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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => SR Forum Archives => Lighting FUD Forum Archive => Topic started by: Matt Fairhurst on September 15, 2006, 12:45:06 AM
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Hi guys,
The issue that I am having has been an on-going battle for the last year of scouring forums and manuals to find the right equiptment for my application. I'll sumarise the issue basically:
I play in a band and we currently have a small lighting rig consisting of:
16 par 56 cans (4 each of Blue, green, yellow and red gels)
2 colour changers
2 Par 20 pin spots
2 cheap scanners
Being the drummer, I run backing tracks off my laptop next to me on stage as well as a click track for myself. This has provided us the opportunity to have midi notes sent from my sequencer to a lighting console or software because the songs are played the same every single time - thus eliminating the cost of a human lighting controller.
Up to this point, I have sent the midi note cues to hardware controllers, firstly a martin Freekie console, which proved good, but the usability was frustrating as it took 3 - 4 hours just to program one song becasue the scenes would change at a set time, not on idividual midi cues...
I then tried a cheap Elation DMX Operator, which had better functionality than the Martin, due to being able to trigger over 100 individual scenes with midi notes, but the dissadvantage of not being able to program scanner movement within a scene and the cheap factor sucked also with the board sometimes freezing mid show...
What I am looking for is either a physical controller or software package that I can use with midi. It has to be able to opperate in a way that each midi note triggers individual scenes, I need to be able to trigger over 100 individual scenes and add them to the track playing off my computer. I would love to have scanner movement within each scene available much like the martin offered.
I have included pictures of our setup taken from showxpress. I would love to know whether there is a software package or hardware controller that will do this for me. We are touring early next year for 4 months and I need a solution relatively soon so i can set up and program the show in time.
Thanks very very much if anyone has any information and advice. I look forward to it.
Matt
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We do just what you are doing. I am using the Bluelight X1 and it works great. It's a software package that is powerful enough to replace even the most high end expensive lighting consoles. It's simple to use and effective.
Check them out at www.innovateshowcontrols.com
I have no affiliation with the company, I'm just a happy customer. PM me and we can talk shop.
Neil
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I use e:cue (ecue.tv), a similar product to the bluelite. In my particular application it is to run led sticks for dj'd music. We have a few electronic liveacts, so the idea of midi got interesting.
I have been using it since march and hte learning curve has been steep, but this was my first foray into lighting. Like the bluelite, the interface and cues offer some modular building blocks. What I enjoy about e:cue is a 16 band dsp color organ to drive the effects. Working with the leds is easy, and movers and mirrors dont lok too difficult, although admittedly I havent used any. The dsp would be a lot cooler if it was 16 parametric bands, but maybe in future updates. This is totally differnt than jsut getting a kick pulse to align with.
As for the midi thing, it responds to anything, but you have to program it - with a programming language! I had 2 years of c++ 10 years ago, so this helped me out. Bluelite might do things more easily. What I have programmed is to change pages and control chaser(multiple cues) levels with a bhringer bcr2000. As the pots are endless, the next or previous page's submasters value updates the level led on each controller. There is plenty more I could program, I am sure, but it is tedious.
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If you're looking for a controller to replace your DMX Operator, the Showdesigner 1 would be exactly what you are looking for. Each Scene can have several chases as part of the scene, and scenes are called up by midi note data. It's also very quick to program once you get into it.
If you want to start over again, the Bluelight is a very powerful program, and the company is very responsive to questions.
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Hey guys, great answers so far! Im looking into the Bluelight right now and it looks pretty top notch. Thanks for your answers so far. Cheers. Matt
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Most of the software based controllers can be downloaded and tried for free. You'll be able to see how it works, etc., but most if not all of them need some hardware box in order to generate actual dmx output. Also, most have a visualizer of some sort so that you can see what the lights are doing without setting them up. There's Martin, High End, Elation, Bluelite as mentioned above, and a bunch more I can't think of off the top of my head. I would try a couple. The Martin visualizer isn't the best, but its serviceable.
I use LightJockey (Martin) almost since it came out and really like it, but I never have done midi input. If you want to get some additional set-up/operation help outside the Martin help file, go to http://www.ukslc.org/Technical_Articles/Monthly_Features.htm l
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What kind of software do you use to do your designs? I've been looking for something to use (Freeware) to design a plot for our school setup, so that the admin. will have a visual..
Thanks,
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Hey man, for those images I just used showxpress. google it and its a free download and pretty easy to use. just take a screen shot or export the graphic. Thanks for all your answers guys, i'm really liking Bluelight.
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Hi Matt,
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I figured I would post this on here rather than PM since others might be interested.
We are a Top 40/Radio cover show band. Our lighting rig consists of 8 Par 56 up front in two bars of 4 for a front wash. 12 Martin Robocolor II on the back truss that I put diffusion gels on the lens and use them for a rear wash. 9 Robe Spot 160XT moving heads, 5 on the truss and 4 on the ground.
I create our backing tracks using Sonar 5.0 Producer Ed. I like Sonar because it is easy to use, sounds great, has excellent midi function, and loads of included effects. Combined with Reason 3.0 I have no need for any hardware synths or effects.
I run this on a Hewitt Packard Centrino 1.73gHz laptop. Sonar has an excellent playlist function. You load the playlist at the beginning of the set and the person controlling the tracks just hits the space bar and it will start the 1st track. You can have it set to start the 2nd track automatically or wait for a key press and so on.
The audio is distributed to the FOH/monitors through a Presonus Firepod.
I also run the Bluelight on the same laptop at the same time. The Bluelight program is very light on CPU usage. The bluelight is very easy to setup your show with and program. You enter you fixtures using the onboard fixture library. You assign your fixture channels and start creating cues.
The way I do it is I base every song I have the lights programed for off the same starting cue. This cue has just a couple of front lights on per side and all the moving heads and color changers in their home position.
Programming cues is very easy, I would suggest downloading the software and try for yourself.
I use the Bluelight event list to synch my light show up to the band/backing tracks. The event list runs of the internal clock of the computer and allows you to insert events(cues) at specific times. The even list can be 24 hours long and cues can be inserted as accurately as 1 frame(1/30 of a second.)
Lets say we are playing Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil and then New Sensation by INXS. We would start programing cues for Beds at 00:00:00:00(hours:minutes:seconds:frames) in the event list. The event list the blue light can be triggered in many ways including Midi Patch change info. In Sonar you set up a Midi Patch change at 00:00:00:00. You set the bluelight event list midi trigger to respond to that patch change by starting the eventlist at 00:00:00:00. When you start you backing tracks(whether its Sonar, Cubase, etc.) it will send out a midi patch change that will simultaneously start the event list at the appropriate time.
When it comes to New Senstation you repeat the process except you set the event list to start at 00:05:00:00. The next song would start at 00:10:00:00, and so on.
When I program our lights I envision what I want the show to look like, when ever I want a cue change I insert an event in the event list at that time, add/create the appropriate cue. Repeat the process till the song is done. I just match the time from Sonar to the time in the event list. For the second song I just match the time from sonar with the time from the event list + 05:00:00.
Joe from BlueLight is currently setting up the midi trigger to trigger the event list to record. For example for New Sensation you would set the trigger to record at 00:05:00:00. When you start the backing track it starts the event list in record mode. Now eveytime you press a key on the keyboard it will insert an event in the event list. You can assign specific cues to individual keys on the keyboard. Play the backing track, hit the appropriate hot keys at the right time and you song is programmed. Set the midi trigger back to "play at 00:05:00:00" rather that record and your done.
It's easier than it sounds best way is to just try it.
Let me know if you have more questions.
Neil