And that kind of simple human typeable control is still common today here's an animatronic controller I just got firing from Medialon Manager last week (I'm doing a lot of haunted house upgrades this summer). That simple protocol is very easy to test, use and program, and was a big improvement, from my perspective, over things like the then common Sony 9 Pin control scheme, a three byte binary message with a check sum. I've long been a fan of simple, human-typeable, ASCII based control messages, back to the days of the Pioneer Laser Disc player, which would take simple commands like "pl" for play, or "st" for still (each just followed by cr/lf). My primary case for simple ASCII-based control messages came down to this: I went back and forth about this in a fascinating exchange with Figure 53's founder and lead developer, Christopher Ashworth you can read the whole thing here. (Medialon's Eric Cantrell figured out how to automatically frame an OSC "Go" message with this syntax: Manager (OSC_String_to_Send = "/cue/" + QNumberString + "/start" + ("!00" * (5-Length(QNumberString))) + ",!00!00!00!0A!0D") ) For example, to tell QLab to Go on the next cue in the workspace using OSC, you would have to send "/go 0x00 0x00, 0x0A 0x0D" The /go is the main OSC "address", the null octets (0x00) are there to pad out the address name to the required multiple of four octets, the "," character is the start of arguments for this address (there aren't any for this address), and then the 0A and 0D are Carriage Return/Line Feed. None of this is a big deal for a computer to handle, but it makes the construction by humans of simple strings for control kind of complicated. For example, it needs its messages padded out to multiples of four octets, and you have to handle arguments for messages in a specific way, etc. OSC, though, is kind of complicated overkill for the kinds of simple ASCII-based control I prefer and have written about before. Figure 53 implemented Open Sound Control (OSC), which is a great protocol for things like fetching and managing lists of cues for the QLab remote control IPad app. The show is simply two “Go” commands, or another way of thinking about it is that the entire show can be run by a single user by hitting the spacebar twice! <- That’s the power of Qlab.Īfter three sold-out shows, I’d say it was worth it.The release of Version 3 of the widely-used, Mac-based sound effects playback program QLab from Figure 53 brought with it something I've been waiting for for a long time: controllability over IP. Simple right!, but by default, Qlab doesn’t see its own internal timecode, and unlike Veźer with OSCquery, Qlab needs you to add an extra little #v# at the end of the OSC address otherwise it will send the wrong values to the madmapper sliders.Īdditionally, most theatrical spaces love Qlab these days, so making a show file that they would understand is a lot easier than explain the intricacies of LED pixel mapping and custom OpenFrameworks camera apps (by Char Stiles). What I needed was on the second (at timecode) OSC fades. At first, I explored Veźer, and while I feel pretty confident that Veźer would have worked, a bit of its UI felt clunky for what I needed. The beginning would trigger a preshow look that would loop for as long as it took to seat the entire audience, and then would fade into the main show with more complicated changes and timings. I was building out slowdanger’s – empathy Machine show and needed a way to automate various visual changes over the 1hr+ performance. I’ll add more to this page if I make them. I put two quick tutorials together for anyone interested.
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