Well, well, well!
Testing went very well. I didn't do a full lighting test because I would have needed 3 full 15-amp circuits to get it done, so I cheated and only used my LED lights and my 2 Chauvet movers.
1: I've had to run off mainly customized profiles due to issues with the provided profiles that match my lights. I think it's a matter of "well, we can't completed test it if we don't have one here to test with" issue. Not ALL of the profiles required tweaking, some were perfect. But this is trivial. The good thing is I am fairly comfortable with the Scan Library editor now. Also, my profiles work as needed, so again, good.
2: The 3D Visualizer is definately a step up from what I'm used to. Not to knock the one in MyDMX, but the Compu Show one is much more accurate, at least in regards to how my movers were operating. Even so, I only need to use it for "proof of concept" and "sanity checking" 90% of the time. There's only a few sequences where timing is critical. Even so, what I saw in the window matched what I was seeing, best I could tell!
3: Dimming didn't display accurately. Yes, things did dim up and down as expected, but the lights themselves dimmed faster than the 3D Visualizer showed. This can be traced back to my fixtures. Even so, without the 3D Visualizer showing dimming, I'd not have been able to get the job done. My resolve? Get better lights from Elation! Not to knock the ADJ fixtures I'm using, but I do need brighter LED cans anyways.
4: A few glitches here and there, mainly stuff doing a single flash for best I could see no valid reason. Mainly would see a mega Panel to a red flash, but it was doing it at a repeatable time with slaved to timecode being read by Easy Show. Again repeatable, and therefore resolvable through simple means.
5: Since I mentioend time code, there were 2 runs: A basic "stand alone run" with no timecode and things ran really good. I did find errors, but the errors were directly tracable to my programming. Of course, this is the point of running tests like this. When I ran timecode, I was equally impressed. Now, there are some programming issues, but it's based on how I did things, such as a long scene with many steps in it based on timings, so I will break that up later. Bouncing the hell out of the master machine to stress test and try to cause failure to Compu show simply did not work to cause Compu Show to fail. It ran SOLID!! I will say that I'm trying to register MTC-VIdeoSlave to run a side projected video off the second display off the Compu Show machine, and that was a bit rough at first. However, once things I guess fully cached, the whole system was solid and flawless all day and night.
Being able to set the MTC off-sets let me get scary-close sync to Compu Show with the master. The test videos have timecode hard-burned into the video, so no guesswork. I was able to keep things dead on and the drift was absolutely MINIMAL. Even with SMPTE, I would notice drift after 5 minutes, even when using MTC with SPP(song position pointers). Not bad!
I still have work to do, but the show is like 90% done. I need to do my ground fog timings and resolve the last parts of the show. At the same time, I'm pleased. The critical flashes tied to these audio cues(hard coded in Compu Show) come off every single time PERFECT. Other cues like that are dead on.(gun shot spot cut, explosion flash, snap blackouts, all flawless).
Considering what I did in MyDMX to make this happen, Compu Show, as significantly more complex and complicated as it is, honestly has made this show POSSIBLE and BETTER!
Now, I have to do the programming for another show, which is the day before the "big show", although it's produced by the same team, and I do sound, lights, video and other logistics for both as well. With the next show only have 42 lighting cues and many recycled scenes, I think I'll have it done fairly fast!
Right now I wonder how I managed before!