limited to two Unicast IP addresses for the whole show. I'm actually surprised they even appear to support two unicast addresses per universe, since it seems that the entire point of sACN/ArtNet/KingNet is to service fixtures consuming entire universes or more.
Hoping they come back in the affirmative on this, because I'd MUCH rather Unicast data only to the devices that need to receive it. I downloaded ArtNetViewer, which shows the activity of all ArtNet Universes it can see, and I can say without question that the software is MUCH faster to send data to just one address than it is sending it to all of them!
Still muddling along and learning the software, but it looks like even the free version does absolutely everything I need it to do, apart from busking-level control. As I said, though - I don't have any gigs coming, so I can drag my heels on that a bit. The PC Wing Compact is certainly tempting, if for no other reason than to get the main programming buttons and encoders out of the box. At double the price of the Mini Wing, it's obviously a bigger commitment, but the joy of hobbies is being able to be a little irrational about them!
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