SCS and DMX

[Theatre III Sound]

ckater,

As I indicated in an earlier post in this topic, I was able to get SCS to behave fairly well with the current implementation, so even if Mike doesn't get to implementing the improvements in time for your production, you may be able to get it to work. Here is some more detail on how you might do this.

I did some more experiments to characterize the current behavior of the DMX trigger mechanism. Currently, any change in the DMX value up or down can cause a trigger event, but there are some limitations that you can take advantage of. If you can create a sharp pulse in the DMX value from (for example) 0 to full level (100% or 255 decimal) and back to 0 in 200ms or less, SCS will see this as a single trigger event. If the duration of the pulse is more than 200ms and/or the slope of the rising and falling edges (i.e. fade up and fade down time) is more than about 100ms, SCS might interpret that as multiple triggers. I'm guessing that the short pulse works as a single trigger because during the processing of the trigger event, SCS is not reading in new DMX packets from the ENTTEC device (perhaps Mike can confirm this) and thus does not see a changing value during that time.

I don't have an ETC Element console at my disposal so I used LightFactory (a PC-based lighting control program) to generate DMX and fed that into the ENTTEC device connected to the PC running SCS. With LightFactory's macro facility, I was able to generate DMX pulses of varying slopes and durations. Looking at the User Guide for the Element console, you should be able to generate the same kind of pulse using its macro facility. This may take a little effort to get working, but it does look doable. The proposed improvements will make the requirements less strict, but the methods used now will still work after they have been implemented.

For the examples below, I used the SCS Demo file for the sound cues (running on SCS 11.2.5) with the following changes :

In Production Properties, define Cue Control Device C1 as DMX In with the following DMX channel assignments:

'Go' Button: 211, Stop Everything: 212, Go To Top: 213, Play DMX Cue 0: 200, Upper Limit of Play Cue #: 210

For cues Q1 - Q5, set MIDI/DMX Cue number to 1 - 5 respectively. This corresponds to DMX addresses 201 - 205 from above.

For simplicity, I'm assuming the Element console is set up with a 1-1 patch (at least for DMX Addresses 200 - 213).

I think the best way to get the light console to produce an SCS trigger (a sharp pulse as described above) is to create a macro and execute it when you want the trigger to occur. The Element console has an editor that can be used to create macros (they can also be learned by recording key strokes). Macros are numbered from 1-999. For example, here's what the macro to trigger SCS Q2 would contain (let's say it's defined as Macro 2):

202 [FULL] [Enter]
{Wait} [0][.][2] [Enter]
202 [0] [Enter]

[Sorry, I don't know the exact sequence of keys to enter on the Element to create the macros but hopefully you can figure it out with the help of the User's Guide (available in PDF format from the ETC website if needed).] Macros are run in a cue by use of the Execute command (Example: [Cue] [1] {Execute} [Macro] [5] [Enter])

I recommend you use discrete cue triggers for SCS rather than the generic "GO" button. That way you can trigger specific sound cues with related light cues and not have to worry about what happens when light cues are run out of order during rehearsals and such. This is a bit more work, since you will need to create a separate macro for each cue you want to trigger. To simplify, let Macro 1 trigger Q1 via DMX address 201, Macro 2 trigger Q2 via DMX address 202, etc.

For lighting cues, I used the following. I tried to think of typical ways sound cues might coordinate with lights.

L1 - Reset all lights and reset SCS (Stop All & Go To Top) - Here I would execute a macro that sends a "Stop All" trigger followed by a "Go To Top" trigger to make sure SCS is reset.

L2 - Bring lights up on stage - no sound cue(s)

L3 - Trigger sound cue Q1 - no lighting changes - This cue would just execute Macro 1 leaving channels controlling the lights unchanged. This is essentially a manual sound cue triggered through the lighting console rather than hitting the space bar on the SCS PC.

L4 - Change lights and run sound cue Q2 simultaneously - Cue contains an Execute command for Macro 2. The macro gets executed immediately when the "GO" button is pressed, thus the sound cue would trigger at the beginning of cue L4's fade.

L5 - Change lights (5 sec fade) and trigger sound cue Q3 after 2 secs - This is an example of triggering a sound cue during a lighting change (an example I can think of is lightning followed by thunder). There are different ways to do this, but perhaps the easiest is to create 2 cues and use the autofollow feature to run them. For example, record cue 5.1 with the light changes and a follow time of 2 seconds and cue 5.2 as a copy of 5.1 plus the command to execute Macro 3.

If you could set things up on the Element console as described above, I think you can run your show the way you want.

I hope this has been helpful and you are able put together a successful production in January.

[Mike Daniell]

Thank you, Bruce, for your detailed responses and suggestions. It's good to know there's a willing community of users ready to share their experience to help other users. I really appreciate it.

I will, however, spend a bit of time during the rest of this week to see if I can implement the proposed changes, and if all goes well then I can let ckater and other interested users have a pre-release of 11.2.6.

[ckater]

Thank you Bruce and Mike for your work and engagement! This way we have two good solutions for our problem, one on side of the console and one on side of SCS. Because the solution on the light console is more complex (and, if you know, complexity can sometimes be your enemy in stressful situations) it is good to have a simple fallback solution on SCS.
Either way, I think we are able to do a great show in January (a stage version of the movie "The Full monty", BTW).

Have nice holidays and a happy 2014!