Hello, and My Project

[andrewbarton]

Hey everybody,
My name is Andrew, currently a college student in TN, and majoring in Theater. I have been in lighting since I was 16, at that point I was TD for a community theater, LD for a private show, and I played Apprentice with Productions and Concerts Inc. a couple of times when I lived in Atlanta (I was an apprentice designer for Star 94's Jingle Jam and a few other events.). I am also working on a project that I want to make public.
I am learning how to program in Objective-C, having already learned AppleScript. I am designing a Mac based program titled OneShow. My idea is that when we have repetitive shows such as dances and musicals, we normally already have a timeline of the music. OneShow will be a new way for LD's to manage lighting during a show that has a predetermined timeline predominately based on sound and music. Rather than having to hit "Go" several times throughout the show, OneShow allows you to upload music to a Mac, view the music in a wave-form format, and set cues to auto fire when the timeline runs over the cues trigger.
There are two wave form tracks that alternate with which song or piece is currently active, so you can still view and edit last minute change in the blind on the next track (you can blind on the active track as well). When a "Song Set" (a group of multiple songs or tracks) is completed, you have the option of "Hold", "Hold ___ (mm:ss)", or "Go". You can hold, blackout, and go anytime in the set. The intention of offering this at the end of the set is to work out real-time set changes from act to act and set to set.
Theres also the option to use a "scroller mode." In Scroller, you simply have to set a scene or macro into a box (the screen has a 30 box by 30 box display), and fire at will. (This concept was brought from my first mover console, the Pearl.)
I have a fellow student who is building the dongle that will connect the unit to a Mac. The dongle (which is really called the OneBoard) will have 10 programable LCD hotkeys above a touch screen panel, and another 10 hotkeys below it, as well asdedicated Go, Hold and Blackout keys. It will also feature 4 universes and stereo (L/R) 1/4" audio out.
The real goal of OneShow is to eliminate the "lag" that occurs sometimes when we realize the cue is right in front of us, while optimizing the ability to make changes to the next scene by opening up the ability to focus on another scene behind the one that is active. By setting the cues in the Waveform, and firing from within the song ( similar to timecode but in one dedicated system ) the need for constant attention to the current scene dissipates.
I need some help. OneShow is still in the conceptual phase. I am still learning Ob-C. I would like to get the community on board and get some help. If your interested, send me a pm. Comments, ideas for improvement, and questions are welcome. I know some programs like this already exist, but I'm working on making this freeware based (with the need to purchase a dongle unfortunately.)

Andrew

 

[xander]

My initial thought is that in musicals, the music is live, so how does that work? I can see this being a useful instrument in a dance concert where the music is played off of some media through the sound system, but I don't really understand how it would be incorporated into theater.

 

[Footer]

Sounds like the Vista console in the programming style.

It would be great for dance recitals, horrible for legit dance. Dance should be called via the movement on stage, not by the stopwatch.

For straight theatre it would not work unless you could link it to a click track (which few shows outside of touring productions with limited musicians use).

I would highly suggest that you shy away from propreitary hardware. Many open source types hate those words and those are the people you are going to want to use this. You might want to look at doing an interface with the openUSB interface and incorporate something like the X-keys device. You need to at least make it operable without the dongle/wing if you want to be able to sell wings later on. Chamsys MagicQ is actually very successful with this business model. I don't own a wing now, but my wife's venue and my venue will both be buying one the second we need a new console.

I would also work some stuff in to operate it in more of a traditional mode. No one is going to want to spend money on such a niche product.

 

[Sony]

Yea, I hate to rain on your parade but unfortunately like Footer said, what you are proposing has already been done. Check out the Jands Vista series consoles and their Timeline programming style, they are quickly becoming very popular.

 

[shiben]

this sounds a lot like QLab as well, unless I am not understanding something... and thats free. Anyhow, sounds useful for the school talent show, school dance shows, but I doubt that much professional stuff will want to ditch the human controller.

 

[ChrisAshworth]

Hi Andrew,

It sounds like a cool project.

Speaking from experience, I'd recommend going ahead and just doing your best to make something. Start small, make something, iterate. Identify the core value of what's cool about your vision and make that central piece of it really kick ass. Narrow in on that part. Keep it simple at first.

I can say from experience that if you think you can do this, and if you think you see a problem that you can solve that other people aren't solving, you should go for it. If I had listened to the people who told me there were already too many audio playback applications and I was doomed to failure, I never would have made QLab.

Best of luck,
Chris

 

[RJ917]

I say good luck and go for it. You may find a better way to build the mouse trap. Imagine if someone told Henry Ford not to waste his time building the model T, there are already similar things out there that do that!

 

[derekleffew]

Yes, but... if Edison tried to introduce the incandescent lamp today, conservative papers would run the headline "Candle-Making Industry Threatened."

 

[kicknargel]

I wonder if it's worth considering turning this into a show control device rather than a console. Create the looks in whatever console you have that already has the architecture for it, and use this system simply as a new method of firing those cues.

 

[JChenault]

As I understand it, your plan is to run the sound from the mac, and trigger the lighting from various points in the music timeline. ( Alternatively you will get timecodes from the device playing the music into the mac and trigger from the timecode information).

As mentioned before, why restrict yourself to lighting? And why try to reinvent the wheel for a lighting console. This sounds more like a show-control situation to me. IE you would build a general purpose engine to associate and easily set cues in a timeline. When the cue fires you would send a signal to any other device that needs a cue. ( Using current technology this would probably be a MIDI signal. A more interesting project would be to make it be any kind of signal required such as a UDP packed that you could configure from the application.)

If you try to open up the design to control lights, you do two things. One you make it a much bigger project. Secondly, you actually restrict the usefulness of the device. Let's say you make this a lighting board. What do you do when the next show wants an LED wall to be triggered from the system. Maybe you want to drive a cue light system from the timeline. Lots of things you may find useful if you make this a more general purpose tool.

And a final note as a software engineer - why objective C. It is not a terribly mainstream language and seems to be dieing a slow death. ( Note - I am more active in the Linux and Windows environment - but I explored the language a few years ago and it seemed moribund at that time). If your purpose in this project is to learn how to write code with the plan to do it professionally, I would suggest Java or C#. ( on a Mac that would be Java). These languages are better supported, and more mainstream.

Good luck with the project. I strongly suggest you keep it simple. Keep it agile ( look up articles on agile programing ). Focus on building the smallest application you can that adds value - then keep adding more value to it ( instead of trying to build the ultimate tool the first go around)

 

[ChrisAshworth]

And a final note as a software engineer - why objective C. It is not a terribly mainstream language and seems to be dieing a slow death. ( Note - I am more active in the Linux and Windows environment - but I explored the language a few years ago and it seemed moribund at that time). If your purpose in this project is to learn how to write code with the plan to do it professionally, I would suggest Java or C#. ( on a Mac that would be Java). These languages are better supported, and more mainstream.

A respectful note on this:

Java is dead on the Mac. One of many examples: Apple long ago dropped support for the Java APIs to CoreAudio.

If you want to make a native Mac app, Objective C is the only right answer.

Windows & Linux are of course a different beast. Objective C is not a good choice if you want to develop on either of those platforms. But on the Mac, Obj-C is the only way to go. (And it's actually a pretty swank little language, as it turns out. Plus, Apple is continuing to develop the language, adding some cool new features to the language in OS 10.6.)