SCS and Linux

[Russell Ault]

This is going to seem like an odd-ball question, but here goes:

The theatre I "work" for (it's our college theatre) has a computer we use to run SCS; however, the computer was donated to the school without an operating system. For the last show, I loaned them a spare copy of Windows XP Pro I had kicking around, which worked well, but I'd like to have that copy back. I'm also a Linux supporter (especially in the face of Vista) and since most theatres are on a limited budget and most Linux distributions are free, I was thinking it might be something worth investigating, both for my little theatre and for the greater theatrical community as a whole. So, here's my question: Has anyone every tried or had any success running SCS (ideal version 9) under Wine (or some other Linux/Windows compatibility layer)?

[hdavidb]

I am currently exploring this option with a laptop that was donated to our local theatre. Its powerful enough to run XP Pro, but we don't want to throw the money into it if a "free" option like linux is available. I plan on using Ubuntu 7.10 on this system with SoundMax Digital Audio onboard. So far no problems have been found with the hardware running Ubuntu Linux, and I'm researching other blogs/posts about compatibility with audio software and Wine. I will be attempting to use ver 9.5.2, and I will post more details soon.

David B.

[Russell Ault]

Well, I'm not Wine expert (at least not yet), but it seems to me like I'm having some audio trouble with my installation (for now I'm just using the latest demo). The good news is that it seems like the installation of SCS goes flawlessly, and it loads without any errors. For me, though, when I hit Go I either get static or nothing. I haven't spent too much time on it yet, but with the laptop I'm using I have a sneaking suspicion that there are greater audio problems at work with my laptop than just SCSs, so I certainly wouldn't rule it out based on that. Actually, consider how smoothly everything else went, I'd hazard a guess that, given some tweaking, it should run pretty well.

[Ian Beeby]

I would REALLY love to run SCS under Linux, I am always concerned about the flakeyness of the Windows I/F and like the stability of Linux, however I havnt as yet been able to get it to load, It opens Wine, goes to the normal opening page where it says loading.... then grays out and hangs!
I am using Mandriva Spring 08 distro
any ideas
Regards
Ian

[Hornett]

I am using Ubuntu, and Wine and SCS seems to run. I havent quite worked out how to get the sound to work though , and a few of the buttons seem to have disapered. but i am working on it!!

but i would love to see SCS made for linux as i am a big fan of both!!

[RobCrossland]

Hi all, I've registered specifically to contribute to this thread, having been a user of SCS for 2 years now in a few different venues.
I have SCS running under the latest build of Ubuntu linux using wine, it took a while to get decent audio but it is possible. Here's my hardware spec:
Dell inpriron 640m, Centrino duo with 2GB RAM, Edirol UA-25 interface.

First thing you will notice if you try and play anything through SCS is it sounds very heavily distorted, this is caused by Linux audio drivers and can be combated by ticking the "DO NOT use floating point" in the audio tab of SCS options. Now the audio should come through crystal clear but occasionally skips; this cannot be resolved within SCS as it would in windows, instead go to "configure wine" and head over to the audio tab. In here there is a box with audio drivers in, uncheck "OSS" and check "ALSA", then check the driver emulation box. Restart the machine and open SCS, it will throw up an error about sound, but just ok it and go into the show editor, then select the second device on the audio devices list (this will have an unrecognisable name) then press the test button, you should now have crystal clear audio coming from the UA-25. Check for skipping with a long track (2-3 minutes).

I know this is a specific case, however I think the options listed above could be manipulated to fit many configurations. Let me know of you have any success with this... I'm running an awards ceremony off it on Saturday, so fingers crossed!

Rob

[Mike Daniell]

Restart the machine and open SCS, it will throw up an error about sound, but just ok it ...

Does this error continue to occur when you next start SCS, or is the error cleared after you've selected (and saved) using the second audio device in the list? Could you tell me what the error is?

Thanks for a very helpful contribution to this topic!

[RobCrossland]

Hi Mike,
The error is related to the audio device not being present, and goes away once you select the correct one in the show editor.

Error will read: "Audio device 'USB Audio' not found. Using primary device for 'FOH'"

The error does not reoccur, and can in fact be completely avoided, however I felt it should be included for the sake of the people suffering from the error! Out of interest SCS will throw up all manner of fascinating errors if you dare to use it with OSS drivers under Linux, therefore it is very important to choose a sound card supported under the ALSA project- AFAIK all edirol cards are supported. I'm going to see how it performs for the lancashire sports awards on Saturday (just a 2 channel setup) before rolling it out under 'proper' production conditions with 8 or more channels. If you are interested in errors under Linux I'll make sure I keep a proper record, there's certainly a gap in the market for Linux show software (for sound that is, of course lighting people are spoiled for choice).

Rob

[RobCrossland]

Hi all,
As promised the results from saturdays exploit with SCS under Wine in Ubuntu... not great.

Curiously I had no major problems with editing and adding cues (all single playback cues with fade times but no cuts/loops), however the unpredictable nature of the ceremony meant I had to skip through cues quite a lot and this caused the display to freeze... thank god the sound continued to play and fade on cue!

I will be doing an awful lot of messing about with this as I do a lot of my sound plots on the train on the way to venues, and my laptop only runs Ubuntu!

Mike, unfortunately no error messages appeared so nothing to report on that front... but any suggestions would be welcome, I've pretty much hit a dead end as I can't really troubleshoot without source, and I suspect it has a somewhat limited circulation

Rob

[Russell Ault]

Mike, this is probably a really stupid question, but now that version 10 is out, have you considered open-sourcing an older version?

-Russ

[tykerdog]

HI I've started using scs on Windows awhile back but as I can't stand that OS I've recently explored running it on Ububtu Studio. I can't get version 10 to fully launch but versions under 10 seem to work with WINE and JACK as the audio server. As mentioned in an above post 9 crashes a fair bit and the GUI freezes. This seems most frequent during periods of fast workflow. I still can't figure out how to register the version of 8 I've been testing but it runs very well. Once I figured out the somewhat different layout I'm almost beginning to prefer it. Through JACK I can route the sound anywhere and it feels a lot more stable then 10 did on Vista. Under Vista SCS stopping talking to my Edirol fa-101 during a show after Windows defender started warning about a virus update. Anyway here is a link to the Wine page FYI
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=8448

If anyone needs a hand contact me. If I can register 8 I'm starting a show build soon. I'll keep working on 10 etc.

[tuxmos]

Hello. Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS - Wine-Stable 3.0 and SCS 11.7.1.3 x86 works fine.
HP Pavilion 22" Touch AiO PC with 4GB Ram and AMD A4-5000 APU and Radeon HD Grafics x4 (AMD Kabini)