OSC Flying Faders

[Rich Walsh]

Out of intellectual curiosity, I've had a half-hearted attempt at maxing something in MaxMSP that will map a MIDI controller to OSC for QLab – but have run out of steam due to these limitations:

1. I have never used Max before!
2. I only have Max For Live, which is proving to be an obstacle to getting MIDI into it… (Or, at least, being able to troubleshoot where it's getting lost.)
3. More importantly, I can make a slider that sends the appropriate commands but it sends TOO MANY and TOO FAST, which creates considerable sluggishness. There must be some clever trick for only sending the OSC commands every few ms or so, but I've no idea how to do that. The QLab Remote app must implement some kind of bandwidth filtering to achieve responsive faders, but how it does that is beyond me!
4. Even assuming I could ever work out how to obtain an echo from QLab and parse it, it strikes me that if you have a fader sending OSC to QLab sending OSC to the fader it's going to either fly to one end or refuse to move at all. Is there some clever way of disengaging the input to a fader when it is being moved and generating the output itself?

It's been interesting to discover quite how clever control surfaces are! I'm going to go back to concentrating on something else though… Anyone have any hints if I ever revisit this?

Rich

[Brendan Aanes]

In regular Max/MSP you can easily throttle commands - use the speedlim object. I don't know Max for Live very well but it should be the same set of objects.

To deal with problem #4, you want to filter the OSC input (from Qlab) to your UI slider such that it only takes input when the mouse is up, or such (there's probably a better criteria out there). There is actually a mousefilter object that does this. And some others (mousestate I think).

Hope that helps. You can solve problem #2 by using regular Max which is quite easy to get MIDI into...

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[Sam Kusnetz]

Hi Rich

> Even assuming I could ever work out how to obtain an echo from QLab
> and parse it, it strikes me that if you have a fader sending OSC to
> QLab sending OSC to the fader it's going to either fly to one end or
> refuse to move at all. Is there some clever way of disengaging the
> input to a fader when it is being moved and generating the output itself?

While I don't disagree with Brendan's suggestion of using mousefilter,
I've had great success with MIDI feedback-prevention using the "bondo"
object. It's not what's it's designed for, but running incoming MIDI
through a bondo configured like this: "bondo 0 20" has the effect of
filtering out any messages that happen simultaneously (or nearly
simultaneously) with identical outgoing messages.

After gaining so much AppleScript knowledge from you, I must say it's
very nice to be able to try to return the favor!

Cheerio
Sam

--
Sam Kusnetz
QLab Support Operative
s...@figure53.com

[gtwi...@yahoo.com]

Hi Qlabers! I not being versed in the ways of the AS, have a request. I need a script I can put in a bundled workspace folder that will 'time bomb' that folder on a specific date, I would like for it to delete all audio and workspace folders. Thanks in advance.

George

Sent from my iPhone

[Rich Walsh]

On 2 Jun 2013, at 18:23, gtwi...@yahoo.com wrote:

> Hi Qlabers! I not being versed in the ways of the AS, have a request. I need a script I can put in a bundled workspace folder that will 'time bomb' that folder on a specific date, I would like for it to delete all audio and workspace folders. Thanks in advance.

Wow, that would be embarrassing if it went wrong and deleted the show you'd been paid to provide early, wouldn't it!? Do you really not trust people that much?

You could have a lot of fun learning how to do this with launchd and a shell script, or make an app with AppleScript Editor that runs at login, checks if today is the day and then uses either the Finder or 'do shell script "rm -r"' (etc) to delete a bunch of stuff.

With UK-formatted dates, this would remove a folder called "DeleteMe" from your Desktop today:

if short date string of (current date) is "03/06/13" then
do shell script "rm -r ~/Desktop/DeleteMe"
end if

See "man rm" in Terminal for more. Good luck not deleting something important by accident...

Rich

[gtwi...@yahoo.com]

Unfortunately, this particular bunch has given me solid reasons to not trust them, it is also been a request of the entity that actually owns the show. Not crazy about the idea, only trying to accommodate my clients request.

Thanks

Sent from my iPhone

[Paul Gotch]

On Sun, Jun 02, 2013 at 06:29:05PM -0500, gtwi...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Unfortunately, this particular bunch has given me solid reasons to
> not trust them, it is also been a request of the entity that actually
> owns the show. Not crazy about the idea, only trying to accommodate
> my clients request.

Actually installing anything on the clients machine to do this
surreptitiously would almost certainly fall foul of the computer misuse
act in the UK I don't know if there are equivalents where ever you are.

This leave you using a Script cue in QLab itself but robustly deleting
the audio *without* knowing where the bundle has been copied to and
without the possibility of deleting anything else by mistake might be
problematic and again would cause your problems if you manage to delete
some of the clients data by mistake.

How clueful is the end user? If they have zero clue and the machine is
yours then you configure an account to:

- Enable Parental Controls
- Use Simple Finder
- Only Allow QLab and nothing else to be launched
- Open the show file on login

The 'Simple' Finder only allows access to 'Applications' 'Documents'
and 'Shared' folders. So placing the audio assets anywhere else on the
machine QLab will be able to see them but the user will not be able to
navigate to them and see them in the finder.

If the client has non-zero clue then deleting the bundled assets isn't going to
help you as the malicious user will just have copied them elsewhere.
Additionally it's possible to get round the precautions outlined above
trivially by booting the machine from external media however this
means they have to have slightly more clue than just dragging files
around.

-p
--
Paul Gotch
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[gtwi...@yahoo.com]

Thanks.

Sent from my iPhone