Control/Dimming Is miniStageConsole reliable?

[wturner]

My church is doing a Passion Play a couple of weeks after Easter. Last two times around, I loaded up our Leprecon LP-624 with all the cues it could hold in the stack (50) and operated it manually. But now our board is starting to act flakey, I need more cues, and I want to drive everything off MIDI control so I only have a single cue list to worry about. (Planning to use Palladium as the driver.) I am looking for a free/inexpensive lighting package to use. I only have three requirements:

1. Free, or at least cheap enough to buy myself and call a donation.
2. Works with my Enttec DMX-USB Pro.
3. Can work a cue list and have the "GO" button be triggered via MIDI.

I have recently come across what looks like the perfect candidate: miniStageConsole, from Chromakinetics. It is very simple, which is fine--we only have 18 DMX channels in use...and all for dimmers (no movers or fancy stuff). It lets me build a cue list as long as I want, and even adds a "follow" time feature that we don't have available on the LP board. So far, so good...right?

But unfortunately it has two issues. First, there is a bug in it somewhere with how it handles the "PLAY CUE xxx" task. It will play the cue I ask for, but not before flashing wildly to another cue first. So I'm limited to just using a "GO" (to next cue) trigger. Second, and more serious, it has crashed several times in rehearsals...locking up on me to the point where even the Task Manager couldn't shake it loose! (Had to reboot.) Now granted, I was using it on a PC with the other programs...but still I'm worried. Last practice (yesterday) I moved it to a separate PC by itself and triggered it via MIDI, and it behaved itself just fine...so maybe that's the answer.

Anyway, my question (finally!) is this: Does anyone have any experience using miniStageConsole in a show, and would you feel comfortable counting on it? Alternately, does anyone have any other suggestions that might be worth considering. A couple of things I have considered, but that don't work for me right now:

• Chamsys MagicQ. I have heard nothing but praise for this product, and have tried it and become quite a fan of it myself. BUT...the only way to MIDI it is to buy their proprietary $1700 interface. Not gonna happen! (Similar line of reasoning for Hog 3PC, etc.)
• LSC Clarity. Powerful with a clean look to it, and does everything I could possibly want. EXCEPT...it's a brand new program, and they haven't quite gotten the MIDI triggering bit in there just yet. (Probably show up the week after I need it, right? LOL)

So any comments on miniStageConsole's reliability, or alternative software suggestions would be welcome. Thanks in advance!

 

[Footer]

I would vote MagicQ and not use midi (any reason why you want to do that...)

Now, it would be possible to use 3rd party software that is essentially a keyboard emulator for midi. I don't know what this product is but I am sure it is out there. If you are doing something at simple at hit the go button that might be a solution. I have never done it, but there ya go.

 

[wturner]

I would vote MagicQ and not use midi (any reason why you want to do that...)

Now, it would be possible to use 3rd party software that is essentially a keyboard emulator for midi. I don't know what this product is but I am sure it is out there. If you are doing something at simple at hit the go button that might be a solution. I have never done it, but there ya go.

Yes, in fact, there is a very good reason I want to do that.

As the music & sound effects guy, I'm using Show Cue System for audio playback (which I highly recommend!) and already have enough to do keeping track of when to play what with that. This year we have lost our sound board operator (and the full-time job of managing all those microphone channels!), but fortunately we have also acquired a new Yamaha LS9 digital mixer. Enter Palladium, from CH Sound Design, to the rescue. This is a very slick program (which I also highly recommend!) designed for just our problem...in that we can set up a cue list to drive the mixer and manage all the microphone channels via MIDI. But Palladium can drive all sorts of other things, too, and since SCS can also be triggered via MIDI...I can use it to integrate the two cue lists and run one application--with only ONE cue list to keep track of--and do both jobs.

What I really need to be able to do is to add lighting to that and put the light cues on the same cue list....with Palladium triggering those changes, too. So the plan is that all by my lonesome self I can run ONE cue list, but be handling the sound playback, and the lighting, and the mixing board all at the same time. I've actually tried it...and it really does work--quite well, in fact. The only piece of the puzzle I'm not confident of is whether or not miniStageConsole is robust enough to bank a show on. But I really DON'T want to have to try to keep track of two applications & cue lists at the same time....hence no MagicQ or Clarity.

Having said all that, your second comment is a WONDERFUL suggestion!! I had never thought of that, but shortly after reading your post I found just such a program--Bome's MIDI Translator. Talk about slick...this little gem will let you map practically any MIDI signal to keystokes or mouse clicks of your choice. So I went home and tried it out....and it works! I can put the lighting program--any program I like--on a second PC, send it whatever MIDI signal I choose, and map that to a command the light program understands.

For a test, I set up MagicQ with a cue list on playback 1, had Palladium send over a typical NOTE ON message, had Bome's map that to the letter 'Q', and MagicQ dutifully "heard" 'Playback #1 GO' just as if I'd pressed Q on that PC itself. I ran the same experiment with Clarity--changing the mapping from 'Q' to 'F1'--and it was equally happy.

Problem solved! Thanks for the tip...