OSC Control of Phantom Zero88 FLX S24 with Multiplay software on Windows

[Neil Macmillan]

I have been experimenting a bit with OSC and faced the issue of the software being recommended for windows being Show Cue Systems. While I have no doubt it's brilliant, for my limited requirements, it's a little pricey. All I needed was to start some music and be able to have a desk change cues at set points of the music.

I came across Multiplay software and found that it has all the features I require. So far I've only run it with the Phantom software, looping back via 127.0.0.1 localhost, but I see no reason it won't run with the actual desk when I get a chance to run it, long as the IP address is updated.

I've done a screen recording which should show all the required information to get you going quickly, but I'll type the main points.

Going to File > Production Properties > Network, you can add a network patch. Patch name isn't important, as long as the destination IP is your desk, the port for OSC is 8830 (or whatever your non factory setting is changed to on your own desk) and the encoding is OSC.

Next you need to select a Network Cue (little icon that looks like an RJ45 connection). Description is the only important part of the Common tab, then in the network messages tab, you need to select the Zero88 network patch (or whatever you named it above) and create an ASCII command with the form /zeros/cue/go/<cue number>. In the video I have created a cue 0.1 which sets everything to black each time everything is run, so the lights come on with the music.

For the Cue 0.1 alone, I also change the Cue Advance options to Action: End Play and Target: Next Cue and the Post Wait option to 1.00 seconds, so that when it is played, as soon as it does its 1 second to make sure the desk has time to move everything back to black, it then advanced to the next cue.

All the other cues are just duplicates of this with the description changed and the cue number changed in the ASCII command. You can just add as many of these as you require. None of these have the above options for Waiting and going to the next cue of course.

I then insert an Audio file just below the Cue 0.1 cue, which is played once Cue 0.1 has done its 1 second wait. You can obviously select whatever audio file you need to run in the Audio tab. The important bit for this is the Cue Points tab.

 I add a list of New Cue Points for each of the cues from 1 onwards. Time is changed for each one to be the time in the audio playing that I want the desired cue to be run on the desk. The target option is the name of the Cue I want to run, based on the description of the cue. 

As such, you could imagine making a standard file with a large number of cues and cue points, then putting in the times for the ones you need and deleting any after that point you don't need.

Just a note also that the OSC command I have used runs a cue in the current playback, so make sure you have the correct playback active. You can use cues that run a given cue in a specific playback if you need to. For more information on the possible OSC commands, you can check this link: https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/setup/triggers/osc-examples

Not saying this is the best way to do it, but it's a way I've got it working and it's free to try. Hope it proves useful to someone.

You can find the screen recording here:

 

[Tomas Pokorny]

I have my own solution for playlists with manually started timecode for zero 88 if you need it.

The playlist looks like this.

#20 colorado manual stop
setup|C0/20,C14/9,C47/5|ready
00:00.0|P2|*LED* TIMECODE START
00:01.8|L1/100/4|hihat
00:24.7|R45,P3,C47/5,P36|narvaný kapsy
00:40.1|C33/2,P2,R47,R36|z billa
00:55.5|R33,R2,C47/5,P36|tam kradou
01:29.6|C33/2,P2,R47,R36|z billa
01:45.0|R33,R2,C47/5|Roman solo
02:00.8|C33/2,P2,R47|z billa
02:14.8|R33,R2|o ty
02:15.5|C33/2,L16/100/1|o ty
 

Explanations:
C0/20 = cue 20 in playback 0 
L1/100/4 = level Playback 1 to 100 via 4 sec.
P3 = playback 3 max
R33 = release playback 33

Automatically converts to OSC commands for FLX.