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DMX light duration

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Blackbat 2023-12-29 13:08:52
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  • Blackbat
    Joined: Jun 2019
    Posts: 7
    Location: United Kingdom
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    2023-12-29 13:08:52
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    I’m new to the DMX world but have a firing system (fireTEK) capable of DMX control so thought I’d try and learn about DMX. I’ve bought a cheap DMX light and created it as a fixture in My Effects, and have added some colour light effects to the fixture, and exported a firing script with DMX information. So far so good.

     

    If I right click on the light effect on the timeline and edit properties, I can change the duration of the effect and this is reflected in the duration column in the exported 2 line script. If instead, however, I drag the right hand end of the effect on the timeline to change the duration the resulting script is different. Instead of two lines for pins 101 and 102 with dmx values of 255, RampX 1 and the specified duration, I get four lines with dmx values of 255 at the start time for the first two lines and dmx values of 0 at the end time for the new 3rd and 4th lines. All with RampX 0 and duration 0.

     

    I suspect that both scripts will work, but am wondering why two different looking scripts result from changing the duration in two different ways. Is this a bug?

    DrewFinale
    Joined: Dec 2019
    Posts: 557
    Location: United States
    Silver
    2023-12-29 21:17:12
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    Hi Blackbat, it sounds like you’re taking a methodical approach to get your footing with DMX, that’s great! Assuming that the effect duration is the only thing changing, I would expect the scripts to be identical. To help troubleshoot the issue, I’m going to loop in my colleague Will, the developer on our team who handles DMX.

    Will
    Joined: Feb 2018
    Posts: 59
    Location: Palo Alto
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    2023-12-29 23:03:45
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    Hello Blackbat, the fireTEK firing system has millisecond resolution for event times, but only 10ths of second resolution in the duration field of its script.  Finale exports the script as efficiently as possible, with the fewest number of rows.  If the user’s chosen duration is a multiple of 10ths of a second and is shorter than 25 seconds, then Finale can represent the event with a smaller number of rows, employing the duration field; but if the duration is not a multiple of 10ths of a second or if the event is longer than 25 seconds, Finale uses start and stop rows to represent the duration accurately even though it takes more rows.

     

    I cannot be certain this explanation applies to your example, but it seems to fit the details.

     

    Will

    Blackbat
    Joined: Jun 2019
    Posts: 7
    Location: United Kingdom
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    2023-12-30 00:11:33
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    Thanks Will (and DrewFinale) – that’s exactly what has happened! I’ve dragged out the effect to less than 25s but made the duration a multiple of 1/10th of a second and the exported script is now the same as the other method I used to change duration, and over 25s the extra lines are there in the script. One learns something new every day 🙂

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