New Tascam Control Surface

Rednroll wrote on 4/19/2004, 6:08 AM

If you have a midi control surface, Vegas can also "learn" midi CC messages, by pressing a button on your midi controler.

cosmo wrote on 4/19/2004, 7:53 AM

Now that rocks.....so my MIDI controller's knobs and sliders can be assigned to vegas controls?

Rednroll wrote on 4/19/2004, 8:28 AM

Yes,
You can use your midi controler to control faders, pans, etc in Vegas. It's very easy to setup. Go into the hardware controler tab, and you select volume slider, and click the "learn" button. You then move the slider on your midi controler and it will learn the CC messages your controler uses and respond to that message in Vegas. This also works with transport functions and a lot of the other features within Vegas. This get's saved as an XML file, so you can also make a few different setups and select between them and share them on other systems. Also, look for future specific drivers for control surfaces in updates.

cosmo wrote on 4/19/2004, 9:19 AM

Awesome, thanks for the cookie trail.

kbruff wrote on 4/19/2004, 11:02 AM

THANKS for the midi control -- now that is awesome -- I have a....
Evolution UC-33 controller and this will make things so much nicer, especially for real - time parameter adjustement.

Great -- I look forward to the upgrade -
Bye,
Kevin
***

pwppch wrote on 4/19/2004, 11:47 AM

Clarification:

Vegas 5 support the Mackie Control Universal (MCU) and auto-detects it. The device must respond like a MCU in order for it to be used. So far the claim of "MCU" emulation does NOT include the ability to auto detect as none of these other device completely emulate a MCU.

What does this mean?

Unless the device responds to the Universal Device Inquiry defined by the MIDI spec AND says it is a MCU in its response, then Vegas will NOT recognize it as a MCU.

Why:
Not all MCU emulations provide all MCU functionality. There are many that require a mapping file that is dedicate to a particular MCU hosts implementation - i.e. Nuendo, SONAR, etc. None of these existing mappings worked well enough with Vegas to permit us to allow them to be "faked" into working with Vegas.

The solution:
We will be providing an SDK for hardware vendors so that they can develope native drivers for their hardware. This will permit a very tight integration between the device and Vegas. Only in this way can the correct behavior of all aspects of Vegas be controlled.

The alternative solution is to use the Generic Control driver provided with Vegas. This driver is basically as Rednroll defined. You learn MIDI msgs and assign them to your fader banks available on the external device. For very simple devices with knobs and faders, this will work fine and not require a dedicated driver. For more complex devices like the Tascam or Yamaha units, a driver is a better solution as these devices have LEDs or LCD displays that would require very specific code to properly display Vegas' state and expose its features.

The plan is to let the hardware vendors develope drivers that specifically support Vegas. The SDK will be available to hardware vendors very soon. We will work very closely with all hardware vendors to assure that integration and compatability issue will provide the best user experiance possible.

Peter

Nat wrote on 4/19/2004, 12:34 PM

Peter :
Will the SDK be avalaible to users also ?
I built a custom midi controller and would love to make it fully compatible (ledrings)

Also, does Vegas support relative cc messages ?

Thanks
Nat

pwppch wrote on 4/19/2004, 1:36 PM

>>Will the SDK be avalaible to users also ?
Unknown at this time. It will be under a NDA and I don't know how it will be made available.

Also, does Vegas support relative cc messages ?
Don't know what "relative cc" msgs means. Please define.

Nat wrote on 4/19/2004, 2:42 PM

On devices equipped with encoders, when you turn the encoder, instead of sending an abosolute feed it can send a relative one, so it sends +1 or -1
I can give more extensive description if needed.

pwppch wrote on 4/19/2004, 2:56 PM

Gotcha.

The Mackie treats it's "VPots" and "wheel" like this, but also includes a "velocity" value for the VPOT in addition to the clockwise/counter-clockwise dir bit.

So, yes, this is supported because it is upto the "driver" to support such details. Basically if the driver needs to interpret incomming MIDI data in a particular way, then it can write a handler as required to translate the MIDI data into a usable value.

The Generic driver has no ability to do this as there are too many ways this has been implemented in different devices.

Some use the CS-10's 7 bit 2's compliment method, others use just a directional bit, and others still use a direction + velocity indicator.

So, depending on the device, you can also get into whether you want to look at direction only or value or both or even treating things as simple inc/dec behavior.

The underlying "spec" actually defines this type of control (incremental or relative) but the current "GUI" provided for the Generic Control Driver does not provide a means to edit/create mappings for this.

Peter

Nat wrote on 4/19/2004, 4:31 PM

Will this be eventually possible ? the controller I made supports all the types of relative mode (constant mode and speed/acceleration mode)

I also use a product called the STC-1000 (www.thinkmig.com) I programmed a little app to transform the output to relative and it would be great if vegas could support this. (otherwise there are parameter jumps on bank changes)

Also, if I modify a control on screen with the mouse, will the updated data be sent to the controller ? (to update the values, for ledrings and motorfaders ?)

PipelineAudio wrote on 4/19/2004, 6:10 PM

You can do a lot of cool things by using the learn function, even if you DO use the MCU. Ive been using the MCU, but with my own layout. If you do this you lose a lot of functions, but for what I need it works out better than the stock vegas map

drbam wrote on 4/19/2004, 6:14 PM

So other than Mackie units, what other control hardware actually uses MCU (not emulation)??

drbam

pwppch wrote on 4/19/2004, 6:40 PM

Again, anything will be possible by writing a driver specific to a device.

The Generic driver does not support device feedback - i.e. turn on/off an LED, send fader moves, etc.

Peter

pwppch wrote on 4/19/2004, 6:47 PM

I am not aware of any devices that completely emulate the MCU.

The two that we recieved - Tascam 1884 and Yamaha 01x - emulated the Mackie Protocol, but do not emulate the MCU control completely so they do not work.

We are not pushing for "emulation" as a solution. We expect native drivers provided by the vendors. Emulations are stop gaps at best and only emulate a portion that can be mapped over.

Example:
The Tascam 1884 does not have any display so it relys on a Windows applet to present the MCU display. I mean, if you have to look at your Windows desktop to use the surface, why not just use the mouse?

Don't get me wrong, the Tascam unit is a very nice device. With a native driver for Vegas developed for it, it will be a great tool to use with Vegas.

Peter

Nat wrote on 4/19/2004, 9:47 PM

I don't know if this will be worked on for future versions, but having the option to feedback the midi data to the device for the Generic driver would be nice.
A nice example is the Cubase/Nuendo generic remote (even though it is currently broken)
You have the option to choose absolute/relative mode and to toggle feedback on/off

pwppch wrote on 4/20/2004, 6:08 AM

There is a mechanism, but no GUI editor for the Generic Controller.

I can't discuss how to do it until the SDK and its distribution is completed.

Please email me Nat:
phaller@sonypictures.com

Peter

MarkWWW wrote on 4/20/2004, 12:23 PM

Peter, can the Generic Control driver handle NRPNs or is it only able to cope with individual CCs?

I ask because I have one of the old Cakewalk/Peavey Studiomix moving fader control units which sends/receives NRPNs exclusively and it would be nice to be able to use it for Vegas.

Obviously, full support via a specific driver would be best but I don't think there's any chance of any driver support from the manufacturers. Cakewalk would presumably see you as a competitor and would be unlikely to go to any trouble to support a third party application - they only grudgingly support the Studiomix in Sonar these days - and Peavey seem unwilling to admit they ever had anything to do with it.

Mark

pwppch wrote on 4/20/2004, 12:44 PM

Yes, it will handle NRPNs, though the meaning of any given one is opaque to the driver. That is there is no "modality" of the NRPN retained by the driver, so if a NRPN is sent an then modified by a inc/dec msg, this will not work as there is no direct association. Basically the driver just treats things a MIDI msgs. It does look at MSB/LSB pairs as defined by the MIDI spec, but nothing beyond that.

I will have to pester Cakewalk to send me one of these so I can have a look see.

Peter

Cold wrote on 4/20/2004, 2:11 PM

There is a small app out on the web called studiomixmap. this will let you integrate your studiomix with vegas and it does run under xp. Just tried and it does work. Post again if you can't find it out there anymore.
Steve S.
p.s. Peter, I bet you thought I was only bitching about my obsolete 02r in the other thread. I got one of these puppies too.

MarkWWW wrote on 4/20/2004, 3:53 PM

Thanks Steve.

I didn't mention that I already had StudioMixMap - that was going to be Plan B.

As you say, using StudioMixMap you can arrange for the NRPNs that the StudioMix uses to be converted into any other desired CCs to be passed to the app you are using, V5 in this case. A bit of extra complication, but it should be workable.

Mark

MarkWWW wrote on 4/20/2004, 3:57 PM

Thanks Peter.

Looks to me as though using the StudioMix directly with V5 isn't going to work then.

But fortunately there is an alternative, using an app called StudioMixMap (as Cold has just suggested) which should be able to translate the NRPNs to a simpler set of CCs that Vegas should be able to cope with.

Mark

Nat wrote on 4/20/2004, 4:07 PM

Mark : if you're having troubles, msg me, I can easily program small utilities that convert different midi messages. (easy and very fast)

H2000 wrote on 4/20/2004, 9:43 PM

Does anyone know if the Vegas MCU support includes the Mackie Baby HUI??