Re: Qlab CL3/CL editor python/applescript control

[Gunther J. Kibelkstis]

I believe it is simpler to add cues to control the channels and faders of the microphones by Midi Note and also Midi Control Change. 

I've done this many times successfully on many digital consoles.

Em segunda-feira, 6 de abril de 2020 17:08:06 UTC-3, Jake Watt escreveu:

Hi sawm,

I'm trying to control a CL3 with either Applescript and the CL Editor for OSX or the CL3 and Python, these two options will be controlled by the QLab 4 machine.

My main aim is to have the channel color change on the console, for a technician who changes out quite often, so that they can see which singer out of the 6 are going to be the main and which singers are going to be backing singers. My reason for wanting to do it this way is so that there isn't a need for a script (timecode or just paper) as I feel this will be more distracting trying to read ahead and lines will be missed, also the lead singer often changes throughout the song.

If anyone who has tried anything similar and got it to actually work, I have currently got it set up to be cueing the channel on the desk but this gets very annoying when you don't want to hear just the vocals blasting out your monitors.

Thanks

[Jake Watt]

Hi Gunther 

That was my first suggestion to the install team however they did not want the techs to just rely on the timecode mixing, I do agree this would be a thousand times easier

[Rich Walsh]

I'd assumed Gunther meant you could assign the channel colour to a MIDI parameter and send a message from QLab to change it – but sadly you can't. You also can't address the channel colour through the Python library (see the command_list pdf that comes with the Python Script Template). The editor program isn't scriptable, so you'd be entering a world of pain trying to do anything with that…

What you can do is create a Scene Memory that only recalls "INPUT NAME" (which appears to include the channel colour), and trigger that with MIDI. I'd have to re-read the bits of the manual about recall safe and focus recall to work out exactly how to do that, but I'm sure it's possible in principle.

Rich

[Tim Long]

Hi Jake,

I agree with Rich that Scene focus might be the easiest.

Do you have midi running from QLab to the CL? If so, I can think of a couple possibilities.

I believe you can control the output of the cue function from a Midi CC message so you could keep your current system of lighting up CUE, and just have the output turned off. If you actually need to listen to something, that'll be an extra step. It's been a while since I've been at the console, much less looked at the options of the Midi CC table.

You can control anything/everything on the console with Parameter Changes. Yamaha has an excel sheet to download which details all this. You would need to be somewhat comfortable with System Exclusive messages & reading hex values.

Andy over at http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/ wrote a program a few years back called YammieQ that could do what you want. It's been a while so I'm not sure what the status of that program is (and/or its ability to run on OSX), but I seem to remember accessing CL editor & the CL itself with no midi involved, but midi was also an option. I did some beta-testing of it but due to time & workflow issues I had to drop it. However, it inspired me to look at Parameter Changes & it's been downhill ever since (in a good way).

Tim

--

"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." -- Mark Twain

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From: ql...@googlegroups.com <ql...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Jake Watt <jake.w...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 6, 2020 2:08 PM
To: QLab <ql...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [QLab] Qlab CL3/CL editor python/applescript control

 

Hi sawm,

I'm trying to control a CL3 with either Applescript and the CL Editor for OSX or the CL3 and Python, these two options will be controlled by the QLab 4 machine.

My main aim is to have the channel color change on the console, for a technician who changes out quite often, so that they can see which singer out of the 6 are going to be the main and which singers are going to be backing singers. My reason for wanting to do it this way is so that there isn't a need for a script (timecode or just paper) as I feel this will be more distracting trying to read ahead and lines will be missed, also the lead singer often changes throughout the song.

If anyone who has tried anything similar and got it to actually work, I have currently got it set up to be cueing the channel on the desk but this gets very annoying when you don't want to hear just the vocals blasting out your monitors.

Thanks

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[Rich Walsh]

I'd not come across that Excel file before: it took long time to find it! ("MIDI Paramete [sic] Change List (CL/QL)").

It was pretty clear that Studio Manager was using SysEx to communicate with the console, but as there was no driver installation for QL Editor (for example) I'd actually assumed MIDI wasn't involved any more… Must be going over IP now too as console connection is via network!

It's not the clearest documentation – can't see a definition of some of the variables used – but I think this might change the channel colour:

F0 43 1n 3E 19 01 01 1E 00 01 cc cc dd dd dd dd dd F7

"n" is presumably the device ID, which the documents say somewhere is the same as the MIDI channel set on the device. "cc cc" is presumably a double-byte representation of the channel number, eg: "00 01" for channel 1. "dd dd dd dd dd" is clearly the data, which in this case is listed as a number between 0 and 7 to represent the colour (although there appear to be 9 colours not 8?). It's not clear whether orange is "00 00 00 00 01" or just "01".

So this might work (for MIDI channel 1):

F0 43 10 3E 19 01 01 1E 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 00 01 F7

Or it might be this:

F0 43 10 3E 19 01 01 1E 00 01 00 01 01 F7

Next time I get near a console I will try to find out. Since these messages are apparently used when slaving consoles I'm going to assume they work over the 5-pin DIN connections.

Rich

[Tim Long]

Hi Rich,

Yes, you're pretty close. It took a long time of reading the manual, looking at the excel list & looking at data from the console before things totally clicked for me.

A few general things. First, the messages are always 18-bytes if you are sending data to the console (aka "hey console, do this"), and 13-bytes if you are requesting data (aka "hey console, what is the color on channel 1?").

Second, all the numbers are zero-based, so channel 1 would be 00 and channel 5 would be 04, etc. There are a couple edge-cases where what one would think it should be varies from reality, but not this specific question. Also, the numbers are always in hex. Thus channel 72 would be "47". I can't tell you the number of times I've put in the decimal number in & seen a different channel change.

Third, on the actual console, you have to enable the Parameter Change TX/RX & set the midi channel to what you want. Yes, it's kinda obvious, but when you load an old file and it doesn't work... been there, done that.

Fourth, if I'm at the console, I find it easiest to "do the thing" while looking at the data on a midi monitor program. Then I cross-check with the excel file as there are times extra messages will popup on the monitor. These mean something to Yamaha, but are not documented. Also, I always connect with physical midi.

In the reference manual, I'm looking at the data list in the back (PDF page 326 of the version 5 manual). There's a bookmark for "MIDI Data Format" with section 4 being "PARAMETER CHANGE details", with section 4.1 being the one of interest.

A few specifics about your example:

F0 43 1n 3E 19 01 01 1E 00 01 cc cc dd dd dd dd dd F7

Yes, "n" would be the midi channel number on the console (0-15). For example, with midi channel 1, the byte would be "10". In my world, my CL is on channel 4, thus that byte for me is "13".

"cc cc" is the channel number (in this instance) but INPUT 01 would be "00 00", INPUT 06 would be "00 05", etc. The comment column in the spreadsheet will tell you a table to look at elsewhere in the spreadsheet so you can put the right data in.

In terms of channel color, yes, orange would be "00 00 00 00 01", as you have to have the correct number of bytes. The 9th color is off/black/no color. The colors follow the order of the right-click popup in CL editor from top (blue, 0) to bottom (off, 8).

Tim

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"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." -- Mark Twain

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From: 'Rich Walsh' via QLab <ql...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 6:29 PM
To: ql...@googlegroups.com <ql...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [QLab] Qlab CL3/CL editor python/applescript control

 

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[Rich Walsh]

On 8 Apr 2020, at 21:07, Tim Long <tim...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi Rich,

Yes, you're pretty close. It took a long time of reading the manual, looking at the excel list & looking at data from the console before things totally clicked for me.

A few general things. First, the messages are always 18-bytes if you are sending data to the console (aka "hey console, do this"), and 13-bytes if you are requesting data (aka "hey console, what is the color on channel 1?").

Second, all the numbers are zero-based, so channel 1 would be 00 and channel 5 would be 04, etc. There are a couple edge-cases where what one would think it should be varies from reality, but not this specific question. Also, the numbers are always in hex. Thus channel 72 would be "47". I can't tell you the number of times I've put in the decimal number in & seen a different channel change.

Third, on the actual console, you have to enable the Parameter Change TX/RX & set the midi channel to what you want. Yes, it's kinda obvious, but when you load an old file and it doesn't work... been there, done that.

Fourth, if I'm at the console, I find it easiest to "do the thing" while looking at the data on a midi monitor program. Then I cross-check with the excel file as there are times extra messages will popup on the monitor. These mean something to Yamaha, but are not documented. Also, I always connect with physical midi.

In the reference manual, I'm looking at the data list in the back (PDF page 326 of the version 5 manual). There's a bookmark for "MIDI Data Format" with section 4 being "PARAMETER CHANGE details", with section 4.1 being the one of interest.

A few specifics about your example:

F0 43 1n 3E 19 01 01 1E 00 01 cc cc dd dd dd dd dd F7

Yes, "n" would be the midi channel number on the console (0-15). For example, with midi channel 1, the byte would be "10". In my world, my CL is on channel 4, thus that byte for me is "13".

"cc cc" is the channel number (in this instance) but INPUT 01 would be "00 00", INPUT 06 would be "00 05", etc. The comment column in the spreadsheet will tell you a table to look at elsewhere in the spreadsheet so you can put the right data in.

That was a genuine mistake: I was rushing past this while thinking about the data chunk and trying not to get bogged down in the specifics of how channel numbers map to values ("CH TABLE #01"). Oddly, that table goes up to 87 but the "Max Ch" column says 95…?

In terms of channel color, yes, orange would be "00 00 00 00 01", as you have to have the correct number of bytes. The 9th color is off/black/no color. The colors follow the order of the right-click popup in CL editor from top (blue, 0) to bottom (off, 8).

Similarly to above, the "Max" column for kIconBgColor has the value 7, not 8. I don't think the documentation is up to Yamaha's normal standards?

Still, very useful to know that you can do even more than I'd previously realised with MIDI and Yamaha consoles.

Rich