Weird DMXIS behaviour after adding 4 new fixtures

[pier6363]

Hi,
I am happily using DMXIS with my CUBASE AI 4 on a windows7 home premium 64 bit OS since some months, and using a mix of bank/presets, MIDI and CUBASE plugin automation to control my rig via the DMXIS.

It all worked perfectly till I recently added 2 CAMEO Hydrabeam 4000 and 2 lasers Cameo.

With this upgrade, my rig consists of 18 units, the total DMX cables length is about 60 metres, the channel usage is 268 (last channel) so I believe that it should still be within the tolerance.

Since the upgrade of my rig, DMXIS started to randomly not recognize anymore some of the automation that I did in my Cubase. Fiddling with it sometimes makes DMXIS recognize it again (for a while), but then it stops to do so again, and / or in some other parts of the song.

Also, after saving the project where the fiddling above mentioned started to make DMXIS recognize that bit of automation again, closing it and reopening it, the automation often is not recognized again.

I have tried to isolate the newly added fixtures, revert to the situation that was working (AND YES, I put the terminator back to where it was before the upgrade). Sadly the problem stays the same, wich means, with or without those new fixtures in the rig, the problem is always there.

I tried to reinstall DMXIS, even downloaded and installed the version 1.7.2.

Also tried to change the Buffer size to lowest latency, changed the audio device type to all what i have available on my computer.

No way, my light show is crippled, and it is very frustrating.

Has anyone got a hint of what may be going on?

I thank in advance who will help me to sort out the issue, and hopefully solve it.

Cheers to all.

Pierluigi

[Dave Brown [admin]]

You say that broken automation is the problem. Are the DMXIS faders not moving? Or are they moving correctly but the physical lights are not responding?

(Connecting additional physical lights to your DMXIS box should never change the software behaviour)

[pier6363]

Hi Dave, thanks for the swift reply!
Where the automation is "recognized", all faders move perfectly, where not, the faders just hang to the last value to which they responded, or move to the value programmed in a preset that is being recalled. But they stop to "follow" any automation.

[Dave Brown [admin]]

OK, so that's likely nothing to do with the physical connection of additional lights to your DMXIS box. I would guess that if you run the show with the DMXIS box disconnected, you will still see those automation problems.

So, the question is, what has changed in your software setup to cause the automation fails. Did you upgrade either Cubase or DMXIS prior to these problems? Or did you make changes to any Cubase preferences or settings?

Perhaps you changed the way DMXIS is patched into your song? Did you, for example, move the plug-in from the master FX rack into a send/return channel?

[pier6363]

Yes. I have followed your suggestion, and tried to run the song with the box disconnected. I confirm, the behavior is exactly the same. Some faders respond to the automation, some do not.

For your awareness, the DMXIS plugin is activated in an audio track, as an insert.

I did not upgrade or change anything before I added those new fixtures, and the problem started to appear.

All I did was to simply connect them to my rig, program their DMX channel modse and addresses, then turned on my PC and DMXIS, and started to just modify / create DMXIS presets and add some automation to introduce some bits of those new fixtures into the show.

That's when I noticed that there was something weird. The new fixtures were behaving "weird", obeying to the automation in the way I just mentioned (some automation was executed, some wasn't).

I noticed that often if I would save the song, close it and reopen it, the non-responsive automation would become responsive. But not always...

But what drove me nuts is that also other (old) fixtures automation (which I did not touch at all) started to behave in the same way. Resonsive, non-responsive.... A real mess.


I have also tried to restore from my backups a version of the CUBASE song which was saved before the upgrade, so theoretically "free from automation issues" (I am sure that the show was running perfectly in it), and noticed that some bits of automation which were not working started to work, but others stopped to work....
So, also the restore did not help.

Over to you.... and thanks again for your patience, and help!

[Dave Brown [admin]]

Is this, I wonder, CPU performance related? Could you take a look at the Windows Task Manager, and check on the CPU load at the points where automation starts to act strange?

[pier6363]

No, Dave, all parameters (VST performance from inside CUBASE), task manager (memory usage, CPU) I checked them already. They all all in the norm.

I definitely agree with you that the situation is weird, and somehow hard to explain.

Whatsoever, an update for you:

I restored the FULL backup of the situation I had before the rig upgrade, this means the original CUBASE song (with its programmed lights), plus Public documents DMX folder, plus in the roaming folder the Steinberg files (for cubase) and the DMX files, and...

WOW!


All is back and running clean, obviously without any additional things I did for the new fixtures (because in the back-up I have restored they were obviously not there).

But it works. And this is the safe fall-back.

I am starting to think that there are some "hidden" ties and links between the world of Cubase (and where it puts its own XML files, and whatever else) and DMXIS (as well), so there has to be a 1-to-1 perfect congruence. Which obviously makes sense, restore-wise.

But it still does not explain while a "Cubase world" and "DMXIS world" which was built on a certain rig, would seem to not accept changes made in it, due to the simple adding of fixtures, update of DMX presets, and CUBASE automation.

And start to behave odd.

To draw a bottom-line:

The full restore made my show come back to health (even with the new fixtures connected, just "not activated" by any change in presests, or automation, so they are there, but not used).

Here now I might be wrong, but...

I have the feeling that it is rather CUBASE that somehow "embedded" in itself the rig and the automation thing to how it was programmed till I added those new fixtures, and as long as it stays in that way, it all works. When I went into it to "welcome" the new fixtures, it somehow started to go wild.

As I said, I might be wrong, but this is what it looks like.

I do not even dare to contact Steinberg (my CUBASE AI 4 is well out of support), and they anyway never shone for availability and responsiveness.

Which instead you did, so, thank you again and again. I mean it.

I guess that I will just give up trying and add any new fixtures in this project, and just leave it as it is.

I will rather move on to a new project where the light show still has to be done from scratch (so no DMXIS plugin activated yet, no presets created for it, etc...), and see how it behaves with the new extended rig.

One question:
Do you see any issue / recommendation in setting my DMXIS plug-in within CUBASE for my next adventures?

So far, and a bit instinctively, this is what I did:

As a first take, I just created an (empty) new audio track in my existing project, and configured into it the DMXIS plug-in as an Insert, then just added automation to this track. As I said, before the rig upgrade, all was working quite fine, in this way.

You have instead mentioned the FX track, which I have never used so far, in CUBASE.

Is there any advantage in using it, with respect to what I have done instead (mentioned above)?

I am just asking, so that when I will start to work on a new project, I might be better aware of more suitable choices.

Thanks again and ... loop open!

[cgrafx]

actually my educated guess is you have reached the limit of automation entries in cubase that can be sent to DMXIS. Adding the additional lights into the cue pushed you over the limit. Its not a CPU problem but a limit on the amount of direct data that can pushed at one time.

Moth MIDI and DMX are fairly slow protocols. If you your trying to push a lot of light changes at the same time, you will simply swamp the data path and stuff gets lost because it can't respond that fast.

I'm guessing your writing direct fader entries into cubase, not DMXIS program changes (meaning your trying to do direct calls from Cubase to control every individual lighting parameter rather than simply changing saved program cues in DMXIS).

[pier6363]

To cgrafx:
first of all, thanks for your contribution, really.
Second: yes, I have come to the same conclusion, even though I have no "final" evidence that this is the case.

For the records, this is what I do:

I am using a mix technique (call it so...)
What I usually do is this:
- 1st I create a DMXIS preset, with most of the settings done.

Now, since I have plenty of moving heads, and when a preset is recalled, they always need a bit of time to position themselves, plus time to change color / gobo, etc., what I do is:

while the previous DMXIS preset is being executed,
- I fade-out all the moving heads which are about to be recalled in the next preset (and I do this via automation).

- I prepare the positioning of the heads according to where they should be in the next preset, while they are blacked-out. Once again, this is done via automation.

- Occasionally, I will also change the colors / gobo / speed of rotation, etc. (again, via automation)

So, all the above is a sort of "let's get ready for the next preset", while still playing the previous one.

Now I finally recall the next preset, and the lights are already in the proper position, with the proper color / gobo, etc.

This makes transitions from one DMXIS preset to the next one very "clean" and immediate (no heads moving, gobos shooting different patterns before reaching the programmed one, and so on.

Of course, all the above means a heavy usage of automation.

In my previous rig, I was managing up to 138 DMX channels (fortunately not all of them, but quite many) via the above technique, and CUBASE and DMXIS where able manage it successfully.

In my extended rig, my amount of channels has reached to 268 DMX channels.

Probably that is simply too much for my CUBASE and DMXIS to cope with.

I am guessing that in CUBASE and / or DMXIS there is a limited table / array of automation entries, which are kept in it or swapped with new entries according to a certain logic.

If that table / array had a capability of at least as many entries as are my DMX channels (268 in my case), I would expect that it would all work, maybe with some delay, but surely not erratic.

My conclusion is that the maximum number of automation entries in this data structure must be way less than the 268 I would need (my guess is the magic number 128...)

This is why I observer erratic behavior of automation working here, but not working there, according to the refresh / push-in swap-out logic of such table / array (or whatever other data structure has been used by the programmers).

That's my best guess, so far.

Now I am wondering how to develop my light show in a decent way, with a totally different technique (due to the limitations I have to deal with).

Any suggestion would be really appreciated.

[pier6363]

Case closed.

I thank cgrafx for his enlightening vision, and Dave Brown for creating the equivalent of a Swiss Watch in IT.

My Cubase has definitely some "untold and hidden" limitations, once you sort them out, and you stay within the limit (or whato you can best guess about it), it all stands.

And DMXIS resoponds as best as it can, given that it is put in the conditions to do so.

All works, sorted out a better way to work, and not to stress both programs, so...

Let there be light!