I feel like the biggest burn of time when programming in Beam is having to manual set individual automation points for parameters I dont want to change later.
My situation - I have stems and loops in ableton clip view. I program my lighting looks and enevelope triggers into midi clips that fire with the ableton scenes.
So lets say I program a look for SONG 1. Generic fixture with 16 properties. 2 Lfos with 8 properties each.
If I then want to program another look for SONG 2 using the same channel. I have to manually set automation points on every single property for at the very least, the final clip of the previous song, to ensure I am not overwriting programming.
whenever there are drastic changes between clips, all automation points for all channel devices need to be manually set.
There needs to be a button that creates an automation point for every fixture paramater, at that state. This would save so much time. Madmapper has this feature when programming cues - ‘KEY ALL’
I have tried to find M4L plugins that do this - ‘variations’ in ‘Performance Pack by Iftah’ should this by saving snapshots but it does not work for me as it does not write actual automation points.
This is a topic I think about an unhealthy amount =) Namely, how to program and recall ‘looks/scenes/cues’ in Beam. I’ve tried automating all parameters of a fixture device the way you’re describing, and I find it very brittle.
My vote – create a track for each look. So if you’re got 3 looks for a fixture, create 3 tracks, with a Beam device customized for that look. I end up grouping these tracks together and then wrote a m4l group crossfader that smoothly fades the volume of the selected look track up, and the vol of the other tracks in the group down, with an adjustable delay and up/down curve. Then I automate just the “track #” parameter of my m4l crossfader, and I get smooth transitions between looks.
I also take that a step further. If I have a look for song 1 that includes let’s say 5 fixtures, then I’ll create one look track for song 1, and in the track I’ll put a rack with 5 chains, with a Beam fixture device on each chain set to the desired DMX fixture. That setup gives me smooth crossfading between sets of fixtures.
If you don’t care about smooth transitions between looks, then it’s even easier; all you need to do is automate the look-track volumes, or the speaker on/off, and you’re good to go.
I have 15 tracks in my set, so creating a track per look leads to a lot of tracks.
This then leads to accidental instances of fixtures or LFOs being left on when not supposed to be…affecting the active look.
I have 8 moving head lights in my set, usually i use a generic fixture to control them with 16 parameters (eg 4 x pan. 4 x color wheel, gives me granular control of pairs of lights).
I’m not worried about fade in or outs, I just want programming looks to be a lot faster, and to feel safe once I have programmed a look that changes to the looks before and after that look will not affect it.
It’s been quite a laborious process programming a 1 hour show.
Yeah that makes sense. That’s one of the reasons I don’t use automation to set parameter values on Beam devices. On the other hand, I’ve got sets with 60-80 beam devices for 10-15 lights and while it’s great for having easy to manage looks, Beam gets pretty unhappy about it. Load times can take forever and there’s a lot of spurious DMX data sent out by Beam for 5-10 seconds before it all calms down (on load only).
I need to give this some thought and write a M4L patch specifically for Beam. I’ve already got my group-track crossfader, but I want something that allows one single Beam device to support multiple distinct looks, without automation, and while preserving the ability to store and recall looks on the device for easy editing/management over time. You might want to check out Smooth Automator, though it doesn’t quite work for me the way I want. Sleek Macro Variation Transitions in Ableton Live (M4L) | Sonic Bloom
Well, all I can say is that I’m in the final stages of writing a m4l patch that would do what you’re describing, but in a way that’s designed to work well with Beam. Maybe you’ll want to be one of the beta testers and see if it works for you.
Being able to programmatically write automation values for all or a selection of parameters would be a huge time saver not only when working with Beam, but also when dealing with any sound-based device in Live. Unfortunately, Live’s API does not currently expose functionality to edit automation breakpoints, so it is not something third-party developers can make a M4L device or an Extension for at this moment, you should ask Ableton
As @tdk mentions, next best alternatives would be to use a preset morphing M4L device or use Beam’s native mixing/merging capabilities - I’ve discussed these in my posts here and here, along with the last part of this video:
I don’t have a good recommendation for a robust preset morphing M4L device yet (great to hear you’re working on this @tdk + I’ve heard rumors about one of my colleagues seriously exploring this area), but we’ve just shared a new Beam for Live Alpha build today that adds some functionality that makes using Beam’s mixing/merging capabilities a lot more powerful, including for something like morphing between different moving head positions. Anyone interested in testing this before we release it is welcome to sign up for the Alpha Testing.
Both of these are interesting and exciting and something I would like to try out. I’m away until 11th of August. I’m taking a break from Computers in this time, when I’m back I would definitely like to explore these options.
