Midi mapping lighting changes.

[The Boogie Man]

I've been away awhile so if this has been covered before, my apologies.
I'm curious as to how high up from base level lighting desks would I have to go to be able to implement midi changes within cubase to have control of a lighting desk or DMX controller.
I know that most take 'midi note on' messages to activate scenes, chases etc, but I'm wondering about control messages from a midi channel in cubase. I know I could use dmxis or another software prog to do exactly this within the comp, but I want to be able to have a desk that can continue if the comp goes down and I lose the backing tracks and 'go acoustic.' 
Plus most of the software to hardware convertors I have seen have been usb from the comp, which would seem like doing the job twice as I currently have all midi tracks for backing in cubase flowing through a ff800 via firewire that has a good midi out. I have thought about a midi to DMX box like the old deccabox, but can't seem to find any for sale anymore.
I used to have a jester to run the lights, but I didn't use a comp for backing back then, so just ran it via a footswitch. 
Cheers
Baz

[timsabre]

What lights have you got... and what aspect of the lighting are you wanting to control with your midi controller messages, over and above the note on-off for scenes?

The big advantage that control software (and more expensive desks) have over the base level lighting controllers is ease of fixture control and programming using personalities. On the basic controllers you just have a bank of sliders to control each DMX channel of the lights, which is not so bad if you've just got RGB par cans but gets confusing quickly for anything more complicated than that. Most control software, and better desks, will let you set what type of fixture it is, then use a colour picker to set colour and separate controls to set position, gobo etc.

[The Boogie Man]

Hi Tim, I only have basic par cans and led par cans. So, thinking about what you're saying the functions of a cheaper desk would probably suffice. 
What I am picturing in my head is the ability to write in a midi channel in cubase the lighting changes for the song, so all I would need is to be able to click on a note, say c# or whatever and a single par lights up. Then once a par can is mapped to a note I can write the 'scenes' and 'chases' in cubase to fit the tune.
I've thought about a back up from a desk if all went 'breasts skywards' with the comp and decided that just the sound to light on the dimer packs would do in an emergency.

[themadhippy]

Theres several midi to DMX convertors available,along with diy ardunio projects .If your dimmer packs take an analogue input the old puslar universal interface might be worth searching for.

[timsabre]

The conventional way of doing this is to program the scenes/chases on the lighting controller and recall them by midi notes, because (unless you only have a very few lights) if you do what you suggest you are quickly going to end up with a whole load of notes all on top of each other - for one thing MIDI can only send one note at a time so there'll be a perceptible delay, and also it will be horrible to edit on cubase. For your LED par cans you have 3 or 4 parameters per light so you'd have to send a note for Red, par can 1, another for Green, par can 1....  This is how the MIDI to DMX converters work and it was OK when you had 12 channels of dimmers, but now if you have 12 LED pars you're controlling 48 channels of DMX and it isn't practical - I expect this is why MIDI-DMX converters have fallen out of favour.

Also performing fades between scenes is pretty much impossible by direct MIDI commands due to the amount of notes you have to send.

Personally I'd be looking at DMX controller software to do this since you don't need a live control surface to operate the show and that is the expensive bit. You could probably run the show with the DMX controller software on the same laptop as cubase, though for programming having 2 separate computers would probably be easier.

Edited November 30, 2022 by timsabre

[The Boogie Man]

Hmm, I see what you are saying Tim. 
I had been trying to avoid having more software on the comp as my connection to the ff800 is firewire and most software now is usb. 
I do only have 2 led par cans as uplighters on the floor, so if I changed them for conventional pars I would only have two bars of r gr bl yw cans paired for either side of the small stage, two pars (red) as floor uplighters and I did have 4 small par can white spots (two either side) but if I cut that to two the floor pars could use the two spare dimmers. That would be only 6 individual channels. 
What maybe the crux though is, are you saying that if I set each dimmer to receive a midi note, via a cheap desk or midi/DMX convertor, that as the midi channel played over 4 notes together in the timeline to say, flash 4 lights, only one light would receive a signal?

Edited November 30, 2022 by The Boogie Man

[timsabre]

No, having multiple notes together would work, but as you start adding more channels to control, they will not all happen at the same time, as it takes a few milliseconds to send each MIDI command. This is most noticeable with fast flashing, and if you need to do a fade it can look steppy. 12 dimmer channels and 2 LED pars would not be a problem. I still think it wouldn't be very nice to program on cubase in the way you are suggesting though.

[Brian]

You might be better off with something like this...

 

http://www.db-audioware.com/dmxis-lighting-controller

[The Boogie Man]

5 hours ago, timsabre said:

I still think it wouldn't be very nice to program on cubase in the way you are suggesting though.

Haha, that is actually the only part that wouldn't bother me. I did have audio for the bass and drums in cubase, but found out that if it was midi then it stayed with cubase when it was swapped to another comp (and stayed in time when the tempo was altered.) So I sat and hand wrote the bass lines and drum sections in midi to the time line. 
I have the backing tracks to 0ver 30 tunes in midi on one time line. I've been doing it for so long now I can recognize a song just by the 'shape' of the midi notes. Haha. Soo sad.

[richard_cooper]

On 11/30/2022 at 4:41 PM, Brian said:

You might be better off with something like this...

 

http://www.db-audioware.com/dmxis-lighting-controller

I always thought dmxis was a good idea, and own it myself, but alas Enttec no longer make the hardware for it, which the software was tied to. https://www.dmxis.com/dmxis/

It's replacement is Show Buddy Active that also has a VST/Audio unit plugin, and can also handle video playback. I've never used it however!

[The Boogie Man]

Hi all, sorry for the delay getting back on here about this (comp has been down for awhile)

Whilst I was researching 'program changes' for switching patches on my guitar amps (boss gx 700) using midi progam changes in cubase, I worked out that it is quite easy to do. A basic lighting desk with midi in that can have it's scenes and chases switched via mid should do.  
Reading back now through the previous posts I see that Tim had already suggested this approach. 

Cheers all for the input.