Automation with vst CPU load issue

Juan carlos
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2019 11:47 pm

Automation with vst CPU load issue

Post by Juan carlos »

Hi there I am a new user of DMXis and after watching some tutorial videos, I decided to work with automation inside of ableton instead of using the banks and presets, I work on a macbook pro 2017 16 gb I7 using the VST plugin in arragement view. I used a midi track and used the “DMXis Inst” for the plugin. I’ve been working on several songs with automation of two adj octo beams with 10 channels.
Now ableton started to crash a couple of times and it seems to be having some CPU overload caused by the amount of automation I’ve created.
I would like to know if there’s a fix for this. Thank you very much in advance for any reply.
cgrafx
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat May 28, 2016 8:52 pm

Re: Automation with vst CPU load issue

Post by cgrafx »

Not to sound snarky, but your having an issue with Ableton and asking how to fix that issue in a forum for a completely different product.

Yes, DMXIS can be controlled/automated from an external source, but the recommended option is to use the banks/presets which you've chosen not to do.

If you really need tightly integrated fine grained control over your lighting fixtures, your going to want a different solution. DMXIS is not intended for that application. Its a basic lighting control system that offers some pretty powerful control in a simple elegant architecture, but its not designed to do massively orchestrated lighting shows.
Juan carlos
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2019 11:47 pm

Re: Automation with vst CPU load issue

Post by Juan carlos »

Thank you for your reply. Like I said I am totally new at this and have been just following tutorial videos where they do automation.
Anyway is there a way to create some automated parts and combine them using banks presets?
cgrafx
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat May 28, 2016 8:52 pm

Re: Automation with vst CPU load issue

Post by cgrafx »

Juan carlos wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 12:47 pm Thank you for your reply. Like I said I am totally new at this and have been just following tutorial videos where they do automation.
Anyway is there a way to create some automated parts and combine them using banks presets?
depends entirely on what your trying to accomplish.

I'd suggest starting with some basic scenes. Adjust the lights the way you'd like them to look and set a preset. Adjust again for the next part and save your next preset. rinse and repeat for each part.

then its a simple matter of using Ableton to switch/trigger each part.
Dave Brown [admin]
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Re: Automation with vst CPU load issue

Post by Dave Brown [admin] »

I would never program an entire show using only automation.

It's a nightmare further down the line. Imagine you have programmed a 2 hour show. You come to change your lighting rig (and you will, this stuff is addictive). You then need to manually edit 2 hours of automation, adding new lanes for your new fixtures. Or even worse, you need to crowbar your existing automation lanes to work with a replacement fixture with slightly different DMX channels.

If you use DMXIS banks & presets (triggered by MIDI notes) it's MUCH easier to maintain your show. Say you create 3 banks of 10 good looking presets, and reuse them in multiple places in your show design. The show will still look great to your audience, but you only need to edit 30 presets when you change your rig.

Automation is great for adding complex FX that the DMXIS oscillators can't handle. But use it sparingly, on top of a show build using mainly banks & presets.
Dave Brown - db audioware
Author of Show Buddy Setlist | Show Buddy Active | ArtNetMon
enjoythe5ilence
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 10:11 pm

Re: Automation with vst CPU load issue

Post by enjoythe5ilence »

cgrafx wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 6:51 am Not to sound snarky, but your having an issue with Ableton and asking how to fix that issue in a forum for a completely different product.

Yes, DMXIS can be controlled/automated from an external source, but the recommended option is to use the banks/presets which you've chosen not to do.

If you really need tightly integrated fine grained control over your lighting fixtures, your going to want a different solution. DMXIS is not intended for that application. Its a basic lighting control system that offers some pretty powerful control in a simple elegant architecture, but its not designed to do massively orchestrated lighting shows.

I am also new to this and what you are saying is useful information. I tried using the Bank/Preset method through my DAW and it works great, but I found it to be limiting for my wants. I found that I tend to make many presets per song. I like to have many subtle changes in, for example, the first half of verse 1 would almost be identical to the second half of verse 1, except that I might change the speed or I might add another fixture on top. I know this can be easily done by copy and pasting one scene and then I can add/make the subtle changes and save that as a new preset. I also found it to be difficult to fade lights in specific time exactly how I want to (maybe I'm doing something wrong) but overall using presets seem to be very time consuming and if I were able to just have automation then I would have one visual per light parameter and I could see exactly what the light is doing in correlation to the music and manually enter the subtle changes by drawing cc midi information instead of making hundreds of scenes.

My question to you is since you said that dmxis is not intended for this type of approach, then can you please recommend me any software solutions that I should look into? I really love the idea of using dmxis but I just read that Dave himself does not recommend this either. Does anyone have any recommendations for me? Thank you!
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