Is there a way to use a (USB-)MIDI controller (with faders and rotaries) with Director? It would make setting up shows at the office PC much easier.
Not sure if Director responds to (or sends) MIDI commands.
Not that I’m aware of. Director is all GUI. You could try using Osculator to map midi controller stuff to director shortcuts, but probably not faders/rotaries.
…that is, assuming you’re working in offline mode?
You can totally do this w/ osculator and director if you’re actively connected to the mixrack. (Or natively on the midi controller if the messages are customizable.)
Alright. So that means I have to get the mixrack into the office if I wanted to use a MIDI controller (I have some BCF2000 usually used for small lighting stuff, but be could used for that). That’s still better than hauling the surface in just to make pre-show setup easier. So how do I do it? BCF2000, Windows PC and mixrack… and now? I guess I need something to translate MIDI from the BCF on the PC to TCP-MIDI for the mixrack to understand?
So I found A&Hs TCP MIDI driver. It is currecntly not available for Windows. This “currently” seems to be the case since 2014. WTF, A&H??? So you leave it like that, knowing that Windows users can’t use MIDI on dLive? Is there any alternative driver?
Jens, as I said in another thread, DAW Control V1.5 for Windows has a ‘thru’ mode which presents the dLive MIDI to a virtual MIDI port, essentially replicating the function of the TCP MIDI driver.
Jens, I haven’t tested the DAW control 1.5 thru on windows yet, but assuming it behaves the way TCP midi driver does on Mac, problem solved! The catch is, in order to use your BCF2000, you’ll need to translate the incoming midi hex to values the BCF2000 can use, and vice-versa for the backmapping path to dLive. (If I recall correctly BCF uses Midi CC?)
Mostly I live in OSX environments, so I don’t have a ton of experience with this kind of build on windows, but I did a quick search, and it looks like Bome Midi translator will definitely do what you need:
If you do try out the AH Daw control 1.5, I’m anxious to know if they allowed it to auto-connect on computer boot like the TCP midi driver does on OSX!
No, DAW control is not auto connecting on my win10 machine. I filed that to A&H support and got “I’m not clear on why DAW control loses connection, this may be a Windows thing rather than a DAW control thing. I will consult the R&D dept.” as a answer.
As this post is from back in April, I will bump it…
What are you using on Mac for translating MIDI CC?
Tried DAW control. Can connect to Director, but nothing else. No MIDI port is provided in the system and there is no option to select an existing MIDI port in the system. The one sentence in DAW control’s instructions on “MIDI thru” is very sparse.
Osculator:
It’s absolutely incredible. Virtually bulletproof, uses very little system resource, gives you all kinds of data manipulation capacities.
I’m still working on a dLive midi message catalogue for it. I’ve got all of the main faders/mutes catalogued. I’ve used that data to link faders between two consoles (FOH/Broadcast,) to supplement embedded recall when I have to run both at the same time. Remote embedded recalls are great, but sometimes you really just want manual fader control.
As of this moment I do also have every known desk message captured in an Osculator library. …but in the fun part of that: working on labelling every message/making sure values in hex are given float substitution values, for each message. I’m up to sends… +/- 24 sends per channel, 128 channels…
I have a feeling I’ll be here a while.
Jens, Have you tried looking at what’s going on w/ a midi monitor running? I see that windows has a, “midi Mapper,” does that allow you to configure software as a “device,” in a Windows environment?
You might also see if AH ever got Tobias’ rtpMidi working as an alternative.
Just tried dLive Director 1.70 with DAW control on Windows 7. What do you know? Director DOES send MIDI messages.
Fader, Mixes, etc. do send MIDI messages. Checked it using MIDI-OX.
Just set the IP to the computer running Director and click “Connect”. The Virtual MIDI ports show up as “DAW MIDI Control 1” in MIDI-OX.
Not sure if Director RESPONDS to MIDI messages, however.
The picture is the same as on my PC, however no virtual MIDI port shows up in the Windows system. Also, if there is no virtual MIDI In for DAW control on your system, there’d be no way to send data TO Director via DAW Control and I could stop my attempts right here, because that is the part I’m interested in.
The picture is the same as on my PC, however no virtual MIDI port shows up in the Windows system. Also, if there is no virtual MIDI In for DAW control on your system, there’d be no way to send data TO Director via DAW Control and I could stop my attempts right here, because that is the part I’m interested in.How do you know there's no virtual MIDI port? It's definitely there on my system.
But, you may be right. I cannot get Director to respond to any MIDI messages.
Just got a reply email from support concerning auto re-connect of DAW Control:
“I’ve spoken to the development team about this again, we’re going to look to add auto-re-connection to DAW control in the future for you.”
Mr. X - Are you certain you’re seeing midi messages to/from director and not the console? (Ie is director connected to console while you’re testing this?) Unless I’m mistaken, director only serves as GUI interface, midi messages are only generated by the console itself. (Pan, for instance, wouldn’t work w/ director.)
Jens - If you have access to Reaper and/or Midi Translator Pro, maybe try mapping this message to a reaper fader/controller fader:
B0 63 00 62 17 06 00
That Last, “00,” represents the value for current fader position. dLive spits that out in hex [00-7F.] Your controller/DAW probably needs something different (like float;) and if so, you’ll need to make sure to provide a substitution value for that incoming value. (Which is why you may need Midi Translator Pro, I’m not certain you can do that substitution natively in Reaper.)
I meant to add: That message is the string for dLive Channel 1 fader. If midi is working, you should see in your midi monitor that string when you move fader 1/fader 1 should respond to that string.
Mr X: Well, if I use ANY software that can access MIDI ports of the system, Bomes MIDI translator for example, I only see the two output ports that are always there under Windows, Microsoft MIDI mapper and Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.
ThatComplicatedMidiGuy: Since there is no MIDI port to receive messages from or send to, there is no way to do that.
That sounds… endlessly frustrating.
Are there any weird things going on in device manager? Do you have to run it “as administrator?” Do you have any spyware/antivirus software running? A quick forum troll indicates those may potentially cause an issue.
It’s odd to me that it worked fine for Mr. X, but not for you. What versions of windows are you guys using?