Fixture Request and Compatibility Question

angelfrost · August 29, 2023, 11:05pm

Hi! I just downloaded Beam and got a midi-DMX converter in hopes of programming a light show for some videos and performances, but I’m running into a couple problems. One: The 2 strobes I’m using don’t appear on the Fixture Profile list: Rockville STAGE PANEL 864 LED RGB Pro Stage Wash Lights+Strobe+Matrix Combo. SECONDLY, I can’t even operate Beam as a VST in Ableton (for Mac). I kept trying to add it in Ableton Preferences, and it would never appear in the Browser, and then finally I tried to open one of the Ableton Patches in the actual folder in Finder and it says: “This device is not available in this version of Live.” But I saw on the FAQs on Showsync’s website that Beam is supported by M1 and Intel Macs alike? I’m running Ableton Live Standard 11.3.10 on macOS Ventura 13.0. Help on both these problems would be greatly appreciated!!!

EDIT: I just upgraded my Ableton to Max for Live, but still having compatibility/setup issues since my fixture isn’t recognized!

Luka · September 4, 2023, 3:16pm

Hi @angelfrost,

Thanks for reaching out! Beam devices are not VST plugins and indeed require Max for Live to work - good to hear you already solved this part.

As for working with your fixture, you need a fixture profile for it, Beam cannot recognise it by itself. You can use the Fixture Editor to make one yourself, or you can request one here. Besides providing the fixture manual, please specify the DMX mode of the fixture you want to use. Here are the fixture profile files for the 4-ch. and 39-ch. modes:

Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 4ch.sbf (221 Bytes)
Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch.sbf (1.5 KB)
Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch (master dim).sbf (277 Bytes)
Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch (stroberate).sbf (418 Bytes)

Place these files inside the Fixture Profiles/User folder, which you can find by going to Beam > Fixture Profiles… Restart Beam in order for the files to be recognised.

To use the 4-ch. mode:

Set the fixture to 4-channel mode on the back of the unit.
In Beam’s Patch Editor add the Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 4ch fixture, but don’t assign any tags to it yet.
Once you have added the fixture, double-click on it to reveal its components: RGB and Strobe. Assign separate tags to each component.
In Live, use separate Par devices for the RGB and Strobe components.

To use the 39-ch. mode:

Set the fixture to 39-channel mode on the back of the unit.
In Beam’s Patch Editor add the Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch fixture, but don’t assign any tags to it yet.
Once you have added the fixture, double-click on it to reveal its components and assign these tags to them:
- Master dim: Rockville Master
- RGB stroberate: Rockville RGB
- RGB 1-8: Rockville RGB (MIDI notes C3-G3)
- Strobe bar stroberate: Rockville Strobe
- Strobe bar 1-8: Rockville Strobe (MIDI notes C3-G3)
In Live, add separate devices to control separate aspects of the fixture:
- Par: Rockville Master (master intensity)
- Strobe: Rockvile RGB (color/intensity and stroberate of the RGB segments)
- Stroberate: Rockville Strobe (intensity and stroberate of strobe bulbs)

Let me know if you need any further help with this or if you need profiles for other modes of this fixture.

angelfrost · December 29, 2023, 6:34pm

Hey Luka! Thank you so much, I’ve got these Rockville RGBs working now within Ableton. Question though: I have 4 of these Rockville lights and want to program them to act differently, rather than them all responding to one signal. How would I go about patching that in Beam and in Ableton?

x
Angel

Luka · January 9, 2024, 5:26pm

Hi Angel,

If you want to have a completely separate control over each of the 4 fixtures you can just assign a different tag to every fixture, and use a different device for every tag. For example (using the fixture in 4ch mode):

Fixture 1:
- Rockville RGB 1
- Rockville Strobe 1
Fixture 2:
- Rockville RGB 2
- Rockvile Strobe 2
…

Alternatively, you can address individual fixtures within a single tag:

using MIDI note-triggered envelopes, by assigning a different MIDI pitch to each fixture:

…when using Beam devices in Live you can then use the corresponding MIDI notes to trigger envelopes for individual fixtures
using Live parameters in a Generic device, by assigning the same modulation parameter to more than one slot:

…the number of same-modulation slots will be distributed across the number of fixtures, read more about this here

Let me know if this helps or if you have something more specific in mind.

ndon · April 24, 2024, 7:58am

Thanks Luka! Glad to see this fixture getting integrated already.

I was wondering - how would i amend the …39-ch.sbf? It looks like i cant change aggregate fixtures?

I was hoping to program/automate both the 3-in-1 Mode & Mode Speed [39-ch Mode Ch. 3 & 4] and Strobe Bar Mode & Mode Speed [39-ch Mode ch. 30 & 31] in order to use the fixtures built-in effects. Should I just make a new custom fixture and just have their DMX address overlap ? Or would a new fixture profile be needed in order to make those channels taggable?

Either way, what do you think would be the most efficient and accurate way to automate those channels ? is there a way to use piano roll/midi notes to sequence a channel’s values? figure that would be more accurate with midi notes being 8-bit versus the parameter knobs in the max devices being decimal, but maybe there is a way to make those knob read “0-255” instead?

thanks for your time and help!

Luka · May 28, 2024, 6:50pm

Hi @ndon,

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you.

I was wondering - how would i amend the …39-ch.sbf? It looks like i cant change aggregate fixtures?

Beam’s Fixture Editor indeed doesn’t support aggregate fixtures, although here you only need to edit the “child” fixture Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch (stroberate), which can be opened using the Fixture Editor. However, the workflow around aggregate fixtures will change in the upcoming update of Beam for Live (already the case with Beam for Max), so I wouldn’t spend too much time on figuring this out - feel free to request any fixture profile in the meantime.

I was hoping to program/automate both the 3-in-1 Mode & Mode Speed [39-ch Mode Ch. 3 & 4] and Strobe Bar Mode & Mode Speed [39-ch Mode ch. 30 & 31] in order to use the fixtures built-in effects. Should I just make a new custom fixture and just have their DMX address overlap ? Or would a new fixture profile be needed in order to make those channels taggable?

I added program and programspeed modulation to the Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch (stroberate).sbf, so you should now be able to control the mentioned channels with Beam.

The parent fixture profile Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch.sbf and Rockville Stage Panel 864 LED - 39ch (master dim).sbf remain the same.

Either way, what do you think would be the most efficient and accurate way to automate those channels ? is there a way to use piano roll/midi notes to sequence a channel’s values? figure that would be more accurate with midi notes being 8-bit versus the parameter knobs in the max devices being decimal, but maybe there is a way to make those knob read “0-255” instead?

You can control a modulation (which is mapped to an 8-bit DMX channel or a 16-bit channel pair) either using parameters or with a MIDI-note-triggered envelope using Generic. With Live’s parameters the values from 0.00 to 1.00 are shown, but that’s just a UI thing, you can work with even more decimal points, see this post.
This is then converted to a 0-255 range in the case of a single 8-bit channel or 0-65535 in the case of a 16-bit channel pair. In any case, the resolution of Beam’s modulation values surpasses the one of DMX values, so no need to worry about that.

However, if you need to recall a specific DMX value in a 0-255 range, I can imagine working with a 0. - 1. range can be inconvenient. Beam doesn’t have a native way of working around this yet, but you can use a custom device like this one.

Hope this helps, please let us know if you need help with anything else.

ndon · June 1, 2024, 6:04pm

@Luka thank you so much!

this is super helpful, and it gave me time to figure out a lot of it on my own through trial and error and just referencing other fixture profiles to get an idea of how it all works.

any chance you have a clever way to rename Generic parameters to make automation a little easier ?

thank you so much for taking the time!!

Luka · June 10, 2024, 1:04pm

Hi @ndon, you’re welcome!

Max for Live API currently doesn’t allow for dynamically changing parameter names, so there is no way for Beam devices to rename the displayed names when programming automation.

However, you can achieve that if you:

Group the Generic device into an Instrument Rack (right-click on the device title bar).
Macro Map the parameters you want to control.
Rename the corresponding Macro Controls.