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software for macs

Discussion in 'General Advice' started by evolutiontheatre, Mar 20, 2007.

  1. evolutiontheatre

    evolutiontheatre Member

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    Location:
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    anyone know of any software for macs? specifically perhaps a lighting design program, like wysiwyg?

    and if there's any free stuff, that would be cool too!
     
    evolutiontheatre, Mar 20, 2007
    #1
  2. Chris Chapman

    Chris Chapman Active Member

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    Occupation:
    Technical Director
    Location:
    Greenville, Michigan, United States
    Go with VectorWorks since that is almost the industry standard. Dig around online and you might find an old, creaky copy of MacLux Pro. It won't run on Intel based Macs though. VectorWorks runs nicely in OS X environtments.

    Chris Chapman
    TD, Greenville Performing Arts Center
     
    Chris Chapman, Mar 20, 2007
    #2
  3. soundlight

    soundlight Well-Known Member

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    MacLux Pro is a great program for really basic stuff. You can learn how to plot in about twenty minutes. Really easy, but absolutely no 3D visualization.
     
    soundlight, Mar 20, 2007
    #3
  4. chieftfac

    chieftfac Active Member

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    You can still get MacLux Pro online at their site... and I've been using it on my MacBook Pro 17 for almost a year now... They are starting the development of a new program call LXFree... Though it is beta right now, it has good possibilities. Like Chris said... Vectorworks is just about top dog in the industry for us Mac folks...
     
    chieftfac, Feb 9, 2008
    #4
  5. phil000

    phil000 Active Member

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    vw 08 is free to students :)

    Edit: see the CB Glossary for the link. -DL
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 11, 2008
    phil000, Feb 10, 2008
    #5
  6. propmonkey

    propmonkey Well-Known Member

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    what about lighting offline editors? so far i found etc's eos for mac but cant find a strand, grandma, hog, or any others
     
    propmonkey, Sep 16, 2008
    #6
  7. icewolf08

    icewolf08 CBMod CB Mods

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    Occupation:
    Controls Technician - TAIT Towers
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    That is why god invented Parallels and VMWare. So you can run OLEs for Windoze and DOS based consoles. In fact, if done correctly with those pieces of software you can, theoretically, turn your computer into a console.
     
    icewolf08, Sep 16, 2008
    #7
  8. jdandreas09

    jdandreas09 Member

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    that is what i use
    you can get a free full copy if you fill out the student request form
    a week after i filled it out they sent me a dvd to instal it
    i have yet to pay a sent
    and there tech suport people are realy helpfull and nice to a person who dosent know what they are doing
    i do not know if you can get 2009 for educational use
    but i im useing 2008
     
    jdandreas09, Oct 8, 2008
    #8
  9. Pip

    Pip Active Member

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    Occupation:
    A2/ Sound Designer/ Stagehand
    Location:
    Manitou Springs, CO
    Yep! Works great, I'm running it too! The only thing is you get little, very unobtrusive watermarks on the top and bottom of your pages.
     
    Pip, Oct 8, 2008
    #9
  10. jdandreas09

    jdandreas09 Member

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    yes but it is worth it
     
    jdandreas09, Oct 9, 2008
    #10
  11. jerekb

    jerekb Member

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    What about audio cueing and stuff? I like iTunes but you cant play two things at once and is there anything that incorporates sound cues and light cues together I love cross integration. And what about midi isn't that stuff usually processed through a computer and if so how does the stuff work on a mac.. USB? Cause like iMac only has one sound input and one out put same goes for the mac books/pro so whats the best option there... USB again? (well unless you spend like $10K on a nice mac pro.) come on people talk. help us out here. ideas?? ideas??
     
    jerekb, Oct 18, 2008
    #11
  12. icewolf08

    icewolf08 CBMod CB Mods

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    Occupation:
    Controls Technician - TAIT Towers
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    There isn't any software that I know of that directly runs lighting and sound cues from the same program. This does not mean that you can't have a unified control system though. There is software like QLab, Macs Cue, and Ex Cues for running sound cues. QLab is probably the most full featured of the three, capable of running sound and media cues as well as sending MIDI commands.

    MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a control protocol that has been adopted by the theatre world for what we call MIDI Show Control or MSC. MIDI was originally designed to allow musical instruments to talk to a computer for the purposes of communicating what an instrument is doing. MIDI does not contain any audio signal at all. MIDI can be used with any modern computer system. You can get MIDI PCI card or USB MIDI devices. The number of audio in/out ports on a computer has no bearing on MIDI.

    The real question is what you want to be able to do with MIDI. You can use MSC to trigger cues on many theatre devices. If you have software capable of sending MSC commands you can control things like lighting consoles, digital sound consoles, other computers, etc. By the same token, if you have software on the computer configured to take MSC commands you can have many other devices control the computer

    On the flip side, you can also use products like the Rosco Keystroke to trigger cues on your computer from the lighting console. The Keystroke can be configured to "push" different keys or combinations of keys when it is fed certain DMX values from the console. Keystroke works with both PC and Mac.
     
    icewolf08, Oct 18, 2008
    #12
  13. willbb123

    willbb123 Active Member

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    Is there any good wysiwyg software out there for mac? I just want something simple.
    I have vectorworks 2008 but I can not figure out how to make my 2d plot 3d...
     
    willbb123, Mar 21, 2009
    #13
  14. erosing

    erosing The Royal Renaissance Man

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    erosing, Mar 21, 2009
    #14

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