How to trigger the performance buttons via MIDI

By default, the performance buttons on the “Perform” tab can be triggered by notes sent on MIDI channel 14.

The MIDI note numbers required are displayed on the buttons. For example, here MIDI note 10 on channel 14 would trigger the “Gears” preset, and note 26 would trigger the “Graceful” preset.

If required, you can change the MIDI channel from the Preferences window:

Fixture Profiles and Visualiser Icons Explained

You may find that when you load a fixture into Show Buddy Active, it displays too many icons, or not enough icons on the visualiser, or doesn’t display colours correctly. This indicates that the fixture needs some tweaking to work with SBA.

SBA examines each fixture to find the “heads”, and each head is displayed on the visualiser as a separate icon. For example, an RGB parcan has one head, an 8-channel dimmer pack has 8 heads, an LED strip with 6 RGBAW sections has 6 heads.

SBA creates heads according to these rules:

• If there is at least one Dimmer channel, and no RGBAW channels, create a head for each Dimmer channel;
• If there is at least one RGB/RGBA/RGBW/RGBAW block, create a head for each block;
• Otherwise, create a single head.

In addition:

• RGBAW and Dimmer channels must be defined as type “D” in the fixture file.
• RGBAW must be named “red”, “Red”, “R”, “green”, “Green”, “G” etc in the fixture file.

These simple rules will cover most popular fixtures. However, the more fiddly fixtures present a problem – not just for SBA, but for every DMX visualiser out there. I’m thinking of those ‘adventurous’ fixtures that try to combine a laser, two moonflowers, a toaster oven and an electric toothbrush on one convenient t-bar.

For those more complex fixtures, it’s usually best to split it into several fixture files , one for each logical section of fixtures.

Modify Channels window explained.

The “Modify Channels” window is available in Show Buddy Active 2.3.0 or later. It lets you make a variety of tweaks to the transmitted DMX data – crucially, without editing any of your presets. Some useful applications include:

• Applying dimmer curves to the colour channels of LED fixtures.
• Forcing channels to transmit fixed values (e.g. to disable unwanted effects channels).
• Restricting the range of channels (e.g. to limit the maximum brightness of LED floods).
• Modifying the pan/tilt ranges of movers at each venue – without editing presets!

Controls overview

1. This list shows every channel patched in your lighting rig. You can select channels for editing here, or by selecting channels as normal in the “Controls” tab of the main window.
2. Create multiple profiles and switch between them as required. For example, you could have profiles with different rig brightness levels, or profiles with moving head positions tweaked for different venues.
3. “Override” locks selected channels at the value set by the slider.
4. The display shows the current tweaks applied.
5. “Symmetric” and “Curve shape” modify the dimmer curve applied.
6. “Min and Max DMX val” limit the range of possible channels values.
7. “Scale” and “Shift” will offset or multiply the DMX values transmitted.
8. “Reset” will revert all channel settings to the default values.

Dimmer curves

Here, we apply a logarithmic dimming curve to the RGB channels of the “Wash3” fixture. This can improve the intensity and colour response of fixtures with simple LED drivers.

Overriding channel values

Here, we override some redundant channels on “Wash3” to a fixed value of zero. Often, fixtures have a range of custom channels for controlling built-in effects or other special features. If we are not interested in using these special features, we can override them and the corresponding DMX channels will remain locked at the specified value.

Additionally, when “Hide unused channels” in activated on the main window, any overriden channels are also hidden from the fader rack, leaving you to focus on the channels that matter.

Limiting channel ranges

Here, we limit the maximum dimmer level of all RGBA channels in fixtures CD1-CD4. This effectively halves the brightness of those 4 fixtures.

This is useful for fine tuning the brightness of sections of your rig at the venue, without needing to edit any presets. For example, if a spotlight is blinding the performer in one particular venue, simply reduce “max DMX val” for the spotlight dimmer channel.

Modifying mover position & range at a venue

Here, we scale the Pan & Tilt channels of “Wash4” down to 80%, effectively reducing the stage area covered by that mover – again, without editing any presets.

Use the Min/Max/Scale/Shift controls to manipulate the range of moving heads as required. For example, if you need to prevent movers scanning the crowd at the venue, tweak the min/max values for the Tilt channels until the movers stay on the stage.