Virtual Display?

[pyrael]

I just downloaded Vixen today. I don't have any hardware built yet and am still in research mode LOL. I saw in the plugins that there is a virtual display output for the LEDTricks. I was curious if there was a similar plug for regular lights? I tried loading the Virtual ledtricks as an output, but it gives an error, I'm assuming it's because I was messing with a standard vixen session. If there isn't one, I think this could be really cool to have (when you don't want to have bunches of lights and equipment hooked up). if it does, can someone explain how to use it? I'm getting just a blank output screen.

Thanks in advance
Steve

[smartcontrols]

Take a look at the “Adjustable Preview” output plugin. I think that is what you are looking for.

It works without any hardware connected and lets you “draw” your lights on the screen. If you do not have hardware connected that is the only output plugin that you would want selected.

[pyrael]

Thanks very much!! Even though I don't have the equipment yet, This will keep me busy till i have the options I want settled. I want to start off smallish and be able to use the same stuff for Halloween and Christmas. Obviously a dongle is planned, but just haven't chosen which path from there yet...

I'll post questions about that in another thread though


Thanks again

Steve

[Christmas.joe]

I used Adjustable Preview from the beginning when I had nothing.  From that, I build my entire show around it.  My first show is exactly from that initial step and it works perfectly so far.

 

[pyrael]

I've bee playing with the editor and just getting the feel of things. I actually feel comfortable with the interface. getting used to the keys is a hurdle, but that because I'm so used to my DAW environment in my studio, where space is the play/stop key.

I'm curious. which plugin do most people use to sync to a beat? I was trying a constant kick drum of 120 bpm and it was going out of sync on me. I tried with both the frecuency plugs and even messed with the waveform plug.

[Christmas.joe]

I've bee playing with the editor and just getting the feel of things. I actually feel comfortable with the interface. getting used to the keys is a hurdle, but that because I'm so used to my DAW environment in my studio, where space is the play/stop key.

I'm curious. which plugin do most people use to sync to a beat? I was trying a constant kick drum of 120 bpm and it was going out of sync on me. I tried with both the frecuency plugs and even messed with the waveform plug.

I sync the beat the hard way.  I don't use the key press or anything that does it for you.  What I do is play the song enough times to get a feel for the beat.  I typically use 25 ms for event period, maybe a little overboard, but I like it.  What I do is slow the music down and watch the vertical bar pass over the square on the beat, then I mark it.  I do that to the entire song.  You will need to make a special non-functional channel for the beat.  Once I get all the beats down then I start with main lights that I want to work with the song. 

Everyone has their way to do it.  I like perfection in the beat and that's how I do it.  If you tap a key you will be off and eventually have to go and fix your beat anyway.  Slow it down, watch it beat, then manually mark it.  This takes about 3 to 4 hours for a 3 min song.  If you spend the time to do this, you may even come up with irregular beats that you can sequence along with the main beat.

I have 5 songs this year and I started on Dec 10, 2010.  I've played these songs all through the year (over and over), making adjustments and finding key beats that I made the lights dance to.  In August I was pretty much done and fine tuned it up to this day.  I would estimate over 800 hours went into my 5 song production, and that doesn't include all the time I spent just listening to the music.  I am a perfectionist and it may not take that long for you.  Every light that I have comes on exactly on beat where I want it to.  That's the way I do it.  Never erase your beats from the working file.  Once I get the song done, I make a production sequence that no longer includes the beat channel.  Maybe there is a better way, but that is my way and I can assure you, my lights are on exactly when they are suppose to be.

Watch, 32 channel, EDM LCD FM Transmitter.

If you have a fast compute and fast Internet then go here.
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If you have slow computer and slower Internet then try this:
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This is private Youtube, I do not allow everyone to see these.  It may be a little out of sequence, but that is YouTube, and my actual Vixen Sequence is spot on the money BABY!


 
 

[pyrael]

Wow!! that's awesome joe! I can see where youtube lagged a bit LOL. Seems that that might be the best method. I'm not afraid of doing the extra work. When in the studio, I record the midi from my keyboard parts instead of the actual audio. this gives me the ability to fix late notes, wrong notes or what have you. So the idea of manually doing each blink is fine to me. Thanks for the advice!! i really like the show BTW!!

On a side thought... How did you get the Adj. Prev. to display in colors? All I've gotten so far is white. 

Thanks again,
Steve

[Christmas.joe]

Here is a link that will help:

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There are lots of good video to learn Vixen.  Vixen Step 6 really hit home with me.

What I basically did was create a Profile for my 2011 entire show.  I created a working profile and then I created my actual production profile.  I used my working profile to create the show, then I copied that date from the working profile to my production profile when I was completely done. 

I know this sounds a little confusing, but it's important.  As I progressed along, I saved the work in files that progressed along.  Like Jingle Bells-A, then I'd work on it for awhile and save it to Jingle Bells-B and so on.  That way if I messed up the sequence, I had a previous version to fall back on.

The key is to create a PROFILE and then use that one profile for all your songs.  Now that is not the only way to do it, but its the most stable way to do it in my opinion.

Watch the video from the the site I gave you and pay special attention to the profile.  It is key in your problem of only having one color.

Good Luck and if you have TeamSpeak, we can go over it and I'll show you how I did it.

 

[rrowan]

Set the channels to a color

Rick R.

[Christmas.joe]

Oh, that's right what Rick said, in the profile set the channel colors.  Duh, I got off on a tangent...

 

[Greg]

I'm curious. which plugin do most people use to sync to a beat? I was trying a constant kick drum of 120 bpm and it was going out of sync on me. I tried with both the frecuency plugs and even messed with the waveform plug.

Have you tried Jonathan Reinhardt's add-in Tap Tempo?  Works great for determining a suitable event period for a given song.

It also allows a baseline beat channel insertion based on the results of the tap tempo averaging.  As you know, nothing keeps perfect timing except perhaps electronically generated so occasional adjustment to the beats by inserting or removing cells is necessary to realign things throughout the song.

I generally use Tap Tempo to find a good event period timing and then do beats the old school way like Christmas.joe does.

You can find Johnathon's add-in here:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

After downloading the dll, put it in Vixen's addin folder, restart vixen and it will show up in the addins pulldown.

Greg

[pyrael]

Thanks again guys!

I'll check out that add in, if it allows for quick and dirty ball parking that's fine by me. I expect that short of a plugin that will allow me to send say the kick drum channel of my MIDI sequncer and create trigger events that way, I will have manual editing to do.

My reason for being so big on finding a way to translate MIDI to DMX sequence or whatever is because in my studio I have the instruments separated to individual tracks. So the kick drum is a solo instrument. I have a plugin that "triggers" a midi event (That i then record to the sequence). So I can literally translate the drums of my studio stuff to midi sequence. i figured if I EQ'd a song in my studio to get as close to isolating only the kick, I could generate the MIDI sequence of JUST the kick and then with the (possible non-existant??) MIDI to DMX (or whatever it would be) have the actual kick light up in time with the music.

I probably just talked in circles there. i hope the line of thought makes sense. It's not something i would use in a Halloween or XMas show. More likely I would devise a way to use my actual MIDI drum triggers connected to the Drum set and add some lighting effects to the shows. I also had though about how cool it would be to use the translated MIDI from the Keyboard's Midi I/O/T connections to send signals to RGB lights. Using the Idea of frequency translation, middle A in music is 440Hz and if you keep going up, eventually you get into the light spectrum and there are different colors for each note, I have a friend who made up a chart on this. Would be neat to have RGB or Smart strings or something that light up and dance around based on the note played. Cool looking multi colored chords and scales. I know, I'm odd

[caretaker]

Do a google search of DMX to MIDI and you will find a lot of converters and interfaces to change MIDI signals to DMX signals. 

[mms]

Like Joe said, everyone does it different.  I listen to the song at a slower speed, tapping the space bar to what I want to animate, then I turn the Visualizer on to see the waveform.  And then between the Visualizer and my pre-tapped animation points I adjust accoringly.

I probably was a little ambitious with my first sequence - Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade.  That song has a lot of stuff going on.  There are "duet" sections, multi-layered "rounds" (like Row Row Row Your Boat).  But, I will say, challenging myself with that song did help me to learn the program, what works, what doesn't work, easier ways to do things, etc.  Also, by not using a Christmas song, I didn't get burned out.  When I first started I wondered how could anyone want/need more than 8 channels!     Now, I have 8 channels around my door!  But I digress...

The MIDI conversion is really nice because it takes the guess work out of synchronizing.  And if you're a musician with a studio (which it sounds like you are) you'll be able to do some really cool stuff that sounds AND looks great.

Keep at it!  Practice make perfect!

Steve

[pyrael]

caretaker, Thanks for the suggestion. I did a quick search. Mostly found controllers and the like. I'll do a more in depth search later. I'd rather use a program that reads the MIDI events and writes a new file usable in a lighting sequencer etc. For live work, there was a pretty nifty controller listed in google shopping. $99 and it allows event triggering and intensity based on on/off and velocity via A MIDI controller.

Thanks for the encouragement mms!

I'm giving myself a year to learn all of this LOL. The startup (even aT DIY prices) is a bit high for alot of people. At the moment, the whole of my excess cash is tied up in a CD I will be releasing soon and of course Christmas for my six kids. So tax time will be shopping season LOL.