Q Light Controller+

Hi all!

In this topic I'll be sharing my experiences with using QLC+ for gig/club live lighting.

First, a bit of backstory and equipment I use. I'm 18 years old and with a friend of mine we're providing sound and lights for parties in our neighborhood, we're beginning at least, mainly we're going for club-like style. We're using self-made equipment + Numark N4 for DJ and recently Numark Mixtrack pro mk. II for lights. We've got 7 short(~33cm) RGB 27W ramps, 2 long (~1m) RGB 36W ramps, LED strobe (1 kW light peaks, 160W power draw) these go for main lighting show + 2 additional floodlights (If I remember correctly they're 48W) and 4 UVs (9W). Everything is DMX512 controlled.

(I'll post some pictures here, when I'll make them)

Oh, and also, I'm a programmer.

So, now onto the topic. I'm aiming to map and use whole Numark for controlling lights (yes, with scratching).

For now I've got 2 decks, each deck has:
- 8 effects activated with buttons
- tempo with tap and tempo fader
- submaster

I've also mapped: master intensity, all white (a scene), blackout, stop all and strobe (with intensity and frequency control), 4x UV intensity on encoders. Funny thing is that human eye doesn't really see a difference in direct UV light intensity, but fluorescent intensity changes. Floodlights are controlled by audio, with equalizer knobs working as submaster's for each color. I couldn't find a way to make them flash on sound (for now they're representing selected frequencies level [submaster for 2 knobs controlling intensity of R,G,B channels of those fixtures])

So far I've encouraged following problems:
- QLC's 'relative' mode for sliders doesn't support encoders (already fixed, quick'n'dirty though, I'll make a clean solution and drop a pull request somewhat soon)
- (it was in 1.8.5, haven't checked on 1.9) when activating a scene or chaser with scenes they're ignoring the submaster in frame, but when submaster is moved it dims, when scene is changed again it goes to full brightness. Because of that I can only use RGB matrix things (or however it's named)
- You can't have 2 submasters in any way (I aim to implement crossfader between decks, I'll create a special VC widget for that)
- You can't make a channel or at least fixture ignore master intensity and blackout (separate)
- No stock way to implement any way of scratching
- No way to override values of HTP channels (for temporary blackout, for strobe) (For example like freestyler's override buttons)
- Audio triggers are sometimes laggy (up to 0.4s of delay)
- Tap button of duration widget won't blink in feedback (and no code for that). Ideally it would be a short (1/5th of beat duration) blink on each beat. But toggle on each beat would also work (like software button)
- QLC+ likes to spontaneously hang on my win XP machine I used for lights before switching to QLC+, looks like audio triggers are causing an issue

I think that's all. I will be dropping pull requests for each functionality, maybe someone will be interested. I haven't programmed in C++ for quite some time (I think it's been like 2 years or so) and I've never used Qt, so that'll be quite an experience for me.

With all that - I just LOVE QLC+, it's great, it's extendable, it's open-source, it's flexible (heck, I'm using a Numark DJ controller for lights and it works great!)

I'll post some pictures and screenshots when I'll get the time.

And what do you think about that? Maybe someone has some suggestions?
Cheers!

PS.
I'm sorry if my English is bad, it's not my native language.

Hi,

- QLC's 'relative' mode for sliders doesn't support encoders (already fixed, quick'n'dirty though, I'll make a clean solution and drop a pull request somewhat soon)

Cool

- (it was in 1.8.5, haven't checked on 1.9) when activating a scene or chaser with scenes they're ignoring the submaster in frame, but when submaster is moved it dims, when scene is changed again it goes to full brightness. Because of that I can only use RGB matrix things (or however it's named)

This should work better in 4.9.0

- You can't have 2 submasters in any way (I aim to implement crossfader between decks, I'll create a special VC widget for that)

What do you mean "2 submasters" ? 2 by frame ? No, you can't. How would this even work ?
Also, it's possible to trick a crossfader as of now, through the loopback plugin. But it's going to be a simple X curve, not pretty :/

- You can't make a channel or at least fixture ignore master intensity and blackout (separate)

Nope

- No stock way to implement any way of scratching

You mean audio scratching ?

- No way to override values of HTP channels (for temporary blackout, for strobe) (For example like freestyler's override buttons)

Nope

- Audio triggers are sometimes laggy (up to 0.4s of delay)

Which OS are you using ?

- Tap button of duration widget won't blink in feedback (and no code for that). Ideally it would be a short (1/5th of beat duration) blink on each beat. But toggle on each beat would also work (like software button)

Neat idea

- QLC+ likes to spontaneously hang on my win XP machine I used for lights before switching to QLC+, looks like audio triggers are causing an issue

What are you computer specs ? Can you try on linux ?

plugz wrote:

- (it was in 1.8.5, haven't checked on 1.9) when activating a scene or chaser with scenes they're ignoring the submaster in frame, but when submaster is moved it dims, when scene is changed again it goes to full brightness. Because of that I can only use RGB matrix things (or however it's named)

This should work better in 4.9.0

I'll try

plugz wrote:

- You can't have 2 submasters in any way (I aim to implement crossfader between decks, I'll create a special VC widget for that)

What do you mean "2 submasters" ? 2 by frame ? No, you can't. How would this even work ?
Also, it's possible to trick a crossfader as of now, through the loopback plugin. But it's going to be a simple X curve, not pretty :/

I tried submastering a frame with frame inside, haven't thought about loopback, I'll definitely try it. Well, there are curves for each channel, maybe that'll be better. But I will create a widget with crossfader support built-in

plugz wrote:

- No stock way to implement any way of scratching

You mean audio scratching ?

No, I mean scratching with light. I have an idea that might look cool, I (or rather we) will see, when I get the time.

plugz wrote:

- Audio triggers are sometimes laggy (up to 0.4s of delay)

Which OS are you using ?

Win XP and Win 7

plugz wrote:

- QLC+ likes to spontaneously hang on my win XP machine I used for lights before switching to QLC+, looks like audio triggers are causing an issue

What are you computer specs ? Can you try on linux ?

[/quote]
That's probably software problem, that notebook will be moved to linux eventually, though, so we'll see. It's some sort of dual core intel processor that's running 1.8 GHz, a bit overvoltaged (but not overclocked). It was doing it's job with Freestyler, but with QLC+ shows are that much cooler And mixing light on Numark controller is just great.

As for audio triggers, I miss that simple and effective functionality from Freestyler, on the other hand QLC's widget is that much more flexible, but sometimes that's problematic (no fast way to change thresholds on the fly), but again - I'll probably do something about it

Thanks for your reply!
Cheers!