Feedback on Programming Setup

[Donny1139]

Hey all,

Your feedback is appreciated greatly on this. I'm in the process of moving from DMXIS to D-Pro due to the amount of time/work required to program a show. DMXIS is wonderful, but tedious to program. Little background on our setup:

2x Intimidator Spot 350's
4x Intimidator Spot 155's
8x 7*10W RGBW Pars DK108 (Cheap China Lights )
2x Dotz T Par Trees for Front Lighting Band
2x Cubix 2.0 for Effect / Dance Floor Lighting

Ableton Live triggers 10 Tracks of audio as well as various midi automation tracks for things like AxeFx, Resolume Arena, D-Pro, etc. Each Scene in Ableton is a song. We play 3-4 hours a night and our songs at picked at random based on crowd response so the ability to free-form the set is key. I use Lemur on an iPad to launch songs and have some panic buttons for mishaps live if they occur, but I only really access it between songs.

Before I get deep into programming. I wanted to get some opinions on how to setup D-Pro to best work for us.

I was originally thinking of creating one cuelist for each song and importing the song audio to use during programming, deleting it from the cuelist when completed. This allows me very fine grained control as I would be able to define and sync each cue to the audio and trigger the cuelist from Ableton. The downside is how long this would take to program a complete song, creating cues for each time I needed the lights to do something different, i.e. moving head positional targets.

The other method I was mulling over was to assign pallets and cues to show control buttons and record a midi control track in ableton. This is obviously faster for me and I can take advantage of the ability to quantize the notes I play to the grid in ableton. I can also stack cues and pallets this way, without having to create a new cue to add to a cuelist.

Anyone using D-Pro in a similar manner as we are? Care to share how you quickly program sync'd to music? Workflow tips? Any input is appreciated before I go full steam in a certain direction.

[Dave Brown [admin]]

I highly recommend the second route i.e. programming lots of nice cues & cuelists onto buttons in the Show Control, then triggering those using MIDI Notes/CC transmitted from Ableton.

If you try to create a long cuelist for each song, you will likely find the timing between Ableton & D-Pro drifts apart as each song proceeds.

[Donny1139]

Dave,

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't think about the timing being that off from Ableton because I intended to "step" through the cuelist using a midi trigger. So the cue list would be manually stepped through in D-Pro, but Ableton would be telling it WHEN to step by sending a midi command each time they were to change, keeping the cue timing in sync based on the Ableton session. Seems like the way you described is still the way to go anyway.

I've also been reading about people having complaints with D-Pro and midi latching, wanting a mix between the two options on a per button basis. Not to get off topic too much, but I've set up my show with midi latching and put a "Flash" cue onto a submaster (100% dimmer, Shutter Full Open, RGBW = 100% each). I made a video to show what I mean, but essentially midi mapping a key press to activate the submaster from 0 to 100%. That way if I've got a chase running with the color teal I can hit the key and have those lights flash full white overriding the current light settings. I think this won't work in all scenarios pertaining to HTP vs LTP, but for "Blinder" type effects its nice.

Don

[Dave Brown [admin]]

There's another approach to programming flash buttons that gets around the "MIDI latching" limitation of some controllers.

Create a short cuelist with the desired flashing effect, and set Action when done = Stop cuelist for the final cue. Drag onto a free Show Control button.

When you run this cuelist, it will perform the flash effect then automatically switch off (regardless of MIDI controller behaviour). This approach also lets you program a realistic looking fade to the flash.