EFX Flash or alternatives

[MubStudio]

Hi to everyone!

I'm using QLC for pre-programming my light shows, syncronizing them with my DAW (reaper or ableton depending from the project).
Until now i kept all the buttons in toggle mode and so i have to put one midi note to start a scene and then send it again to stop the scene. This has been not a problem for now but actually i have added two moving heads to the setup and i would really need to change the way i'm triggering scenes: in particular, i need to have scenes active only until the relative midi note is pressed, and then stop them when each note ends.

For that reason i put all the scenes in flash mode and everything seemed to work perfectly, until i found that the flash button is available only for scenes, while i need the EFX for moving heads relative movements. Is there any way to trigger the efx in a similar way to flash mode?

I hope to have explained correctly what i'm searching to do!
Thank you in advance

[Yestalgia]

You need to do some research on "Loopback Magic"

Basically, you can have QLC+ enable and disable it's own buttons using flashable scenes. Google "QLC+ Loopback Magic flash" to find examples.

[MubStudio]

I spent a few hours on that this morning but i'm still not able to put the efx button in flash mode.

I created a loopback universe and i'm able to control the efx buttons from a flash loopback button but the efx is not stopping after the flash loopback button is no longer pressed.

Could you give me an help about that? Thank you

[GGGss]

Was that you I talked to in the FB group?

The thing is, QLC+ does not have a latching mechanism... so you need to be creative to find a solution.
I tried 2 or 3 things but didn't come to a solution.

Let me think about this one

[MubStudio]

Oh Yes, i had no idea that the forum and the facebook group were connected! Sorry for the double post in this case. However a friend made something like that easily with another software (DMX Joker in this case) so i was pretty sure that this function was easy to achieve also in qlc+ which is a beautiful software.

I'm still trying to find a solution even with loopbacks but still without any result. If you should have some ideas about that please let me know, and thank you so much!

[MubStudio]

I also had the idea, as alternative, to put all the scenes in normal mode (toggle) in qlc+ and find a system to let reaper/ableton send Note On+Off on the beginning of each note and then On+Off at the end, to simulate the double press. Haven't managed to find a solution for that, too

[GGGss]

If you create an input profile, you can opt 'to generate a second click'. Now you only need one rising edge to trigger things. (rising edge si a signal from your reaper)

[MubStudio]

I Made a fast attempt but it seems to work and this is fantastic! I'll let you know if this works good on all the virtual console but this seems to be a great idea since it allows me to keep all the functions in toggle mode and emulate the latching system from the midi!

[kproth]

For what it's worth ... it looks like that "generate extra press/release" option will cause a button toggle to occur when you send a non-zero midi value, and cause it to toggle again when you send a zero midi value. So you're not really latching it on and off, you're just translating the latch-on (rising edge) and latch-off (falling edge) midi notes into toggle commands. If that VC button ever gets out of sync, then your "latch-on" could actually cause the button to toggle to off, and vice versa.

If it's of interest, I created a custom fork of QLC+ to support a use-case involving controlling vc buttons via midi notes, for a figure skating show (where it would be a bad thing if I accidentally toggled all the lights off while skaters are flying around the ice). I added options so that external input could have more direct control over buttons and cuelists. Specifically, sending a note value > 0 will turn a button on (or do nothing if it's already on), sending a note value of 0 or a "note off" command will turn a button off (or do nothing if it's already off). The cuelist widgets can also be driven by direct step value instead of a relative (0..255) one. I've got recently compiled versions hosted here if this is something that might work well for you - https://github.com/kpr0th/qlcplus/relea ... .0.0-beta3. I will most likely package this up as a pull request in the future to try and get it incorporated into the main codebase. If you do try this, please let me know how you like it, and if you have any questions/comments/concerns.

[GGGss]

Kevin,

Is this dev ready to be integrated in the live version?
If one would tick this option somewhere inside the QLC+ config page, this would be a fantastic add-on.
I surely lost count of the number of posts here, asking for this feature.
And on top of that, if we got a possibility to also use the falling-edge as a signal, that would even be more wonderful.

[kproth]

Yes, it's 100% ready, other than I'd need to take some time to re-base it on my personal fork since I believe I accidentally mixed in a couple other personal changes. I coded and tested it under both v4 and v5 and even adjusted the help pages to match.

I will try to find time in the near-ish future to clean it up and submit a pull request.

[GRE]

@MubStudio Don't forget that you can control QLC+ from within Reaper FM using OSC. You need SWS. This gives you a lot of possibilities to control lighting using envelopes in Reaper.