Ableton Forum

hambone1 wrote:
The VST looks like a quick way to get some lighting going, but I feel there's much more control and creativity to be had with Follow Actions, MIDI effects, virtual MIDI buses, dummy clips, etc. The ability to create complete integrated audio/video/lighting sequences, drag 'n drop them into Live's browser, and 'play' them live or sequence them is awesome.

Im currently creating a 2d sequancer for xy panning. Each note on midi keyboard or piano roll can trigger lighting sequances for up to 32 lights per note. Ive created a XY Pad to draw the positions of the lights or cameras for each step/beat. Anyone that plays with dmx lighting knows how troublesome it can be positioning lights to hit certain spots in a room, if you move the x axis, the y axis needs to be adjusted as well because lights dont shine out on a true xy axis, so a xyPad will save A LOT of time.

That sounds great!

Step-sequencing lighting and video at the same time as the audio is really useful.

This looks very promising!

Heres what ive developed so far with the step sequencer:



An idea for the step seqencer is animation. Imagine the man below dancing using 13 scanners or other lighting projected on to a wall or ceiling, anything will be possible in a short space of time as almost as easy as using macromedia flash in web pages.



Ill have to create a calibration function because different venues will have different room sizes to project on to.

Can even take apart the lighting and replace the gobo wheels with band logos ect for even more original effects.

Heres A mockup screnshot the step sequencer, is something what im after, it works very well, just got to finish off the gui and a few more features.



The third of my series of plugins will be a synth, each note sent to it will be translated in to dmx lighting and the velocity will define the level to that channel. Working in a simular way to a midi-dmx hardware devices but will be at full speed. DMX works at 250k bits a second while midi is FAR below that(31.25 k bits per second) so they work too slow to instantly change 512 channels.(8 times too slow in fact.)

oops wrong post- deleted

ava wrote:

koneko wrote:thats look awesome !!
any chance to generate some video signals out of Live? as abstract as it may get.. that would be very cool to have it packed in a VST plugin

Yes, we intend on producing a video screen and im going to give a secret away here , also a new media codec, audio video and lighting! Simular to mp3 but superior quality.

BUT, it's windows only for now.

sounds interesting

ava wrote:
All my plugins will be locked to the DMX interface. No serials or dongles required!

Hm, i hoped it could also put out MIDI instead of DMX to control lights via an existing MIDI to DMX converter and to control vj software using midi...
i would not need the interface...

This looks really, really fun.

I have one (possibly dumb) question. Are you able to view a visualization of what you are creating if you have to program your lighting offline?

Coupe70 wrote:

ava wrote:
All my plugins will be locked to the DMX interface. No serials or dongles required!

Hm, i hoped it could also put out MIDI instead of DMX to control lights via an existing MIDI to DMX converter and to control vj software using midi...
i would not need the interface...

My app sends out data on each channel about 50 times a second to stop jerky movements, midi is just too slow for dmx.

ive built in a spectrum analiser to split audio levels in to low, low middle, upper middle & high, so your lights can respond too it if you wish, midi wouldnt be able to keep up.

My spectrum analiser works great by the way, scanners work like never before!

philipc wrote:This looks really, really fun.

I have one (possibly dumb) question. Are you able to view a visualization of what you are creating if you have to program your lighting offline?

If you look at the screen shot 4 posts back, you can see where the lighting is moving too, yellow digtates current position so my answer is yes, sort of. But it would be best to design your sequences with lighting. But once youve created your sequences you could create your song offline.

Just thought I would do the maths for people currently using midi to dmx converters.

Each piece of data is 8 bits plus a stop bit so thats 9.

They require 3 messages sent for each command, the midi channel, midi cc and midi value , so thats 27 bits per command.

27 times 512 dmx channels is about 15000 (Ihave no calculator on me)

Midi works at 31500 bits per second so in one second you can send about 1000 dmx commands.

So if you wish to move all dmx channels the first would move instantly but the last would move half a second later, extremly poor response.

Lets say you wish to swing you lighting from left to right steadely to the beat from left to right would require about 10 commands a second else would apear jerky.

All in all midi to dmx converters dont do the job they intend and in fact officially are not official dmx at all.

Ive added a few more features live velocity and a change in gui color.

Our plugins work great using follow actions and dummy clips, puts you in a trance and worries just fade away.

And remember every control on the 8 channel effect plugin can be fully controled using abeltons envelope editor. Simply amasing results.

Lookin' good! Let's see video and Mac support next...

I use a lot of follow actions and dummy clips to launch scenes that have lighting and video in them, and in those scenes will be more follow actions and dummy clips.

Getting lighting and video to work tightly synched and choreographed is really powerful. For example. For example, I have one scene that switches both cameras to night vision mode, kills all lighting except for a green laser tunnel, and overlays green military-style night-vision graphics over the live camera feed. The laser tunnel panning and tilting motion has matching moving target crosshair motion on the video and camera panning and tilting. All motion is synched to the audio and tempo. The same CCs that pan and tilt the laser also move the video target and pan and tilt the cameras, and can even do 360 degree panning sound effects that follow the laser around the room.

The possibilities are endless!

hambone1 wrote:Lookin' good! Let's see video and Mac support next...

I use a lot of follow actions and dummy clips to launch scenes that have lighting and video in them, and in those scenes will be more follow actions and dummy clips.

Getting lighting and video to work tightly synched and choreographed is really powerful. For example. For example, I have one scene that switches both cameras to night vision mode, kills all lighting except for a green laser tunnel, and overlays green military-style night-vision graphics over the live camera feed. The laser tunnel panning and tilting motion has matching moving target crosshair motion on the video and camera panning and tilting. All motion is synched to the audio and tempo.

The possibilities are endless!

Sounds great, how are you panning the cameras? is it dmx? I havent thought about video input but seems a good idea( like arkoas ect), i could even go with motion detection so the camera follows dancers, just an idea probably not work though cause of lighting flashing, but could use proximity sensors like what are used in house alarms though.

I really like your creativity.

Mac support may be a problem for me, I have no experiance on creating mac drivers, nor a mac But who knows.