I might have the opportunity to do a unique gig, where I’ll be using lasers for beams over audience and a few projectors for projection mapping onto mannequins on stage (lol).
I’m using madMapper for projection mapping with the projectors, and (obviously) liberation for the lasers.
Is there any reason this shouldn’t work simultaniously on the same device, as long as my laptop is powerfull enough (macbook M1 PRO 16”) ? →keeping both liberation and madmapper running at the same time.
I hope to have switched my heliosses for ether dreams by that time, so I’d run my lasers and 2 epson projectors over network.
As for safety; the mapping would be visuals that don’t need a lot of maintainance/live interaction by the operator (me), just casually switching between style/colors while the lasers are off.
I’d say you should be fine, but there is truly one way to find out. If you have all the gear on hand, I’d say it’s mandatory to setup in advance and play with it more than once before the gig. Unplug things, throttle your processor with too much content, open a few more windows, etc. Close one program, reopen and see what happens to your connectivity. If it does not meet your expectations, look into a second computer.
Are you using an APC for both, or two controllers?
Thanks! Yes I’d definitely check it here first, but I don’t have etherdeam yet (im on helios now) and haven’t tried my projectors over ethernet either, so thought I’d check it on the forum first. But I could def do some tests already.
I’d use apc for liberation and just laptop for madmapper, probably good to check whether madmapper would do weird things while using the apc for lasers now that you say it.
Hey Mathijs - short answer: running MadMapper and Liberation on the same Mac at the same time is almost definitely not going to work reliably once you move to Ether Dreams.
Both apps try to listen on the same UDP port for Ether Dream discovery packets, and only one can “own” it at a time. I’ll look at improving this in Liberation in future (it would only be possible on macOS, and even then MadMapper would also need to support shared listening). So for now, if you’re using Ether Dreams, assume you’ll need two computers.
If you’re still on Helios, though, that setup might actually fare a bit better since the Helios units use direct USB rather than network discovery - definitely worth testing.
Also note that if Liberation detects an APC, it’ll automatically connect to it. I’m not sure how MadMapper handles APCs, but you might be able to turn its MIDI input off or select a different device there to avoid confusion.
And if you do go with two computers and Ether Dreams, be very careful: Ether Dreams really don’t like being connected to by multiple apps at once. Older ones (v1/v2) would actually try to play both point streams simultaneously, producing chaotic results, while newer ones (v3/v4) just crash and need a power cycle. Liberation has a built-in check to see if a DAC is already in use before connecting, but I doubt MadMapper implements that, so it might try to grab a DAC that’s already active.
As long as you’re deliberate about which app connects to which DAC, it should all work fine - just make sure to test the full setup in advance, with power cycles and restarts, so you know exactly what happens before showtime.
I went to the venue today. We’re going to do 4 lasers over etherDream + we’ll use the installed projector at the venue for mapping. The projector would just be HDMI, will this cause interference with liberation/etherDream or should I be safe if it’s just Router-laptop (ED) + HDMI-IN to laptop (projector)?
Again, safety wise → the visuals for mapping will be very low maintenance, I’d never have the lasers on while periodically adjusting the visuals over projector