MIDI hardware worth it for Vista?

Vista software Feature suggestions
1

I’m looking for opinions:

I"ve a situation where I’m to do lighting busking for a church event. At the moment they’ve got a PC with Vista that sends DMX signal through a node and has a touchscreen. Vista can use Midi to trigger cuelists.
I’m wondering if it’s worth the time and energy to figure out how to use Midi with Vista? Or if it’d be just as good to use the touchscreen control. (Getting Vista hardware is not financially feasable)

Is it worth the time and energy to figure out how best to use Vista and Midi?
  • Yes, take that time to figure out how to do Vista and Midi
  • No, it’s just as beneficial to operate Vista with a touchscreen only
0 voters

Hopefully I put in the poll info. correctly! (first time)

2

I’ve never used Vista with a touchscreen (after 11 years of using it) although I’d like to some day. MIDI support in Vista is somewhat rudimentary right now, although they’ve promised big updates as well as OSC support in the next major release some time later this year. I think MIDI control, even with its current limitations, is a great thing to learn and have available. I use it extensively every week, in combination with Bitfocus Companion and ProPresenter for remote control away from the console.

The biggest limitation I think you’ll find with MIDI support right now is that you can’t use a fader to control levels, timing, or whatever else a physical fader on real Vista hardware can give you. If you can live with that limitation, MIDI is a great feature to figure out.

3

There are software based third party midi fader to OSC converters out there - so we expect users to be able to do this via translation once the next version is released that includes OSC.

ShowCockpit is an excellent example on WIndows

4

That’s an excellent point and I can’t wait for OSC support.

5

This is a great question, and one that will definitely be impacted by OSC support in the next version. Honestly though, why not do both?

Picture this: you have a midi controller set up to activate cuelists, bumps, effects, tap tempo, etc. for your busking setup, and you also have a touchscreen for Vista making it easy to select fixture groups and make on-the-fly changes.

I don’t see any reason why a touchscreen and midi input need to be mutually exclusive, when both can be combined for an even better experience. And when it comes to whether it’s worth learning how to connect Midi to Vista, I would argue that it’s always worth learning and attempting to figure out something new. Even if you end up to decide against implementing it extensively into your workflow, the knowledge and experience gained in the process of figuring it out is invaluable, in my opinion.

Drew

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