Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.4

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EricW

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Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.4

Hello all!

I am currently working on integrating Glow With The Show gear into my display. I have created an AutoIt GUI that takes the Hex phrases found in the GWTS thread, busts them apart at the spaces, and then displays each of the 16 bytes of information in decimal. These can then manually be put into the sequence using the intensity command. But I was thinking, why not go one step further? Why not have the script build the 16 channels of data for x amount of time, that can be immediately pasted into the target sequence?

What exactly is copied to the clipboard when a chunk of data is copied? It can't be pasted into notepad as far as I've tried. It only displayed the last copied text instead of the data. I also tried opening a sequence in notepad, and while there is quite a lot of human readable information, once it gets down to the <EventValues> tag, it becomes a jumble of characters & symbols that do not seem to have a structure that's easy to decode.

Is there a utility that someone has that can generate this data from an outside source? Obviously something like that is in use with anything that can export .vix files. But how is the question.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

EricW, have you done a search of the sites for GWTS uses that have come up before? I don't know how far back it was, but there was a couple of threads on this. Perhaps they will help.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

Yep! I have. It was what inspired me to integrate GWTS gear into my display this year actually.

The question isn't primarily the codes though. My main question is what is copied to the clipboard when you copy sequence data, and how can this information be generated by an outside software to be pasted into Vixen.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

That one is over my head. Best ask the developers. Jeff? Jon? Anyone else?
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

Thanks algerdes!
Stupid question... How exactly should I go about summoning them? PM? Is there a magic "Hey look over here!" button?
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

I may be able to help....but I think what you might be looking for is a custom addin. In there you shouldn't have to decrypt the Event values from the sequence.(there's a guy somewhere that made some videos on how to create them....:happy:. Just being smart. If you need the link to the videos let me know and I'll find it)

But, just in case you are wondering, the event values in Vixen 2 are a Byte[,](a 2 dimensional array). I'm not on by own computer right now so don't take this as gospel but as far as I remember, the values you see in the sequence is a string composed of each channels values. In other words, All of the event values of channel 1 get written out to the string, then all the event values for channel 2, etc. I have some c# code that can do this if you want to look it over.


Again, creating an addin might be your best bet. You could make it as simple as importing your hex text file.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

I am running Win10 and tried using clipbrd, but no luck. No new information is displayed in the viewer. This happens in both 2.1.4 & 2.1.1. It's almost like Vixen has it's own internal clipboard...?

ctmal, a string for each channel? That's some long strings! lol. What I see in Notepad seems would seem to make sense with the byte values. Raw binary values not formatted in ASCII -> opened in a text editor -> all the values converted to ASCII -> looks like gibberish.

I would love to see your C# code for that!
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

I think KC added importing from the clipboard in 2.5. I don't think that's available anywhere anymore because people had issues with it.


As for the amount of event values, it makes sense if you think about it. If you have a 60 second sequence running at 50 milliseconds, that's 1200 possible event values per channel...that'll balloon up quick.


I've attached the method I use to import the event values in another project. Keep in mind, if you create a custom addIn you wouldn't need to do this because you'd have access to the eventvalues within Vixen. It would save you the trouble of having to mess with the sequence file directly.
 

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Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

Thanks for the code!! Googling the Base64 function opened up a whole new world of information. It is now very obvious the eventvalues are not just straight ASCII. I was able to successfully convert (online) values generated from a sequence containing 1 channel with a 255 event period long ramp.

This is all great progress, but this is all done outside of Vixen using text editors. It still doesn't get me to the point of taking outside data and inserting it into the grid.
Maybe I can find an Base64 AutoIt script that I can intergrate into my exisitng "GWTS Hex to Dec" program, and make it spit out a valid .vix file?? That way I can at least open it in Vixen, and then do a straight copy/paste into the proper points in my real sequence.

Even after all the copying and pasting I've done, when I go back into Vixen, it STILL remembers the chunk of data I copied. This makes me think even more that Vixen has it's own clipboard.

As for the creating a plugin... I am not at all confident on my ability to create one. Much less even where to start! I feel like for what it's worth just to control Mickey Ears, and the fact that it's already a week into September (my lights fire up October 1st), the AutoIt path may be somewhat of a workaround for now.

Oh KC, you great wizard of Vixen, why did ya have to make it so hard?? Haha
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

But... What I currently have now is conversion of only one channel. I am unsure on what signifies the end of one channels' event values, and the start of the next. Since the <time> and <eventperiodinmiliseconds> tags are included in the .vix file, does Vixen just count up the event values till it reaches time*eventperod and decides that point X is the end of channel 1 and the start of channel 2?
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

EricW said:
As for the creating a plugin... I am not at all confident on my ability to create one. Much less even where to start! I feel like for what it's worth just to control Mickey Ears, and the fact that it's already a week into September (my lights fire up October 1st), the AutoIt path may be somewhat of a workaround for now.
Click to expand...

Check this out on how to make an AddIn:
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?15190-Vixen-Plugin-Tutorial&highlight=addin+tutorial

If you want me to have a go at it I'd be willing...but I completely understand if you want to do it all yourself.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

EricW said:
But... What I currently have now is conversion of only one channel. I am unsure on what signifies the end of one channels' event values, and the start of the next. Since the <time> and <eventperiodinmiliseconds> tags are included in the .vix file, does Vixen just count up the event values till it reaches time*eventperod and decides that point X is the end of channel 1 and the start of channel 2?
Click to expand...

Yup, that's exactly what it does. The only thing I have noticed is that the last channel doesn't necessarily have all of the event periods. It appears to stop when at the last changed event.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

Holy cow at all those tutorials! Those are awesome! I went ahead and downloaded Visual Studio and watched almost all of your tutorials. It took a day or two haha.

Is there a function under m_sequence that returns the current location of the cursor? Cursor as in if I clicked on the grid in Vixen, can that location and/or time be returned? I want to take the GUI that shows the sequence name & audio and turn it into a multitude of text input boxes (16 or 17 boxes). Then I can select the exact location of the insertion point before running the addin, and once I hit OK, the values are written out to column X, and rows 0 through 16 respectively.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

EricW said:
Holy cow at all those tutorials! Those are awesome! I went ahead and downloaded Visual Studio and watched almost all of your tutorials. It took a day or two haha.

Is there a function under m_sequence that returns the current location of the cursor? Cursor as in if I clicked on the grid in Vixen, can that location and/or time be returned? I want to take the GUI that shows the sequence name & audio and turn it into a multitude of text input boxes (16 or 17 boxes). Then I can select the exact location of the insertion point before running the addin, and once I hit OK, the values are written out to column X, and rows 0 through 16 respectively.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no way to tie directly into the grid. But what you can do is take care of the channel mapping and importing yourself. It really depends on what your data file includes. So, for example, if your data file includes 5 channels but those channels are all in a row, you can just have the addin ask for the starting channel and import the data from there. In the addin you have access to the channels and the event values so you can edit them directly.

If the data file has multiple channels that might not be directly, you could set up some sort of channel mapping setup. This is what I did in the 3d Object Suite addin. If it's something you may do multiple times, you can even save that mapping to the sequence so you don't need to enter it every time.

As for calculating the time, I think you would have to prompt for that information. Fortunately, if you click the grid, it shows the time information in the window. You could just have the addin ask for that value before the import.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

Ok... I'm crying uncle! I'm a novice at C#. I am close to getting it done, but I have a pesky problem in my code. I can't access the information in the form class, from the primary class. It seems to be a common problem. Yet all the searching I've done it seems like there are 20 different ways to fix it. With me being such a novice with C#, It's basically Greek to me. Would you be ok with looking over my code?
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

Let me rephrase that... My code is not the right description. More like it's your tutorial code that I have attempted to bend to my own will.
 
Re: Creating sequence data from outside software & pasting into sequence - Vixen 2.1.

EricW said:
Ok... I'm crying uncle! I'm a novice at C#. I am close to getting it done, but I have a pesky problem in my code. I can't access the information in the form class, from the primary class. It seems to be a common problem. Yet all the searching I've done it seems like there are 20 different ways to fix it. With me being such a novice with C#, It's basically Greek to me. Would you be ok with looking over my code?
Click to expand...

Sure, no problem. I will pm you with my email address.
 
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