I videotape concerts and have been doing audio since I was a teen. But I have never done much with lighting.
The venue I do a lot of video work at has a bunch of DMX LED lights, a bunch fixed, some moving. The problem is they’ve got a couple of different controllers, but neither is really suited for moving lights, LEDs or much more than a bunch of PAR lamps on dimmer packs.
So as I’m shooting video, I have a choice between two or three mediocre lighting setups being run by a sound guy who doesn’t want to do lighting.
Looking around, I think I could get a DMX USB interface and fully control the moving lights and set colors properly and have some hope of getting lighting that will look good on screen.
So I’m looking for recommendations for computer software and USB DMX adapters. Anyone? Or failing that, what good lighting forums should I visit to ask?
I do, but I’ve never worked with the sort of software that you’re describing. Professional lighting shows are nearly always programmed on real lighting boards because it’s a lot easier that way. There’s probably an element of professional snobbery, but those sorts of software packages are usually pretty derided.
If you want lighting that looks good on screen, you probably don’t need to shell out any money for software or hardware; you need to get a decent lighting designer. What lighting consoles does the venue have? If your entire goal here is to get the moving lights to move in a flashy rock-concert way, the sort of software you’re describing might do it. (It might not; I know very little about PC software to do this sort of thing.) If you’re hoping that the band will look less washed-out, or will “pop” from the background, or something like that, you need a better designer, not a better console. Try contacting a college theatre department; there will be reasonable student designers who will probably work relatively cheaply.
The problem is the boards I have access to have only 24 faders. That means each LED fixed instrument sucks up three faders (RGB), and another two for XY movement for a scanner.
All I’m trying to do is make it look less shitty. This venue pays me $100 a night to do video, which is significantly less than my standard rate - I only do it because I like the music. There is no budget for a “lighting designer”.
I’d have to check.
No, this is a club that is mostly Blues, Americana, Folk, Country…Not looking to move the lights around during the show, I’m looking to be able to move the lights during the sound check and set up scenes for different songs.
I’m sure the console, or pair of consoles, could do it, but honestly, the idea of using three faders to mix color for one fixture is just dumb compared to using an on-screen color mixer. Same thing with using another pair to aim the fixture. It’s just a poor interface. I don’t know DMX software either, but based on what I’ve seen at concerts, it looks like software would allow me to define each fixture and assign whatever channels needed to each one and and control color and movement with a mouse - which seems like a much more natural interface to me.
BTW, is it possible to combine both forms of control? Can the DMX out of the board link to the software, like how I can use my Behrengier BCF2000 to control the software faders on my editing program? Do I need a lighting board with a USB interface?
I did some searching, and found a recommendation for showXpress from Chauvet and downloaded the demo. It looks like it might make some sense, but I’d really like to see some options.
I can understand the comfort of an analog interface. At Buddy Guy’s, the sound guy was pissing and moaning about the Yamaha PM5D board he was using compared to his old Allen and Heath. I pretended to sympathize, but thought “you know, if you read the manual…”
Well, if you’re basically just trying to get access to enough channels to control each controllable aspect, then the software you’re talking about would probably work. It certainly would be a step up from a 24 channel XY fader. (I’m assuming they’re XY, although at this point I guess they might not be!) Certainly if you’re planning on setting something before the show and either not changing it or running a few simple cues, it should be fine. As long as you aren’t expected to do anything quickly, adapt on the fly, or write cues in a technical rehearsal, the PC software ought to do it. I’ve never heard of a lighting board with a USB interface.
And analog board comfort be damned; lighting boards cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, are huge and unwieldy, and yet every professional theatre I’ve ever worked at and every touring show I’ve ever loaded in uses dedicated lighting boards, not PC software. It’s a whole interface designed to do lighting, not a piece of software interfaced through a PC; believe me, between the guys schelpping the thing out of the truck every night and the accountants who have to make the show turn a profit, if they could be using a PC and DMX adapter they would be. Like I said, there is an element of snobbery here, but it’s not entirely unfounded. It’s a lot easier to do these things on a board, with trackpads and faders, not to mention keys that are actually labeled with the things that they do instead of hotkeys.
ETA: By the way, have you priced DMX to USB adapters? They’re over a hundred bucks. Damn, but that’s overpriced.
That is pretty much the situation - do a few simple scenes, maybe change from a “full band” scene to a “guitar solo” scene.
My problem is that whoever programmed the scenes into the board originally did a pretty weak job. The “blackout” button does nothing. It doesn’t black anything out.
I’ve got two choices:
Learn this lighting controller inside and out and re-program it from the ground up.
Learn the PC interface.
As I don’t have any lighting experience, and have a considerable amount of PC experience, the PC version looks more sensible. I downloaded “Sweetlight” and “Showexpress” and found they were both the same software - which makes me suspect they are packaging an Open Source product and selling an over-priced USB interface. I could easily build one from plans.
Just goofing around with the demo mode, I was able to add fixtures and aim and color them, move them, group them, etc. And I was able to see it in a 3D virtual stage. Would I want to try to do a production of Shakespere’s The Tempest? Probably not. But to do the local band The Tempest? No problem.
Sure, but compared to the cost of a dedicated lighting control board…
About the dedicated board thing - it is happening in sound. There are some “You can take my Midas when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!” types who have to have every knob in front of them even if they only touch 10% of them during the average show. Then there are the technocrats who love digital boards and literally mix the show on an iPad sitting in a standard seat in the audience. I’ve heard both and both sounded great. But I suspect the guy who is able to tuck his mixing board under one arm and move to a different seat is the future.
Well, there you go. Probably the best case for you. I suspect that the little live model is quite a best-case scenario, but you’re not looking to fine-tune anything anyway.
Oh, of course. I was commenting on the absurdity of the cost of the thing; it’s a little box that does a single thing with no more than two printed circuits, I’m sure. It must cost almost nothing to manufacture, and the only reason it’s expensive is because it looks cheap next to an full-size lighting board.
Maybe so. Certainly lighting boards are horrendously overpriced, mostly because of industry inertia. The things can’t possibly cost more than two hundred dollars to manufacture, maybe another two hundred to distribute, and are expensive half because they were legitimately expensive in the past and half because the market is so small and they do require some engineering. I have never seen any theatre larger than a community theatre run entirely by volunteers using a PC to control lighting, though.
I have to climb up and get the DIP switch settings of all the fixtures to know what I’m starting with. Everything on this stage is LED, a bunch of fixed, a handful of moving. I’m not sure the DMX lines are twisted pair, or that they are correctly terminated. Once I do that, I’ll now if 100 channels is enough.
Yeah, if there is a decent Open Source program, I’ll be happy to build an interface. Hell, I built my own ClearCom boxes.
I did sound on one Broadway show road tour before I figured out that I wasn’t suited for that lifestyle, and saw so many goofy things that my fellow sound guys cannot believe when I tell them. Our system was supplied by Masque Sound, and all the microphone cords were female on both ends! If you wanted to extend them, you had to use a double-male XLR adaptor. The speaker cables were male polarized 15 amp regular wall plugs, again male on both ends, and they had to be extended with a duplex outlet! And I saw a theater in St. Louis that was entirely DC power, with huge knife switches and rheostats for control…and the IASTE guys liked it that way. There’s inertia, then there’s actually moving backwards.
I toured with a small outfit out of Boston last year, and I saw some rat-nesting of road-patch systems (themselves decades out of date) that were so bad that I had to photograph them to share them. Hell, in one venue there was no loading dock, so we drove our truck directly into the venue, down the aisle, and loaded directly onto the stage! There’s so much inertia in this industry that there’s nothing to do but laugh sometimes.
You might be able to to minimal mixing tasks on a tablet - control the volume of a singer or soloist, but you can’t properly mix a band, let alone set it up, without a proper board interface. Even in these instances the people with iPads are just using them as a remote for their existing digital sound consoles, which also cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The convenience and portability of these tablets can’t be beat, but there’s a reason why these sound boards are still sold. In theater lighting, you can program the show on a big console and then operate each night basically with one button. This is not possible in sound.
Click on the link. This was in Mix magazine. This was John Ward, the sound mixer for Tim McGraw. As I quoted:
That statement seems pretty clear and unambiguous proof that at least one giant arena tour is being mixed on a tablet. Actually, this was back in 2006, so they have been doing it for years. I’ve seen shows myself mixed on tablets - when David Allen Coe (a giant asshole) came to the venue where I do video, the show was mixed on a Yamaha PM5D on stage, controlled by an iPad. The feed to the venue was a single stereo pair.
I did read the link. My point is: even with the iPad, you still need the PM5D, a machine that’s tens of thousands of dollars, and you won’t do your initial setup on a tablet if you’ve got the board sitting there.
As he said in the article, the two boards were stacked up in a hallway, where you can’t even hear the show. The microphones are plugged into them, the feeds to the racks and stacks are coming out of them, but all control was done via the tablet.
Do you think he would lie to Mix magazine? Obviously, the microphones, or the wireless receivers, have to plug into something. But what the two situations make clear is that, if one desires, there is no need for a big panel of knobs, buttons and faders. The big panel will eventually wind up gathering dust.
It’s like synths. You can buy a Yamaha Motif XF with a keyboard, or without. It is the same synth, but one is one RU high and costs less. Eventually the idea of a huge panel covered with knobs, buttons and faders will seem as retro as a Moog modular draped with patch cords.
I’m quite confident that within the next couple of years, Yamaha will introduce a digital “mixer” that will appear to be nothing more than a stage box. It will have microphone and line inputs, line outputs, I/O connectors for a handful of external processors that the user just can’t live without out and a network connection. It will be 5, maybe 6 RU high. There will be no board, as such. All control will be via tablet.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in so many venues where the sound board is in a terrible location - under an overhanging balcony, way up high, too far off to the side - pushing it off to a location that won’t consume a bunch of potential seats. Get rid of the panel covered with knobs, buttons and faders, sell those seats for a few dozen dates a year and you’ve paid for the new “mixer” and tablet.
Do you mix? I’ve been out of the game for years, but when I was doing it, I’d never be touching more than 8 faders at once. I’d get the drums all balanced during soundcheck, and put those on a submaster. Same thing with horns, guitars, keys, vocals - and during the actual show I’m touching the submasters, the lead vocals and lead instruments. I’ll tweak EQ a bit, but once it’s rolling, not too much after the first song or two. After that (if the board had it) I’d be muting and unmuting channels as needed. All the actual surface I’d really be touching during a show can easily fit onto am iPad. If I’m going to mix in an arena, I could imagine something twice the width of an iPad to give me plenty of room, but I could still tuck under one arm.
I do mix, as a matter of fact. However, I do musical mostly, which means that sometimes I need immediate, convenient access to 10+ faders to balance out as many singers (not to mention the band, another 10 faders, although that’s usually less problematic than the singers), plus reverb and masters. I can definitely see that in a rock’n’roll show things might be a bit different.
I am definitely not accusing the engineer in the linked article of lying, but unfortunately it’s very short and there’s not much info. It’s interesting though that he still used two D5s (maybe as a backup, they can be set up redundantly), because those things are freaking huge. I’m very confident that during setup he took full advantage of the console’s surface, as there are a lot of cheaper options that could do the same thing.
It’s true that sound boards can be located very poorly, but I dare say that for certain types of music you’re always going to need a proper interface for your mixing to keep track of all your EQs, comps and not least of all the levels - I can’t see a proper level bridge working on a tablet. They are will continue to become a great tool for flexibility - set up a monitor mix where the monitor actually is, play with the delay of a sidefill while you’re in the coverage area, stay connected to the board while you’re going through the audience checking the sound - but I for one won’t ditch my board altogether.
As far as I know, those “mixers” already exist, most digital consoles nowadays are nothing more than a remote control with no DSP whatsoever - the Digidesign Venue consoles for instance. I think it’s great that these options exist, in my line of work they will most probably stay a helpful tool rather than my only control surface.
The more seasoned the band, the less tweaking is needed during the show. I’d imagine Tim McGraw’s band is as tight as any.
I’ve read another thing about this particular tour that I wasn’t able to locate. The gist was that Faith Hill’s set was using a traditional board, like a Midas, and Tim McGraw’s set was the opposite. He may well have had both boards out during rehearsals, but decided that once they had everything tweaked, as long as the set list, instrumentation and mics didn’t change there would be no need to touch them.
With a “co-headliner” show like this with two different crews, having the D5s out in the hallway could mean a dozen or more additional floor seats could be sold.
I can. There might be some lag on the display, but I can easily imagine alternative layout schemes for a glass mixer. I don’t have any love for the trend of skeuomorphic design of interfaces. Digital “knobs” make no sense - give me a button that I can touch and control by sliding left and right. There is no reason to emulate a fader where I’d have to grab a virtual handle - just make the handle appear wherever my finger falls and I can slide up or down from that point. Same thing with level meters - put them under the faders.
It is easy to re-imagine the whole nature of a mixer if you are not wedded to the idea of trying to cram a Midas’ collection of physical controls into an iPad’s worth of screen space.
With the trend on Broadway shows of putting the pit orchestra in another room to get more stage space, I’d imagine the producers are going to look at the number of seats used by the sound board and lighting boards and start figuring out how many more asses they could fit there.