DMX Input - Control Liberation from a Lighting Console

User guide and tutorials
1

Hi everyone,

I’ll get this properly documented in the updated manual soon, but for anyone who wants to try the new DMX Input controls in the latest test versions, here’s a quick guide.

The basic idea is that each Liberation zone appears on your lighting desk as a fixture. You can then use DMX to select clips and control their colour, brightness, position, scale and rotation.

Note: DMX Input operates independently from Liberation’s normal live controls. You can use both systems at the same time, but they don’t affect each other’s content. For example, adding an effect to a zone via DMX will only affect the DMX-triggered content in that zone - it won’t affect content you’re controlling live in Liberation. Likewise, effects applied within Liberation won’t affect content triggered via DMX.

There are two fixture modes:

  • Basic 16ch - clip selection, colour, intensity and transforms
  • Extended 32ch - everything above, plus FX controls and per-zone tempo

Fixture profiles are currently included for Wolfmix, grandMA3, ChamSys MagicQ and Avolites Titan.

Setting it up

  1. In Liberation, go to Settings > Project > DMX Input Settings.

  2. Enable DMX Input and choose your protocol - Art-Net, sACN, or Both.

  3. Open the DMX Input Settings profile window and click + Add Profile.

  4. Add one profile for each Liberation zone you want to control from your desk.

For each one, choose:

  • the Liberation zone
  • Basic 16ch or Extended 32ch
  • the DMX universe
  • the start address

For example, three Basic 16ch zones could start at addresses 1, 17 and 33.

  1. On your lighting desk, patch one Liberation fixture for each zone using the same mode, universe and start address.

  2. To get output from the desk:

  • Set Arm to 250-255
  • Raise Intensity
  • Choose a Gobo Bank
  • Raise Gobo Select above zero

You should now see the selected Liberation clip on that zone.

Arm deliberately defaults to 0, so merely patching or importing the fixture won’t suddenly produce laser output. Liberation’s normal laser arming, zone and safety controls still apply as usual.

Selecting clips

The Liberation clip deck behaves like a lighting-console gobo system.

Each Gobo Bank represents one 8 × 5 page of the clip deck - 40 clips per bank.

  • Gobo Bank 0 = the first 40 clips
  • Gobo Bank 1 = the next 40 clips
  • and so on

Gobo Select 0 selects no clip.

Values 1-255 select one of the 40 clips within the current bank.

Clips are counted down each column first, then across to the next column.

Basic 16ch controls

Ch Control What it does
1 Arm 250-255 enables DMX output
2 Intensity Brightness
3 Gobo Bank Selects a 40-clip page
4 Gobo Select Selects a clip within that page
5 Red Red level
6 Green Green level
7 Blue Blue level
8 Colour Blend Blend between the clip’s colour and desk RGB
9 Zoom Overall size
10 Scale X Horizontal scale / flip
11 Scale Y Vertical scale / flip
12-13 Position X 16-bit horizontal position
14-15 Position Y 16-bit vertical position
16 Rotation Rotation speed and direction

Extended 32ch controls

The first 16 channels are identical to Basic 16ch.

Channels 17-28 provide controls for the first four Liberation effects, with three channels for each effect:

  • FX Level
  • Parameter 1
  • Parameter 2

Channels 31-32 provide a tempo override for the selected clip. Leave channel 31 at 0 to follow Liberation’s normal tempo.

Fixture files

The test build includes ready-to-import fixture profiles in:

resources/dmxinput

There are profiles for:

  • Wolfmix - .ssl2
  • grandMA3 - .gdtf
  • ChamSys MagicQ - .gdtf
  • Avolites Titan - .d4

After importing the profile into your desk, patch one fixture for every Liberation zone you want to control.

Checking that it’s working

The DMX Input profile window includes status information and a Live Monitor.

For a working fixture you should see fresh DMX data arriving and eventually an Active status.

If it isn’t working, the status should give you a clue:

  • No data - Liberation isn’t receiving DMX. Check protocol, universe, port and network settings.
  • Stale - DMX was received previously but has stopped.
  • Disarmed - raise the Arm channel to 250 or above.
  • Blackout - raise Intensity.
  • Active - DMX is being received and the fixture is armed. Make sure you’ve also selected a valid clip.
  • Address overlap - two profiles are using overlapping DMX addresses.
  • Range > 512 - the fixture doesn’t fit at its current start address.

One important networking note: Art-Net DMX and Art-Net timecode normally both use port 6454. If you enable Art-Net DMX Input, Liberation disables its Art-Net timecode receiver to avoid the two fighting over the same port.

That should be enough to get you started. I’d be very interested to hear how you get on with it - particularly which desks you’re testing it with and whether the supplied fixture profiles behave as expected.

Seb

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