Newbie Lighting / Audio Synch Question

[Duckfather]

Hi all

 

I play in a band. I've tried many different methods for controlling our lighting rig while playing live and have basically found just about every desk (within my price range) and software solution (ditto) to be lacking in certain respects that I've needed.

 

As a result, like many other people in my situation, I've written my own software. This works fine for me, but now I would like to be able to automatically synch my lights with an MP3.

 

Specifically, I would like to synch the strobe effect of parts of my LED lighting rig with a thunderstorm backing track (for a cover of the Doors, Riders on the Storm).

 

Now, I've seen a bit about time synchs, but does anyone have any pointers to how I could either dump such functionality into my code or to something that is free and does similar? How do I add a time synch into an MP3 so it can be read?

 

Any help / pointers would be greatfully recieved :-)

 

Andy

[timmeh2]

Hi

 

Can you control your lighting desk via MIDI?

 

All the best

Timmeh

[Duckfather]

Hi

 

Can you control your lighting desk via MIDI?

 

All the best

Timmeh

 

Yes. The lights aren't controlled through a desk, but by a laptop (through a USB DMX converter) running some software of my own. The program is controlled by a Behringer footpedal connected to the laptop via a USB / MIDI interface.

 

Andy

[pshughes]

Via the software route, I did this a LONG time ago so my technique may be out of date but it may give you some pointers.

 

I was playing around with computer controlled firework ignition and music syncronisation.

 

I originally used MediaPlayer as an ActiveX control (you'd now use COM). This allowed me to start and stop the playing of an Audio CD in the PC's CD-ROM drive. More importantly there was a call I could make to the control to give me an accurate HH:MM:SS:FF position of the currently playing track.

 

This was just at the advent of MP3 (told you it was a long time ago) and as such MediaPlayer was unable to play this format. But I liked the idea of playing straight from the hard disk and used the WAV format for a while.

 

To utilise MP3 I wrote a plugin for WinAmp. Again the API gave me a quite accurate timecode to sync to.

 

As stated above, this info may be vastly out of date but I hope it may help your research.

 

Good Luck.

[Duckfather]

Hmmm, that's interesting. And you've pinpointed one major thing that I forgot in my software. No 'timecode' type routines! I can change between static light setups and am currently finishing the code for cycling between / through set sequences, but not timecode.

 

I could integrate an audio player MP3 COM object and code a relatively simple timecode routine which could fire static lighting scenes at the required times.

 

Did you ever have any problems with the timecodes going out of synch with the audio? After all, it's two (or more) seperate threads running in the OS.

[pshughes]

I didn't use a separate timecode process, so no sync issues.

 

I interrogated that actual player object as to where it was within the track.

 

This gave me a resolution (for CDs at least) at the frame level (30th of a second).

 

It also meant I could pause/fast forward/rewind etc when testing the show offline and yet my software would still know where it was on the cue timeline.

 

I had a simple list of cues and the software would simply sit waiting for the next cue in the list's time to come up.

 

I then simply checked the next cue(s) in the list to make sure they hadn't elapsed too (this allowed me to ignore cues that were late (remember my original design was for CD-Audio and I didn't want a skip on the CD firing off chunks of my show)).

[Duckfather]

Good point there!

 

I think the way to go will be to re-code so I can trigger an MP3 and monitor the 'timestamp' of the file. I can also have a list of scenes to trigger at certain points. Nice one!

 

I only need to find out how to interrogate MP3 files for various header data, never mind the actual song amplitudes etc (for later re-codes when I want to trigger scenes via levels) now :-P

 

But that's certainly not a question for on here.

 

Cheers for your help :-)

 

Andy

[pshughes]

Again Winamp may be your friend (if not for the final project, at least to see how it could be done simply).

 

The standard plugin interface gives not only simple level information but also does all the hard work with the Fast Fourier Transforms etc to give you spectrum analyzer info also.

 

It's designed for developers to produce video visualisations, so it sould be more that adequate at trigering some kind of 'sound to light' process.

 

A quick google shows there are a couple of WinAmp to DMX plugins out there

 

Eg. http://www.winamp.com/plugin/DMX-512-winam...ght-show/139289

 

So it shows what you want to achieve is doable.

[dbuckley]

I originally used MediaPlayer as an ActiveX control (you'd now use COM). This allowed me to start and stop the playing of an Audio CD in the PC's CD-ROM drive. More importantly there was a call I could make to the control to give me an accurate HH:MM:SS:FF position of the currently playing track.

 

Thats pretty much the way that the PCStage MediaSync plugin works, theres an array of events, each with their go time, and as the track time passes the event time the event is actioned.

[runawaymartin]

Hi Andy . . . you might want to have a look at a great program called Show Cue System (http://www.showcuesystems.com/idevaffiliat...iate.php?id=100 ). Make a point of checking out the section on MIDI/DMX control.

In SCS you import and create a list of the audio tracks you wish to use . . they can then be triggered by several means including the laptop keyboard, a MIDI keyboard, USB footswitch etc. The program enables you to replay a variety of sound files, including mp3, and you can trigger lighting either by MIDI or DMX commands at any given point. If you can use MIDI to trigger your lights you may want to consider constructing and running a MIDI file in sync with your music (SCS can do that).

You can also check out an article I wrote regarding my use of SCS at http://www.soundachievements.com/SA_Web-Si..._Home_Page.html.

Cheers . . . Martin