ETC Express 24/48 Midi

[Zac Harris]

Good afternoon!

I have been working on trying to set up Qlab V. 4 to work with my theatre's old ETC Express 24/48.

Ideally I'd like to fire specific cues.

The reading on this has been very confusing, can someone walk me through how to set this up?

I've set my "MIDI Show Control Device IDs" to 1/1 on the ETC.

I'm sending a simple "GO" from Qlab, to device ID 1.

What am I missing?

[El Armstrong]

Make sure you have both the Cue list and the Cue Path set to 1 (for a
cue in the A/B fader pair - 2 for the C/D fader pair). Also, the
older version of the midi cards in these was particularly "fragile".
Test it by sending Midi out of the Express to Midi Monitor (or something
similar) to make sure it's functioning.

Also, IIRC, a "GO" with no cue number will fire the next cue in the
stack. Specifying a Cue Number will fire that specific cue.

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[Zac Harris]

I've got those settings set up as recommend, but still nothing. I'm not totally sure how to test the MIDI out from the ETC. This is our first time using MIDI with this board.

[Zac Harris]

MIDI monitor confirms that QLab is firing the correct codes to the cable, I have yet to figure out how to trigger a MIDI code from the ETC to the Mac.

[Bruno Carneiro]

Hi Zac, I had the some problem you're having a few months ago. 

In my experience MSC didn't work, it just didn't. It doesn't matter how carefully you set them, it won't work. But "Program Change" commands did work for me perfectly. All you have to do is set your MIDI cues to "Musical MIDI" -> "Program Change" and set the "Program number" to the desired cue number. Voilà!

In case you still have any doubts, I'm attaching a workspace, the manual and a screenshot of the section of the manual that explain this. 

good luck!

[Freddy Komp]

Or, it is simply the issue I reported in Oct 2009:

So, here goes...

I have the following issue with MSC/MSysEx controlling our ETC Express 48/96 (yesyesyes, I know, ancient ;)... but it was what we could get for free, and it's reliable... ) :

I want to fire specific cues rather then just a general GO, and so I made a MSC Cue with Command "GO", Device ID "3" (which is the one I set up in the console), Q Number "56.2" and Q List "2" (which refers to the C/D Fader group on the board), Q Path empty.
When I fire the Cue, nothing happened.
So I created a MIDI SysEx Cue and typed in the raw Hex that the ETC manual prescribes, namely:
"7F 03 02 01 01 35 36 2E 32 00 32 00"

with QLab adding F0 and F7, the message, recorded in a MIDI monitor, looks like this:

"F0 7F 03 02 01 01 35 36 2E 32 00 32 00 F7"

This actually works and does fire the desired Cue. So I looked at what the other MSC Cue sends in said MIDI monitor:

"F0 7F 03 02 01 01 35 36 2E 32 00 32 F7"

As you can see, the MSC frame packets are exactly identical, except for the omitted Delimiter "00" before the ending "F7".

What's the go, is ETC not conforming to standard demanding the delimiter (as it does in its manual at  http://www.etcconnect.com/docs/docs_downloads/manuals/Express_Two-scene_Preset_v3.1_User_Manual.pdf  on page 284 (which is 298 in the pdf)? I mean, I've found a work around, but I'd rather not write 120 lighting cues in Hex if I don't have to :P. Assuming that it's not a bug (or somebody else would have mentioned it before), would there be a possibility in the preferences of either the cue or the workspace/application for a tick at "Trailing Delimiter" or something along those lines? At the moment, neither cue settings nor preferences look particularly cluttered...


cheers,

Freddy

From my memory, we were never fully able to resolve it, except that I believe it went away with using another (better) MIDI device instead of my MIDISport Uno!

Cheers,

Freddy

[Freddy Komp]

And here how I described the way I resolved my issue in the end:

Freddy Komp <busy...@gmail.com> Aug 10 06:40PM -0700  

Hi Penelope,
 
 
Sorry for the late reply - yes, although I was able to make it work with
the work around of writing my own SysEx Messages as described (I ended up
writing an Applescript that would acquire an LX Number from a dialogue box
and generate the appropriate SysEx message) -
 
The ultimate fix (that allowed me to use normal MSC cues again) was to use
the MIDI ports of a good quality device (i.e. Edirol UA25, MOTU Ultralite
mk3...) instead of the cheap(er) MAudio Uno:
http://www.pcmusicsupply.com/images/interfaces/usbmidi/usbuno/uno_big.jpg
...
 
The odd thing was, that the same MAudio Uno was working fine with an ETC
Express 48/96, and then did not work for the ETC Express 24/48 (except for
SysEx)...
 
So, bottom line - while the MIDI Monitor showed no difference between the
MSC messages used... there is more between Heaven and Earth (er, Midi
devices and Midi devices) than one can fathom... :)...
 
So, hopefully, the new MIDI device will help you...
 
 
Cheers,
 
Freddy

[Sam Kusnetz]

Hello all

This is the most important and relevant part of this thread:

On December 7, 2016 at 6:03:30 AM, Freddy Komp (busy...@gmail.com) wrote:

The ultimate fix (that allowed me to use normal MSC cues again) was to use
the MIDI ports of a good quality device (i.e. Edirol UA25, MOTU Ultralite
mk3...) instead of the cheap(er) MAudio Uno

The buffer on many MIDI devices is too small for MSC to be properly transmitted. Switching to a higher quality device is the way to go.

Sam

—

Sam Kusnetz | Figure 53

s...@figure53.com

[Bruno Carneiro]

Zac, if you have the chance to try out another interface let us know the results please, for science! =)

I've seen some people mentioning the quality of MIDI interfaces before, but some people also dismissed this. I respect your opinions and would love to conduct some tests on this issue...

bruno

On Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at 4:40:03 PM UTC-2, Zac Harris wrote: