Demo and Playground Projects unresponsive

Beam for Live
1

Hello there. After a week of using the trial version, both the Demo and the Playground projects are now unresponsive to the signal sent from Ableton.

I’ve already bought my license, de-installed everything and installed it back again, etc. Nothing seems to make it work again.

See attached

tempImagen5nG0Q
tempImagen5nG0Q1920×1440 274 KB

It’s just stuck on that frame.

2

Hi Gus,

Thanks for getting in touch.

You can check whether Beam is receiving DMX data from Live by looking at Beam’s Monitor and see if there is any activity when you play e.g. Beam Demo with the corresponding Beam - Ampco Flashlight Studio 1.sbp fixture patch loaded in Beam.

Monitor
Monitor1726×1250 391 KB

If there is, the issue is that the visualizer is not receiving DMX data from Beam. The bundled visualizer presentations are made with Capture visualizer and are not directly part of Beam, so they receive DMX via the CITP protocol via the loopback network interface.

In order for the visualizer to receive DMX from Beam, there need to be CITP Visualizer output universes added to Beam’s Inputs/Outputs configuration:

Inputs/Outputs
Inputs/Outputs977×740 60.2 KB

If you open the Demo Project via Beam > Open Demo Project… Beam automatically sets the Inputs/Outputs configuration, but you can double-check that they are there.

Next, head over to the visualizer application and go to Window > Universes…:

Universes
Universes1920×1569 138 KB

If the visualizer is successfully receiving CITP/DMX universes sent by Beam, you should see some of the Beam universes under External universe:

Universes
Universes2756×1080 423 KB

If not, you are probably only seeing (auto) and (no). If that’s the case, we need to determine the reason Beam and the visualizer are no longer communicating between each other. This could happen because of a change in your network status/configuration, e.g.:

  • You were connected to a Wi-Fi network when you first started Beam and the visualizer and later disconnected from it. While no internet connection is needed to communicate between the two programs, the connection may be lost if the connectivity status changes and Beam needs to be restarted to be able to connect to the visualizer again. For example, poor Wi-Fi signal can result in your computer often disconnecting/reconnecting, which can in turn impact connection with the visualizer. To check if this might be the reason, quit both Beam and the visualizer, disconnect from Wi-Fi and try again.
  • You changed your VPN or firewall settings, somehow restricted network access to Beam or the visualizer app, installed an app like Little Snitch, or modified the hosts file in a way that prevents Beam from communicating with the visualizer via CITP.

Please check the above and let us know what you find out.