Triggering A console over Midi

We used to do this with our Obession II, although it should be the same process as with the Express and Element.

What we would do is create a midi track and run the audio track once while recording the midi output of the light console, then we would swap the midi cabling so that we could play back the midi that we recorded.

I'm no protools expert, but my sound guy was able to show me how to view the midi track we created and move the msc triggers around on the track to fine tune cue placement.  I think there is a way to create show control triggers without recording them off the console, but the designer I was working with wanted to do it this way.

Just make sure you don't run midi from the console to protools and back again, it'll create a midi feedback loop.

Here has been my experience with midi and lighting control consoles.  The control consoles like to see Midi Show Control.  This is a stripped down version of the midi string.  Not in all but in most cases you will need some midi translator to accomplish this translation.  ETC expression/express line is not looking at the full midi string.  I do not remember exactly but I believe it is looking at the end of the midi string. 

Hope this Helps

P-

I'm afraid that you've misunderstood a few things there.

MIDI Show Control (MSC) isn't 'stripped down', and it's nothing to do with the start or end of a MIDI string.

Original 'General' MIDI provided two things: Notes and Controllers.

• MIDI Notes give commands like "Play Note X at Velocity Y" and "Stop Note X"
  • Play Note defines which key on your keyboard you pressed
  • Velocity says how hard you hit the key on your piano keyboard (usually volume)
  • 'Stop' says when you released the key
• MIDI Controllers set values between 0-127 for continuous controls such as "Set Pitch Bend to Z" (between 0 and 127)

This means that Notes and Controllers can easily be used for console keys and faders, as you can pretend that each key is a Note (press and release) and each continuous controller like Pitch Bend could be a fader (0-127)

However, that doesn't work when you want to tell a console (be it lighting, sound or something else) "Goto Cue 5"
- That's not a single key, and it's not a fader either.

Therefore, MIDI Show Control was added to the MIDI specification aimed at (you guessed it!) Show Control.

This has specific commands for "Goto Cue X" and a lot of other things.

So:

When you want to control cuelists, you'll use MIDI Show Control

If you want to control faders, synthesisers and that sort of thing, you use General MIDI.

Sometimes, you'll use both, and Express(ion) supports the use of both methods simultaneously.

We are also attempting to control our Express 24/48 via MIDI (Not MSC).  Our version of SFX does not spit out MSC so we are attempting to use vanilla MIDI to trigger macros which then fire the Go button.  We currently cannot get the console to respond to a single message we have sent.  We know all cabling is good and the MIDI is good (other equipment in the chain responds to the same messages if connected).  Does anyone have tips on specific MIDI string format to get the Express to respond?  I'd like to stick to MIDI rather than the other way we're thinking of which consists of the following:

SFX --> MIDI --> MD24 MIDI relay device with solid-state relays --> mechanical relay --> ETC Remote Macro trigger

Anyone?  

Richard:

Your post has been the most helpful I've seen for understanding the concept, but I'm still unsure how to implement it. I'm using an Element, although if I can't make it work I have the option of using an Obsession II.

My understanding of midi is that if I play a note on a midi device and the device to which it's sending signal triggers the same note, same velocity, etc. What is the relationship between sending, let's say a note with a pitch of 60 and a velocity of 127, to bringing up a channel at a level? Is there a supposed 'pitch' value for 'go' or for 'channel'? If, on the other hand, I wanted to use midi show control to say "GoToCue 1", would would be the number of the controller and what would be the value?

Do you know of a site that explains this in detail? It would help to understand both but for my purposes I'd be using midi show control.

I'm using a software program that's able to either send or receive a midi signal. There are a number of values that I'm supposed to enter and I don't really understand what they mean...primarily: port, channel, controller, and value. If I'm receiving midi signal rather than sending it these have both an in and an out.

Meanwhile, on the console side, I'm asked for MSC (Transmit/Receive) Channel and ACN MIDI Tx ID. Supposedly the channel is a device ID and I think that this should be the same as the channel on the software side, so that makes sense. The Midi Tx ID, according to the manual, needs to correspond to the "MIDI (In/Out) Stream ID" on the gateway of an advanced control network, I guess in this case referring to the software program. I don't really understand what the rest of that means.

Thank you

There is a difference between MIDI, and MIDI Show Control. The EOS family expects MSC. See this really useful article in the Wiki for details on the format of MSC messages supported.

MSC uses MIDI system exclusive messages instead of note or controller change MIDI messages. If your program does not understand MSC messages, see if your program has a way to send MIDI SysEx messages. One way to think about it is that the SysEx messages are a generic container for implementation specific messages. MIDI Show Control is a set of MIDI SysEx messages with specific content layout.

There is a link to version 1.0 of the MSC standard on the Wikipedia MIDI Show Control page.  I found the standard useful to understand how to implement MSC in a program I wrote. It was also useful to capture and look at the MSC messages generated by my Express 250 to see if I understood the MSC standard correctly.

-- David

Thank you both of you! There were some other problems to fix on the hardware/software side but you were immense help and it does work now.