Absolute vs. Relative

[Thomas B]

Hey guys,

sorry, I'm opening this again, as I'm not completely satisfied and want to understand what's behind.

My Arturia MiniLab works now "ok" with Relative#2, but not "fine". (sometimes tehe LR rulers shake around or walk the wrong direction before they move smoothly ...)

The Arturia Support says:

"Absolute mode is the standard method of sending MIDI data. When an encoder is moved, it will send a value based on
the last value it sent"

That's great, as it is also the Standard mode of MIDI2LR, isn't it ? But why does ist work with the x-touch, but not with the Arturias ?

(it also explains, why this "jump" effect is only, when I work an a Phot the first time!)

I guess, the secret is: "...send a value, based on the last value it (has) sent".

The Controller does not receive anything back. So how does the Software know the "last value sent", if the Controller send a value first time ?

The only answer is, that the Software sets the first value !

I would probably set "0", as default ! And hey, that would give the effect, that Arturia users experience: the ruler jumps to  0, when the Encoder is being touched!

For some of the LR rulers, this is, what we want (sharpness, luminance, etc.), but for most of the rulers, 0 is not at the very left (MIDI 0), but in the Center between the range -x to +x (MIDI 63)

If I would have coded this (which I can't, just trying to be analytic), I would do something like:

IF range = 0-x

THEN set MIDI=0

ELSE set MIDI=63

or so ...

still interesting, that this is all Software and has nothing to do with the Controller! So why should it be different with Behringer or Arturia ????

Rory ?

Thanks !!

Cheers

Thomas

[Ernst Bokkelkamp]

I can not give you any definitive answers because I do not have the Aturia Minilab but I can give you some information on the X-Touch Mini and MIDI2LR.

The X-Touch Mini has 8 endless encoders which are normally configured to absolute mode, this means that the minimum value is 0 and the maximum value is 127, and LEDs around the knob. The LEDs show approximately the current value of the encoder, when you turn the encoder clockwise the value send to MIDI2LR is increased until it reaches the maximum value but you can turn the knob further because these are "endless". MIDI2LR sends updates to the encoder, when you have used the encoder to increase a slider (like Exposure) and you then use the mouse to decrease this causes the current encoder value to be update which will be reflected on the LEDs.

What I suggest is that you configure the Aturia to absolute values and that you assign one encoder to exposure. 

Then go into the developer module and change the exposure using the mouse to -5, turn the encoder a few steps clockwise and look how the value changes in LR, now use the mouse to change the exposure to +5 and turn the encoder a few steps counter clockwise. Each step should change the exposure value by about 0.08, if not then it may well be that the Aturia ignores the update send by MIDI2LR and you may have to use pickup mode.

(https://github.com/rsjaffe/MIDI2LR/wiki/Application-Settings-Dialog)

Some additional information, the 0 setting for most sliders can not be set using absolute values. The reason is that there are 128 steps from minimum to maximum.

The minimum value of the exposure slider is -5 and the maximum is +5 giving a range of 10.0 which results in 0.078125 per step, or about 0.08. Because of internal rounding the slider value 0 may never be reached and -0.04 / +0.04 is the nearest value.  The X-Touch Mini has a button for each encoder and I use this to set the sliders to 0. 

[Wolfgang G]

I solved this problem:
 

Some additional information, the 0 setting for most sliders can not be set using absolute values. The reason is that there are 128 steps from minimum to maximum.

The minimum value of the exposure slider is -5 and the maximum is +5 giving a range of 10.0 which results in 0.078125 per step, or about 0.08. Because of internal rounding the slider value 0 may never be reached and -0.04 / +0.04 is the nearest value.  The X-Touch Mini has a button for each encoder and I use this to set the sliders to 0.

...by setting the min and max value of the X-Touch Mini to min=0 and max=101 and in the MIDI2LR config min=1 and max=101 (if I remember correctly, I'm not at home ATM). This way each step is exactly 2 and also the 0 position is reached by turning the encoders. The only side effect is that MIDI2LR sends a -102 if I turn it all the way to the left, but that is just ignored by LR.
The long, unreadable numbers like 32.8125 annoyed me ;-)

[Lev Flitman]

I can confirm that it works exactly like this. I've had my X-Touch Mini set up this way for the last several months. Took me some time to figure out that in order to make LED indicators centered when the slider in 0 position the min and max values should be 1 and 101 instead of 0 and 100 both in MIDI2LR and controller firmware. Although, I still can't understand why.

I was also able to configure the X-Touch slider to turn the lights on and off, here is how:

- set the slider values to min=0 and max=1 in the firmware

- set CC Message Type to Two's Compliment and resolution to 1

- assign CC to key combination (Ctrl+Shift+L)

Now each time the slider passes the center position it will send the same assigned command to Lightroom. I use it all the time for turning the lights off and on, but it can also be used for zooming, before/after view, shadow/highlight clipping display and pretty much anything that works as a toggle.

Keep in mind though, that it only works while the main Lightroom windows is in focus.