Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

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MarkThewessen
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Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by MarkThewessen »

We would so much love to have the abilty to assign and control resolume with a 16bit DMX possibility.

moving around the X en Y axis or zooming with old school stuttering 8bit DMX is a bit 18 september 2018...

Please make this giant leap for video techs possible!
Much love!!!

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Arvol
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Arvol »

I'm not sure what console you're using, but on the MA you can set your encoder wheels to "Fine" or "Ultra" and get the same precision you're requesting for. On AVO if you press the Blue button next to your encoder wheel it gives you the same result as the MA process. And on the HOG.... Well no one uses the HOG! HA! :lol:

Does this give you some more control?

Empyfree
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Empyfree »

Arvol, he means to have 16bit support in Arena, which would mean assigning two channels per attribute. Not currently possible but would be very nice!

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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Arvol »

Empyfree wrote: Wed Sep 19, 2018 15:39 Arvol, he means to have 16bit support in Arena, which would mean assigning two channels per attribute. Not currently possible but would be very nice!
Yeah, I understand that, But I'm curious to what 16 bit will offer? I know what the differences are between 8 and 16 bit, but I have 6 tours currently out using 8 bit and with their encoders set to "Fine" (they don't even need them set to "Ultra") I haven't had any complaints about the control and amount of steps that are needed to control Resolume.

I guess I should also ask the OP, Is this request for incoming DMX or outgoing DMX?
AFAIK 8bit for incoming is more than enough for what I've had to control.

If you're trying to control X and Y and you don't need to move X to 7,000px but rather maybe 200-800, It would be nice to have the option to set in and out limits on DMX like you can on MIDI. This would reduce the amount of steps and reduce the jumpiness and stutters when moving, since 255 is now spanned across 600 steps, rather than 14,000 steps.
Does this logic make any sense?

Thanks

Empyfree
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Empyfree »

The “fine” buttons on all those consoles don’t do anything to the DMX resolution you can achieve on an 8 but attribute. They only really come into their own when controlling a 16 bit attribute.

I’m only familiar with Chamsys, on an 8 bit attribute the modifier key has the effect of slowing down the rotary encoder, but there are still only 256 steps to step through.

In comparison if you have a 16 bit attribute you can slowly wind through 65536 steps!

Real world example:
1) You are working on an a 8000 pixel wide canvas
2) You have already got a nice background, and now you want to animate a logo (200 pixel square) across the canvas to a position in the top right corner.
3) With 8 bit DMX control of the X position, carefully restricted to just the canvas size there are only 256 positions you can pick from across the canvas. Lets say your canvas has a real world size of 20 metres... that means each step is going to jump nearly 80mm.

4) With 16 bit control you’d be able to smoothly pan that logo across the screen, with sub pixel accuracy of position.

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Arvol
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Arvol »

Empyfree wrote: Wed Sep 19, 2018 20:18 The “fine” buttons on all those consoles don’t do anything to the DMX resolution you can achieve on an 8 but attribute. They only really come into their own when controlling a 16 bit attribute.

I’m only familiar with Chamsys, on an 8 bit attribute the modifier key has the effect of slowing down the rotary encoder, but there are still only 256 steps to step through.

In comparison if you have a 16 bit attribute you can slowly wind through 65536 steps!

Real world example:
1) You are working on an a 8000 pixel wide canvas
2) You have already got a nice background, and now you want to animate a logo (200 pixel square) across the canvas to a position in the top right corner.
3) With 8 bit DMX control of the X position, carefully restricted to just the canvas size there are only 256 positions you can pick from across the canvas. Lets say your canvas has a real world size of 20 metres... that means each step is going to jump nearly 80mm.

4) With 16 bit control you’d be able to smoothly pan that logo across the screen, with sub pixel accuracy of position.
Correct.
But in the mean time, you could build that animation within resolume as its own separate clip, and then just fire/cue it with DMX ;)
There are a ton if thing a person could animate with DMX midi, or OSC. But there are other more efficient ways for some of these things to be set and controlled as well.
For me personally, controlling something like a keystone or anything with a value well over 1,000 seems like a lot of extra work to be done via an external controller. It's do-able but how efficiently has it been achieved?

But yes, I'm on board for 16 bit DMX.

Empyfree
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Empyfree »

I don’t think it’s really needed for much other than position and rotation.

Those are the two things I’ve been frustrated with when DMX controlling a rig.

Menno
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Menno »

16-bit DMX is on our backlog but sadly not planned for anywhere in the near future right now.
I'm wondering though, do the dmx consoles have an option to select channel order or do they all do the same? eg can you choose rough / fine vs fine / rough?

Empyfree
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Empyfree »

I’ll investigate. Every lx fixture I’ve played with over the last 20 years has been rough/fine. But there could be some weirdos out there

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Arvol
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Re: Feature Request: 16bit DMX support

Post by Arvol »

Menno wrote: Thu Sep 20, 2018 15:55 16-bit DMX is on our backlog but sadly not planned for anywhere in the near future right now.
I'm wondering though, do the dmx consoles have an option to select channel order or do they all do the same? eg can you choose rough / fine vs fine / rough?
AVO and MA have normal, fine, ultra. and that works for about everything I need DMX to control.
The only feature I would like to add would be to set and "In" and "Out" point for DMX values, kind of like how MIDI is currently setup to do. This could help take a 14,000+ parameter and limit it down to 1,000. and that will help when you only have 255 steps to play with in 8 bit DMX. Now instead of moving your layer's X value to +7,000 when DMX is at 255, it only would go to +500 or whatever you set it to. Does that make any sense? haha.
Thanks

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