EOS file import (lightwright)

Even though it's an ASCII file, you should import it using the Lightwright option from the browser, not the ASCII option. This tells Eos what type of ASCII file it is, to help read it. Is this what you tried? If yes, and the ASCII file looks like it has data in it, send it and the Eos version number (probably 1.3 or 1.3.1) that you are running to eos@etcconnect.com and we can take a look.

I just tried this on a console and was unsuccessful, so instead of actually saving the LW file onto a thumb drive--the workaround is to export the LW file to an ASCII file and then import the file into EOS/Ion

In LW4 click on File-->Export-->ASCII Soft Patch 

Save the file to a thumb drive--Find the file on the drive and right click and change the file extension to .asc

When LW4 saves an ASCII file it does not add the .asc file type extension to the filename. In EOS/Ion you should now see the file name under Import-->ASCII. Hope that helps.

Josh Selander

ETC Las Vegas
 

There are two ways to import Lightwright into Eos: 

 From Lightwright, select Export->Data and type in a filename only.  Lightwright will add an extension of ".txt" when it creates the file.  Now use the Import->Lightwright option in Eos and browse to that .txt file.

The other way is to select Export->ASCII Patch from Lightwright, and give it a filename.  Lightwright doesn't add any extensions so you will have to type in ".asc" for file type.  Now use the Import->USITT ASCII in Eos and browse to the .asc file. 

These files are not interchangeable, and one method may work better for you than the other.  The Lightwright documentation that I have indicates that the ASCII option may be preferable, but try them both and let me know what you think.

 Thanks.

Ann  

I just tried the export data in Lightwright as described above, and it doesnt work. 

In export data, Lightwright asks you what you want to export, and it will export everything or nothing. I chose everything at first with the titles at the top, tab seperated, and when I tried to import it and selected patch, it didnt import anything. The same thing happened when I only exported the channel and dimmer information.

I am curious about doing the opposite of what all of you are discussing on this thread. I want to export an EOS patch to ASCII and import that into a program, such as Lightwright. I have successfully exported an ASCII file from EOS, but have had no luck what so ever importing that ASCII file into anything-Lightwright, VMS, or other ETC offline editors (other than EOS). I can open the Ascii file that came from EOS in a text editor and all the info is there, but is not in a format that can be imported to these other programs. Does anyone have any hints or suggestions? Has anyone had any success doing this.

 My most current attempts have been using EOS Offline version 1.3.0.9.0.55

 Thanks in advance!

Scott
 

The problem with going back in to Lightwright or other database is that a channel can have multiple addresses, and there's no automated way to know which address goes to which unit.  That is why importing an ASCII patch currently isn't part of LW.

That said, I've had success getting the one-address-per-channel part of the patch into LW through a combination of BBEdit and the VLookup function in Excel.  I'm not aware of any off the shelf way to do this, though.

-Josh

P.S. I haven't attempted the other part of your question -- getting the Eos ASCII file into another offline editor.

Joshua-

this may prove to be helpful to me. Would you mind detailing a little more the steps and process you describe? What what steps do you use BBedit for? At what stage do you transfer this into Excel. I am on a Windows platform and a quick Google search indicates that BBEdit is a Mac only program. Are you aware of a Windows alternative?

I would greatly appreciate this. I mostly use the patch in a wonderful program, Virtual Magic Sheet. It is quite easy to get the patch from an ASCII file on almost any other product except the EOS. Since I'm usually entering the patch into this program sometime between hang/focus and cueing with directors breathing down my neck the more I can do to automate this the better.

 
Thanks!

Scott

 

Scott L:

Does anyone have any hints or suggestions?

Scott, you don't mention if you have tried deleting everything in the ASCII file except for the PATCH (i.e. the keyword that starts each line) records, and then using the remainder of the file.  It's reasonably clear that Virtual Magic Sheet should be able to get what it needs from an ASCII patch file, as opposed to Lightwright - which as stated, could never know which of two units on the same channel had which dimmer number. 

Scott,

So, I took a look at an Eos generated ASCII file, and the patch section uses manufacturer-specific keywords.  (In an ASCII show file, any word beginning with "$" indicates a propriety format)  I imagine that this is to accommodate all the extra information Eos stores in patch.  

For EOS, the patch info is:

$Patch {channel_#} {personality_#} {address}

while the ASCII standard is:

Patch {page_#} {channel_#}<{address}@{proportion}

BBEdit is a super-duper text editor that allows grep find and replace searches (for example, \d+ finds one or more digits).  I'm not sure of a Windows equivalent, but I'm sure there must be one.  In this case, a search and replace could fairly convert the EOS patch line to a standard patch line.

To get an ASCII patch into Lightwright, I use BBEdit to first filter out all lines that don't begin with "Patch."  I then convert the patch information to two tab delimited columns, one for dimmer, one for channel.  I can now open this in Excel.  I also export LW data, one column for LW ID and one for channel.  I open this in Excel as well.  I add a third column to the LW data that uses the VLookup function which looks up the channel number, matches it to a channel number in the patch worksheet and returns the adjoining dimmer number.  I re-save the text file and merge back in to LW.  I have some macros and scripts set up so that this isn't so tedious.

All this aside, Anne indicated in another thread that customized data export is in the works, so something like this will be much simpler in the future. 

-Josh 

tbuchman,

 yes, I have tried deleting everything but the patch. As Joshua states, the EOS patch contains propriety language. In fact, this language exists on every line of patch information. Unlike other patch files, every address has it's own line. I have tried what Joshua mentions below in Excel. However, I have not been able to automate all the actions into a series of macros nor could I ultimately create an ASCII file which could be imported into VMS (FWIW the creator of VMS is working on this issue as well). However, I think I can try what Joshua mentions and import that into LW which I then hope I can import into VMS. 

 All of this is very convulted. Nor does it solve using the EOS exported ASCII files in other offline editors and programs. I look forward to the progress that Joshua mentions that Anne is working on customized data export which I think is sorely needed on the EOS.

Thanks!
 

Joshua-

thanks for this. I think this may help. 

By the way, I could not locate the thread you mention for customized data export. Would you please point me in the correct direction?

Thanks-Scott 

Here it is:

http://community.etcconnect.com/forums/thread/5465.aspx

-Josh 

Scott, I dashed off a program to do the translation you need.  It finds all $Patch records and translates them (as much as it can) to standard ASCII PATCH records.  This will result in multi-dimmer units (e.g.. moving lights) having their lowest DMX address patched to their single EOS channel number.  In most cases, but not all, that will be "intensity".  I'm posting it on the web at the following address:

http://secondcut.home.att.net/download/EOSPtch.exe

Keep in mind that I don't work for ETC and they have nothing to do with this program. Let me know how it works.  If you are doing more than Virtual Magic Sheet work, and find that the large EOS files are choking your destination offline software with their manufacturer-specific keywords, I would still suggest what I did before.  Cut and Paste the Cues, Groups, and Subs, then use the word processor to replace all $ with !, then paste in the Patch records translated with my program.

The program I posted is not really slick, since it will probably not be needed after the next version of EOS.  For example, the Open File dialog usually starts looking in the EOS Show Archive directory.  If you don't have EOS offline on the PC you're using, it may start looking on the desktop or in MyDocuments.  But you can always navigate to the folder where your input file is-just like you would in Word or Excel.

Both file dialogs look for .asc files first, but you can select .txt or All Files to see more files.  In the Save File dialog, you have to type in the extension you want (say, .txt or .asc) along with the filename.  As has been stated elsewhere on this board, sometimes EOS prefers one extension or the other.

You can contact me through this board or at the email address on my website, http://secondcut.home.att.net , under "About".

To all of you following this thread I would like to report that I very happily used the EOS patch utility so graciously provided by Tim. With one tiny little adjustment (detailed below) it did exactly what was wanted and fully described by him in his last post.

I am very grateful to Tim for providing this utility which quickly and accurately provides an ascii patch file from the EOS ascii file.

NOTE: As some consoles have differing needs, Tim's utility puts an "!" exclamation point in front of the line "Ident 3:0". Most of the time I find that this should not be there, as was the case in my most current need. This line is found at the beginning of the file and can be edited with any basic text editor. This one, tiny edit made the file instantly usable.

Thanks again Tim!

Scott
 

We have added the standard ASCII patch and channels to Eos for the 1.4 release, due out very shortly.  This should help with converting shows back to older consoles.  Unfortunately, the ASCII standard v3.0 did not have a way to denote moving lights or multi-channel devices, so some of the show data can be lost.  That is why we like using the manufacturer-specific data.  Of course, that means that the console readin this data in has to know what to do with it, and that is a lot harder than you would think!