Jester Desk getting a copy of cues

[colinnewton]

Hi,

 

This is probably a really easy question for anyone who knows the answer but is there a way of getting the data about the cues I have stored on the Jester 12/24 into a printable format (channel numbers and levels, times etc). I've tried down loading the Phantom Jester but this just seems to be the desk on a PC. The show is currently on a USB stick and the desk but I wanted a paper copy so I can re programme when I have to use another desk.

 

Many thanks

 

Colin

[pritch]

The answer is one word, and probably not the word you're looking for:

 

No.

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and all that...

[Shez]

Very crude, but could you call up the cues on the monitor and take pictures of it...?

[Neil Hampson]

Only slightly better, and a bit time consuming would be to get a copy of a screen grabber such as FSCapture (just happens to be what I use at work) and copy paste the rows of the output previews from Phantom Jester. for something a little more permanent as a record, you could try to run the resultant page through and OCR scanner to get a 'real' list of numbers.

[colinnewton]

Thanks guys I spent a while this afternoon with my camera on a tripod taking photos but now the office printer has run out of ink!!!

[mutley]

Not having seen the contents of the file (on the USB stick) I can't say for definite, but using MSQuery, or even just Excel, you might be able to extract and filter out the necessary information.

 

It is probably saved in a CSV or TSV (Comma-separated-values or Tab-separated-values) format. However, that does not necessarily mean it uses commas or tabs - just punctuation marks or spaces. Have a play around with a copy of the file (suggest you only work on a 2nd copy in case it corrupts the data somehow), or email me a copy and I'll have a play (PM me for address).

 

After filtering out proprietary data such as the file header, the heart of the file is probably something like this:

001;00:00:00,00:00:00
  001;45;
  002;FF;
  003;FF;

for Scene number ; fade up time , fade out time

channel 001 @ 45 (hex)

channel 002 @ FF (hex) ie; 100%

etc, etc

 

E2A: Zero88 might even have the necessary ODBC filter driver to do the job, try giving therm a call.....

2nd E2A: If it isn't possible to filter the file and extract the data, you could use the virtual Jester software from Zero88 to display the info, and take screen captures by pressing [PrtSc], then just paste into Word, Powerpoint, Photoshop, GIMP, or any other program that can work with embedded images.

[TomHoward]

E2A: Zero88 might even have the necessary ODBC filter driver to do the job, try giving therm a call.....

Zero88 are a pain for getting the file structures out of, we've been trying for years to get the Frog series file, so we can make an off-line editor to plot by number on the computer - however, the problem is the desk doesn't verify the file on loading, so if there's a problem with the structure, it won't pick it up and it could cause unexpected behaviour.

 

Haven't got a Jester file at home but I've got plenty of Frog files - they're not Ascii CSV (parts are, like the cue names, but following that I guess the levels are in hex or binary, as in any kind of text viewer it's a mess) if you're interested.

 

The easiest way to actually solve the OPs problem might be to find a way of capturing the live DMX line on a PC - use a cheap DMX dongle to capture incoming data and some appropriate software to create a file or cue list.

[mutley]

...they're not Ascii CSV (parts are, like the cue names, but following that I guess the levels are in hex or binary, as in any kind of text viewer it's a mess) if you're interested.

They will be in hex, as the desk works in hex. With 255 levels per channel, that's 0xFF (hex FF), so that's two bytes per channel. Thinking about it, the channel numbers probably don't appear in the data, because they aren't present in DMX, just the binary level code, then the frame stop bit, followed immediately by the next channel's word.

 

It might be worth trying to open it with a free Hex Viewer/Editor. Some will allow the ASCII to be copied so it can then be manipulated using MSQuery and Excel to collate it in an understandable format...

[TomHoward]

Unfortunately the cue names are dropped in there alongside the raw hex values, so I don't think any kind of export from Hex to Ascii is going to be able to distinguish where one set of levels starts and the next ends without the file structure. You can make out the cue names in the Ascii side and the levels in the Hex side, but matching them up manually is more than I've got the patience for..

 

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/2185/screenshot20111006at013.png

[mutley]

The code for "Start of cue name" seems to be:

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF B8 0B 00 00 00 00 00 01 0A 00 20

followed by two variable bytes then three pairs of 00. I'd guess the two bytes correspond to the fader or submaster they are assigned to?

 

The code for "End of cue name" seems to be:

02 00 00 20 14 00 00 00 E0 FF 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1E 00 00 00 1E 00 00 00 1E 00 00 00

so by finding and replacing all those 64 byte strings with speech marks " , as well as a bit more filtering, it should be possible to extrapolate the data.

[pritch]

What you're both referring to is something I've been contemplating getting around to for some time, but have never managed.

 

I think the next thing I'd do with the showfile that you're playing with is to create four variants of it, one with a cue where all channels are at 00, another with all channels at FF, one with odd channels FF and even channels 00, and a final one with odd at 00 and even at FF.

 

That should hopefully cause some patterns to become rather obvious.

[TomHoward]

I think it might be fixed length, as the files seem to be a fixed size, and don't vary with the amount of cues or levels in them, so I suspect there may not be markers for start and ends of sections. I'd though the same thing about creating a dedicated file with min and max values, but I haven't got round to it yet.

 

At the top of the file there's a load of data for patching as well, and then palettes and stuff are at the end.