Dmx shortcuts manager issues

[ginnteq]

Hi.

We're having major drawbacks using Dmx profiles in Arena due to the issue in how the software handles presets and preset files.

First and foremost, the auto-save feature presents major flaw, as it always overwrites all loaded files in the presets directory. This means that tracing preset file changes is impossible as all file timestamps get updated, but moreso, editing preset outside of the software is practically not possible as all files always get overwritten with the content in memory of Arena itself.
This points to another issue, since Arena only reads and loads presets at boot time, not on opening shortcut editor, nor on loading new show. This in turn becomes impractical when host VJs are using DMX shortcuts, as we cannot just reload the show but have to restart entire software. This is important because output device controls are dropped/lost when software is closed.

We're at a point where we are deciding on whether we would include dmx in our integration flow or stay away and do additional work to move to OSC entirely.

With that in mind, we'd mostly appreciate any feedback with severity level and potential roadmap/timeframe approximation, if available, as this would help us decide on how to proceed.

Shortly, if the team does not deem this as critical, and/or fix for this isn't to be expected within the next few months, we'd appreciate such response.

Thank you.

[Zoltán]

Which Resolume version are you using?
Presets should not get touched unless you upgrade versions.

Editing the shortcut files manually is not recommended.
The device id-s are mostly calculated, DMX addresses are too, pretty hard to figure out one by one and creating all unique IDs for the shortcut entries.

I see the point of loading a new preset, on the go, but if you want to load the guest VJ's composition, you'll neeed to stop clip playback anyhow.
Loading specific decks could be done without that, but then the layers won't have the effects of the guest.
A Resolume restart is not much longer then.
Edit: Turns out you can load shortcut presets from any location by drag and dropping them to the shorcuts panel

All that aside, I'd assume a guest, bringing their own machine with their own controllers and media files, and plugging in a HDMI to a switcher would be the preferred workflow for reliability and reproducability.

How often does it happen in your day to day work that the situation you describe comes up?
What about their third party effects? Do they install those too?

[ginnteq]

Hi

Thank you for rapid response and looking into this.
Latest Arena, 7.22.5, but we're aware of this behavior for a while now, just wasn't as critical as we didn't have the need to modify shortcuts as frequently.
So, there's 2 scenarios:
1: simply bootng up Arena, the entire Shortcuts/DMX folder content gets "Date modified" set to current timestamp, every single boot.
This happens to all shortcut presets, as well as Arena/Preferences folder, files: dmx.xml, osc.xml, recentLayout.xml and server.xml consistently.
Quitting Arena without saving - just Quit - overwrites all files in Preferences at once, except for the AdvancedOutput.xml.

2: opening DMX shortcuts via Ctrl+Shift+X, then pressing Escape to exit. As per manual, changes are automatically saved. But, that simply overwrites all files in the DMX folder known at boot time (doesn't touch newly added files) as well, with in-memory content. This happens on either a) current preset has changes, so save is required or b) preset was changed from A to B (A or B can be the "Default" too).

While this isn't critical, per-se, and I understand that you mostly favor in-software file modifications, its still bit awkward to keep track of changes, so if that isn't too much to ask to be looked into, we'd appreciate it.

Back to the topic itself: The drag and drop feature is solution good enough for us., since that also overwrites the content with dropped content, so there's no file mismatch so long as new files are dropped in.
I can't express how silly we feel right now, reverse engineering presets but all 3 of us missing the drag and drop solution, while this in fact works for everything in Arena. I've just tested the same with Advanced output, and, well, drag and drop also works there, but there's the Load button in menu and we've always used that.
Thank you, for sure.


While restart doesn't take thatmuch longer, it still does, but moreso, its a surprise reveal party sometimes: outputs are released to host OS, and - especially when not using SDI outs - with Windows, that means anything thats on the desktop, including any icons, background or a window that's located out of the main display. It just opens up much more possibilities for unwanted situations, which is why we rather avoid that unless necessary.


To explain a bit; We've set up a workhorse server for a client recently, and needed a bit more extensive DMX support, as their LD handles most of the smaller shows. With that, we've had a need to built a dynamic fixture profile for control, and as we achieved that it can adjust to the composition itself, shortcuts must also be adjusted on the fly to reflect the state.
I understand that manually editing presets is not recommended, but to support the fixture, we had no better way, so we've reverse-engineered the shortcuts and made a builder for it, including the ability to use input xml made in Arena, and replicate shortcuts from layer 1 across layer Xs with offsets, as well as merge two or more presets into a combined one, offsetting either addresses or lumiverses, based on demand.
We've done this as other control modes simply don't offer some of the abilities that we have when using dmx, especially when using lighting consoles.


Even though loading isn't available for OSC either, that's rarely an issue since osc inputs are statically pre-mapped, so to be fair, the loading option doesn't really come up as often, whereas with the changed dates, it often prolongs debugging issues since we can't see right away if someone changed anything in the preset, so its more of an inconvenience.


Perhaps the issue of host VJs was too personally viewed, as I was coming from the view of when we do the VJing for bigger shows with the said client, and we naturally use mediaserver we installed, as it also has common plugins licensed on it, instead of bringing our servers along just for the sake of it. Since we explored dmx control and already built what we needed for a client, we've now also been looking into incorporating this to our VJ team's general workflow, since it brought up some pretty nice capabilities. It is however essential that we can have changes applied with no restarts though, orelse no changes are allowed, but mainly, adding or removing a layer breaks the mappings.

Perhaps there was also bias added coming from a history of working in Casino and Cruise environments, where shows often require only playback and some control, and we've rarely had VJs need any custom plugins, but then again in many cases these aren't professional VJs owning complicated compositions, and would also not need shortcuts anyway.

Wish I asked this sooner though, as we would have bit easier time developing the fixture during these past 2 months knowing about the drag-and-drop solution.

[Zoltán]

On my mac, I only see updated timestamps for old and touched presets, interesting.
We have a ticket to take a closer look.
Having a folder watcher would be nice for the presets also.

The drag and drop doesn't seem to be documented in the manual, we'll fix that.

While restart doesn't take thatmuch longer, it still does, but moreso, its a surprise reveal party sometimes: outputs are released to host OS, and - especially when not using SDI outs - with Windows, that means anything thats on the desktop, including any icons, background or a window that's located out of the main display. It just opens up much more possibilities for unwanted situations, which is why we rather avoid that unless necessary.

Most of us have a black background for this reason, with no icons on the output displays.
Could be a nice use for the club logo as background. Then it won't seem like an error when outputs go blank.

adding or removing a layer breaks the mappings.

We have a feature ticket for this, I believe.

With that, we've had a need to built a dynamic fixture profile for control,

I'd keep the control clips for this in a layer or group below my other content, so the shortcut mappings don't change.
A group with say 4 layers can have lots of stuff in for the future expansions, it and can be hidden away easily.
Layer to slice routing would be very handy with it: https://resolume.com/support/en/slice-routing

[ginnteq]

Thanks for the feedback.

Well on Windows it does change, on pretty much any station we've tested. Thanks for creating the ticket. Agree on the folder watcher, but I wonder how that would work if file would be changed, not just added.
Reload of same preset should probably be manual?

I really dont want to turn out as just coming against, but with Win10/11, this is always a surprise reveal party.
I'll point out things we actually observed last season, beachside clubs, opened 18h/7. Note we're only there on occasions, and these get phoned in as well;
- Black background works fine, so long as someone during the day, adjusting daily content, doesn't decide that this screen looks a bit "boring" and dark, and changes that.
- The icons are also fine, if some new install or screen plug-unplug, or just weird windows reboot doesnt move them on screen, that's now numbered differently than a month ago. Hiding icons has same problem as the background.
- Then there are windows, which just sooner or later end up on a wrong display.
I'd rather keep them think quitting Arena is really last most risky resort, to be honest, as none of the above shows up so long as Arena is running. And doing this mid show still seems risky, on its own.
There's enough fun with increasingly more adjustments needed on Win11 to even allow auto logging in, which minimizes lock screen image display on restart.

For these reasons alone, dedicated streaming output card seems much safer choice running Windows. We went SDI years ago and never looked back.


Re: fixture -> That's all fine, but thats still limiting to single composition, and single user workflow. We wanted to automate this to minimize effort needed when things change. Its not always you want or need the same amount of control, or have effects or composition set in the same manner. And its not you always have same amount of available control channels, especially with the fact that such profiles can get channel hungry quite fast. We want this to be more "busking" friendly, so dropping new effect somewhere, we want minimum intervention needed.

I believe the only thing holding us from achieving this is an option to force-reload current dmx preset profile from the file itself. Is this reasonable request to be made, available through web api, perhaps?

If there will be folder watchers, a button as mentioned above would be needed anyway?
I just assume, but button for reload, while it could work for OSC, definitely shouldn't be an option for midi or dmx mapping, as it could create infinite reloads...?



Re: Layer to slice -> I thought this was great, but it is only to certain level of complexity. Slice transform allows far more.