Mark,
Thanks so much. That advice worked. But after playing with it for a while, I have found 2 "problems" that I can't fix:
1. I can't write any automation (level, pan, mute) with the BCF
2. When I open the .veg file, the faders move up to the currect positions, but then they don't move to reflect any volume automation changes that I draw in with the mouse.
Any suggestions?

OK this is where having a BCF2000 instead of a real Mackie Control makes it a bit more awkward. All the buttons, etc, of the Mackie Control Universal (MCU) are mapped onto the BCF2000 when it is set into its Mackie emulation mode, but not always in the most easily accessible places.

To read/write automation using the MCU (or BCF2000) you need to engage automation mode which on the real MCU just means pressing the Automation button - when you do so an LED lights up adjacent to the Automation button to indicate you are in automation mode. Then any moves you make on the faders, etc, are written to the corresponding track and reflected on the moving faders when you replay the track (depending on the automation mode you are in in Vegas - I normally have it in Automation Write (Touch) mode).

On the BCF2000, because of the smaller number of buttons available, things are more awkward - the emulation mode has to map the nearly fifty dedicated buttons of the MCU to the much smaller number of buttons available on the BCF2000. In the case of the Automation mode, this is obtained by pressing and holding the bottom left of the four "encoder groups" buttons and then pressing and releasing the Edit button. This puts the BCF2000 into the MCU Automation mode. To exit the Automation mode on the BCF2000 just hold down the lower left EG button and press and release the Edit button again. (In the Mackie emulation mode the two left-hand "encoder groups" buttons act like a couple of shift keys and the various functions buttons of the MCU are mapped onto the remaining buttons on the BCF2000 so that three of the functions appear on each button - one is selected when the button is pressed unshifted, another when the lower "shift" (EG) button is held down and the third when the upper "shift" (EG) button is held down.)

In a similar way, if you need to use the BCF2000 for Video rather than audio you need to put the BCF2000 into the MCU's Video mode, which is acheived by holding down the lower left "encoding groups" button and pressing and releasing the Learn key. Repeat this to toggle back to the Audio mode.

These aren't the key assingments I would have chosen if I were designing a BCF2000 MCU-emulation mode for use with Vegas, but presumably they make more sense when the BCF2000 is used to emulate a MCU in Cubase, which is what the "MC C" emulation mode is really designed for. Maybe one day Behringer will release a new version of the firmware with a more suitable key assignment for use with Vegas, but I doubt it somehow. In the meantime, if you compare the keyboard overlay for the MCU for use with Cubase and the control mapping chart showing the way the keys are assigned in the "MC C" emulation mode you should be able to work out how to get at all of the functions you need.

Mark

Mark.
That worked! Thank you so much. Where on earth did you find all of that info? I have the template overlay thing, but I couldn't find automation mode anywhere on it.
Anyway, thanks.

When I was looking into buying a control surface I looked seriously at the MCU as well as the BCF2000 and I eventually decided that I couldn't afford the cost of the MCU, but that I would buy a BCF2000 instead even though it was clearly a bit more awkward to use than the MCU. When I started playing with it and discovered just how much more awkward it would be I began to wish I'd gone for the MCU after all. :-)

But I decided to persevere and gradually I realised that one doesn't actually need the vast majority of the functions available anyway - one really only needs to know how to switch between the audio and video modes and how to engage and disengage the automation mode - so it wasn't quite as confusing as it at first seemed.

But I did take the time to work out exactly which functions were mapped where and draw myself up a master chart. Now I think about it some more, I think that to do this I needed to compare information from the MCU overlays for the basic MCU, Cubase and Vegas and also the information from the overlay chart for the "MC C" mode chart that was provided by Behringer, along with using the MIDI monitoring facilities in MIDI-OX to confirm that I was getting everything correct.

I never got round to making a pretty version of the chart, but if it is of any interest I'll scan my handwritten version and upload it to my website tomorrow (can't do it right now because the chart is at home but the only scanner I have access to is here at work).

EDIT: I've just remembered I'm off work tomorrow and the next day, but I'll post it when I can.

Mark

Hi guys,

I bough a BCF2000 about half a year ago, and have hooked it up OK. Howvever haven't had the time to learn how to use it.

I wonder if any of you are interested in up a BCF-Vegas group somewhere to share ideas/experiences - YahooGroups ? Or is here enough. Appreciate thoughts.

geoff

geoff

Right, sorry for the delay, I've just uploaded a PDF file containing the complete layout of the BCF2000 in Mackie Control Universal emulation mode (MC C) for use with Vegas to my webspace. Could be of some help to anyone struggling to get to grips with comtrolling Vegas with this device.

It's at: http://www.whippey.eclipse.co.uk/BCF2000Vegas.pdf

Mark

Excellent, thanks for that !

Hey Mark, thanks for all the good info!
I got a couple more questions for you (or anyone).

1.) I'm using Vegas5, and I understand from other threads here that there is a communication error which happens from time to time with the BCF2000 in MCU mode. Have you had this experience, and to what extent does it happen? Every 5 minutes, every hour, not at all. Is it still worth using with Vegas5 for some simple fader rides?

2.) Can the faders be assigned to the busses in MCU mode? Or is that just a shift-click away? Just wondering how that is addressed.

Thanks!

1. I've only had my BCF2000 since after V6 was released so I haven't really used it with V5 much. I've never seen the problem in V6 so I am pretty certain that whatever the fix for this communication problem was it is included in V6. But I don't know whether it was included in V.5.0d I'm afraid.

2. Faders are not assignable to the busses in the way you are probably thinking, but the faders can be used to control the buses and the master as well as the tracks. There is no flexibility in the assignment, but the fixed scheme that Vegas sets up for you is quite usable. It works like this: the faders are assigned (in ascending order) to tracks, followed by master, followed by buses.

To take a real-world example that you may have access to, included with Vegas 4 was a sample project called "Audio Mix.veg" which was designed to illustrate the use of Vegas as an audio tool. This consisted of 13 audio tracks and 5 buses (used as groups). When you use a BCF2000 in MCU emulation mode the (fixed) assignment scheme gives you this layout:

Fader 1 = Track 1
Fader 2 = Track 2
Fader 3 = Track 3
Fader 4 = Track 4
Fader 5 = Track 5
Fader 6 = Track 6
Fader 7 = Track 7
Fader 8 = Track 8
Fader 9 = Track 9
Fader 10 = Track 10
Fader 11 = Track 11
Fader 12 = Track 12
Fader 13 = Track 13
Fader 14 = Master
Fader 15 = Bus A
Fader 16 = Bus B
Fader 17 = Bus C
Fader 18 = Bus D
Fader 19 = Bus E

You use the "Bank >>" and "<< Bank" buttons on the BCF2000 to slide the 8 real faders you have up and down the notional infinite number of possible faders 8 steps at a time - they start off mapped onto faders 1-8 but if you press "Bank >>" they change to faders 9-16, and so on. (You can also use the "Channel >>" and "<< Channel" buttons to slide them up and down by a single step, but personaly I find that rather confusing so I tend to only work with slides of 8 steps.)

On a real Mackie MCU you have an LCD display above the channels which shows details of the track name and control values changes, etc, which of course the BCF2000 doesn't have, but you can download a little onscreen display applet called BCFView from the Behringer website which duplicates this display quite nicely so you can see where you are at all times.

Although you don't have any flexibility in the way the track and bus allocations are made the fixed scheme is quite workable, particularly if you don't need to add extra tracks halfway through a project (each added track bumps the master and busses up one place, of course). If you have the discipline to add enough tracks to cope with the project before you start this little annoyance won't be a problem. And it's just occurred to me that if you make sure you have a multiple of 8 tracks set up (8, 16, 24, or whatever), then in effect you will have scheme where the final press of the "Bank >>" button takes you into a master+bus mode, the kind of thing you are probably have in mind from your question. (I.e. you could have it set up so that repeated presses of the Bank shift buttons take you between Tracks 1-8, Tracks 9-16, and Master+Busses, for example.)

I'm not so disciplined as that myself - I just mark an M with chinagraph on whichever fader is currently the Master one and if I have to add a track later I just rub it out and remark it one place to the right.

Mark

Thanks for all the detail on this Mark. I'm seriously contemplating getting one of these myself - for the money, it would be stupid not to! And your explanations and PDF I think will really help.

Cheers

Ben

P.S. I hadn't heard the word chinagraph uttered in quite a while - took me back. Now, where's that Revox gone...

Thanks alot Mark. That's great info.

Hi people!

Ive been reading this thread and the BFC2000 really interests me. For the price it seems really excellent. I wanted to ask a few questions from people who've been using it, just out of interest and in deciding wether this would be just an additional toy or would it really make recording and editing easier.

Do you find it easier to find a balance in volume between tracks when using real sliders? To me it's always been a bit of a pain to click a few decibels off with my mouse as I usually tend to slide the volume from zero to where I want it to be. Although Ive been using the mouse for 8 years now it feels always so much easier when doing it with a real desk.

When you click the channel shift and change from 1-8 to channels 9-16 what happens in vegas? Does the view change or do you have to manually scroll down to see the tracks?

I usually record projects with up to 80 tracks so I was wondering how fast is to shit from tracks 1-8 to tracks 72-80? Is it click - wait 2 secs - click - wait to 2 secs or does it happen as fast as you can click?

If you click a track in vegas does BFC recognize you're working on track 32 and change to that?

Does the BFC2000 remember your settings? Say you open a veg file where you've been working on a video project, does it go to the video mode automatically?

Did you find it easy to install and easy to learn? It seems pretty easy and fairly simple with all the help and sheets that the generous people have offered on this thread.

Thanks for your time!

Sami

Q: Do you find it easier to find a balance in volume between tracks when using real sliders? To me it's always been a bit of a pain to click a few decibels off with my mouse as I usually tend to slide the volume from zero to where I want it to be. Although Ive been using the mouse for 8 years now it feels always so much easier when doing it with a real desk.

A: It's definitely easier to balance levels, etc, using a real slider control, for me at least.


Q: When you click the channel shift and change from 1-8 to channels 9-16 what happens in vegas? Does the view change or do you have to manually scroll down to see the tracks?

A: Nothing happens in Vegas (on the screen at least). You would have to scroll down maually to have the display on the screen show the same set of tracks as the BCF2000 is now controlling.

Q: I usually record projects with up to 80 tracks so I was wondering how fast is to shit from tracks 1-8 to tracks 72-80? Is it click - wait 2 secs - click - wait to 2 secs or does it happen as fast as you can click?

A: There is no need to pause between clicks. I've just set up a test project with 80 audio tracks (lots more than I have ever used myself) and have set it so that fader 1 is controlling track 1. Then I hit the "Bank >>" button 9 times as fast as I could and the 8 faders were immediately controlling tracks 73-80. (If you use the BCFView display utility you will see that the display lags behind a little, taking maybe a second to reflect the final status as "Aud 73, Aud 74, ..., Aud 80", but as far as I can tell the change in the data the BCF2000 sends, and hence in the tracks being controlled, is effectively instantaneous.)

Q: If you click a track in vegas does BFC recognize you're working on track 32 and change to that?

A: I'm not sure what you have in mind by the phrase "change to that". If you select a track in Vegas then that will be indicated on the BCF2000 by having the lower of the two led buttons associated with that fader become illuminated, if that track is within the current "window" of track-fader assignments. E.g. If the BCF2000 is currently controlling tracks 32-39 and you select Track 32 in Vegas then the Select button for fader 1 will light up. On the other hand if the BCF2000 is currently controlling tracks 1-8 and you select track 32 in Vegas nothing will happen on the BCF2000. If you then press the "Bank >>" button twice (so that you are now controlling tracks 32-39) you will see the Select button for fader 1 light up.

Conversely, if you press the Select button for one of the faders on the BCF2000 then yhe Select button will light up and whichever track that fader is controlling will be selected in Vegas. But note that the behaviour of this mode of track selection is a bit different to the way it behaves in Vegas. In Vegas if you select a track then that track becomes selected and any other tracks become unselected. If you want to select multiple tracks you have to use the CTRL button while selecting the extra tracks after the first. When selecting the tracks with the BCF2000 Select buttons you will find that the button acts as a toggle - press it once and the track is selected, press it again and the track is unselected. This makes it easier to select multiple tracks (just press the Select button on the tracks you want selected) but means that you have to remember to unselect them when you want to select another track instead.

Q: Does the BFC2000 remember your settings? Say you open a veg file where you've been working on a video project, does it go to the video mode automatically?

A: The BCF2000 has no memory of this sort of thing. It starts up (when using the "MC C" emulation mode at least, which is the mode most suitable for use with Vegas) controlling audio tracks 1-8 in non-automation mode. If you want to control the video tracks rather than the audio tracks you need to hold down the lower shift button and press the Sends/Video/Save button as indicated on my pdf chart to put the BCF2000 into Video mode. Similarly, if you want to control the automation envelopes rather than the track volumes/pans you need to hold down the lower shift button and press the Pan/Automation/Undo button to put the BCF2000 into Automation mode.

Q: Did you find it easy to install and easy to learn? It seems pretty easy and fairly simple with all the help and sheets that the generous people have offered on this thread.

A: I didn't find it completely straightforward (a) to get everything working and then (b) to understand how to get it to do what I wanted, but with the information available in this forum it all became clear. I'm sure that we'll be able to sort you out if you run into any snags.

Mark

Great info Mark! Have you considered creating a manual or better yet, a DVD tutorial on this? A couple of the video guys (especially DSE) seem to be doing quite well in that area and Sony is obviously tolerant of marketing on these forums if it benefits their apps.

drbam

Thanks a lot for your info Mark! I ordered one today, should be here in a week. Ill let you know how it works for me.

Sami

Hi Everyone,

I got the bfc2000 today and after an hour of work updating the machine and getting vegas set up so far it seems to work out ok. Thanks to all the folks of putting up the info here, it would have been a struggle without it.

Right now what I really need to do is a colour coded control layout to get an idea where all the knobs and buttons are.

So far I find it really easy to use and Im not sure but when I get it to a real life mixing situation I might find it extremely helpful. Have to wait and see about that.

What I find hardest at the moment is the fact that its really difficult to keep up with what tracks the sliders are controlling at each moment. If you're currently using the sliders to control tracks 1-8 (and one has 12 tracks + master + 2 effects in project) you press the bank button the first 4 sliders wont be controlling tracks 9-12 as I would have expected. Instead they control (starting from slider 1) tracks 8-11 + master + effect1 + effect 2. It would have been easier to crasp if it would have just left the sliders empty at the end. Dont you think? Is there really no way to change this? One could always just add empty tracks to keep them in multiples of eight as Mark suggested.

--EDIT--
Ok, finally got the BFCview set up and now its pretty easy to follow the tracks.
--EDIT--

I found a way to control pan and effect one but effects 2 and beyong I cant find a way to control.

--EDIT--
found out a way to do this kind of too with the help of bcfview, although I find it much easier to control these in the vegas window.
--EDIT--

Also what happens when Im in pan mode and I press the pan knob, it changes into a different mode and the leds are controlled but nothing happens?


--EDIT--
found out this too.
--EDIT--

Well, Ill keep on discovering, so far it seems like a really nice tool. Not a toy.

Sami

Will the bcf2000 work with Vegas in a USB connection rather than MIDI?