2.1 RC Announcement

We have just added a 2.1 Release Candidate version to the downloads area VenueMagic 2.1 DJ Edition RC1.  During the last several days of quality and reliability testing we have been unable to discover any more problems with the release.  Our goal and guiding principle in all of our development is to release completely reliable software which can be used comfortably at any event.  We always want to hear about every minor “crash” or hiccup as those are not acceptable to us and we take them very seriously.  We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback in the forums.

Ben Holmes VP of Product Management

VenueMagic Newsletter Subscription

Thank you for subscribing to the VenueMagic Newsletter.  If you requested a 15 day free trial of VenueMagic, you should receive an email shortly asking you to confirm your email address, once you have confirmed your email address you will receive an email containing the download links.  (If you don’t receive the link email within a few minutes please check your junk email box.  If it’s not there, please contact us atsupport@venuemagic.com)

 

About this Newsletter

The VenueMagic Newsletter is published once per month in email and html format.  The primary purpose is to inform our customers about upcoming technology, VenueMagic news, Tutorials, and cool things we find during the month.

We promise to take your requests for information and support seriously.  If you would like a particular question answered as part of the monthly newsletter please email your question to support@venuemagic.com.

VenueMagic DJ Edition Now Available in Guitar Center Stores Nationwide

We are very please to announce the availability of our VenueMagic 2.0 DJ Edition retail release in Guitar Center Stores Nationwide.

We have finally shipped and VenueMagic is now available in stock in the following Guitar Center stores: Hollywood, CA (Store Page) Palmdale, CA (Store Page) San Jose, CA (Store Page) Hallendale, FL (Store Page) Atlanta, GA (Store Page) Chicago, IL (Store Page) Brooklyn, NY (Store Page) Las Vegas, NV (Store Page) Houston, TX (Store Page) SLC, UT (Store Page) And more to come!!! All Guitar Center stores nationwide can order it for you upon your request. About Guitar Center Guitar Center is the world’s largest retailer of guitars, amplifiers, percussion instruments, keyboards, and pro-audio and recording equipment. Its retail store subsidiary presently operates 214 Guitar Center stores across the United States. Guitar Center is also the largest direct response retailer of musical instruments in the United States through its wholly owned subsidiary, Musician’s Friend Inc., and its catalog and Web site, www.musiciansfriend.com. In addition, Guitar Center’s Music & Arts division operates more than 100 stores specializing in band instruments for sale and rental, serving teachers, band directors, college professors and students. More information on Guitar Center can be found by visiting the company’s Web site at www.guitarcenter.com. The Guitar Center logo is a registered trademark of Guitar Center Inc. Other brand or product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Last Updated (Friday, 07 May 2010 14:05)

Featured Videos Added

The “Featured Video” panel has just been added to the VenueMagic website.  Here you’ll find video presentations of VenueMagic Lighting Control Software in action.  This panel will be updated regularly with videos showing events, tutorials and even user-submitted material.  If you have created your own video on how you’ve used VenueMagic, we’d love to see it!  Email us atvideos@venuemagic.com and let us know.  We’ll put it up on our site!

VenueMagic Retail Version Now Available

We are very excited to announce the release of the full version of VenueMagicTM 2.0 DJ Edition show control software. VenueMagic represents the ultimate in DJ lighting control software, with dozens of features to make designing light shows quick and easy.

The full version includes:
· VenueMagic 2.0 DJ Edition Show Control Software (CD)
· VM-USBDMX-01 USB DMX Interface (w/USB cable)
· User’s Manual (on CD)
· Video Tutorials

New Release Uploaded

We have just finished uploading the latest release of VenueMagic 2.0 DJ Edition.  This release contains some fantastic improvements to help our DJ Lighting Software become even more awesome.  Over the last couple months we have added the following features:

  • Timeline Markers
  • Play timelines in foreground during Events and Cues
  • Note fields available in most dialogs
  • Improved Beat Tapper
  • Flash Lighting Effect
  • All Pan/Tilt Lighting Effects have been enhanced to allow more flexibility
  • New Lighting Fixtures added to library

In the next few weeks we will also be making pre-built shows available to purchase and download.  The intention is to build a library that you will be able to just take and use in your own shows.  In order to do this effectively, we would like to get feedback on what people out there are using as a primary setup.  For example, one of our customers uses four LED Lights and four Moving Head lights, so we have already created a number of different timelines around this setup.  Please post your feedback and suggestions in the forums.

What’s Different About VenueMagic?

VenueMagic is not your typical lighting control software package.  It’s a revolutionary new approach to DMX light show design that is quite different from anything else out there.   VenueMagic DJ Edition is a powerful show control software product with features and capabilities that focus on creating an increased appeal in the DJ lighting market.   At ESG, we recognize that the lighting control software industry has been slow to respond to the specific needs of the DJ market.  Whereas available products do provide the user with varying levels of power and flexibility, their approach to show design continues to be directed more towards experienced lighting engineers, rather than to DJ’s.   Typical lighting control software is designed to mimic traditional hardware-based lighting controllers.  Each fixture channel is assigned a slider control.  Each slider is adjusted to the desired position and then a time is assigned.  This is called a step.  Other parameters allow you to set the transitions between steps as smooth fades or instantaneous jumps. A sequence of one or more steps creates a scene.  Individual scenes can be attached to triggers, such as clicking on a button, pressing a key on the keyboard, or a message from a MIDI controller, which will cause the scene to be executed.   More sophisticated and higher-priced software may allow you to line-up scenes, or blocks, on a timeline to help synchronize it to music or to other blocks.   This “time-step entry” approach to programming light shows has several disadvantages:   First, using this method, shows must be carefully laid-out in advance on cue sheets, often second by second, before programming can even begin.  This is especially true when precise synchronization to music or other events is desired.  This approach may work for large-scale concerts and theater, but your average DJ is not going to take the time to do this.  For this reason, many DJs become disenchanted with synchronized lighting control before they even start into it.   Another disadvantage to the time-step entry approach is that it is difficult to make changes, especially to timing.  Quite often, doing something as simple as shifting the timing of one cue can involve going back and redoing dozens of steps in a scene.   Unless you have had many years of experience in doing light shows time-step entry is tedious, time-consuming and often frustrating.  And there is little tolerance for mistakes.  DJ’s are artists, and they think like artists, while the time-step entry approach is really more suited to the mindset of engineers.   Many of the disadvantages of time-step entry are addressed by high-end software-based systems costing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.  However such capabilities have always been well out of reach to typical DJ’s and other lighting specialists.  That is, until now.   VenueMagic makes the experience of light show design far more enjoyable by shortening the gap between dream and reality.   VenueMagic abandons the time-step entry approach altogether.  Instead it uses a more intuitive, timeline-based approach similar to that used by popular audio-editing software such as Cubase, Pro Tools, and Ableton Live.   Creating a light show using VenueMagic begins with a timeline.  A timeline can contain as many tracks as you like where you can drag over audio clips, lamp effect clips and events.   Audio clips can be moved and sized, and you can also apply envelopes to control volume, pan, echo, reverb and other audio effects.  This allows you to put your audio mix together right in VenueMagic.  This is great if you want to mix-in additional sound effects or other audio clips on top of your music.  In most cases, there’s no need to create a mix-down in advance with other audio-editing software.   Lighting effect clips let you control fixture channels the same way you would control audio envelopes.  Precisely synchronizing lighting effects with music is simple because it’s all on the screen in front of you.  The powerful envelope editor feature gives you even more precise control.   There is also a library of pre-programmed chaser sequences and other special lighting effects that you can simply drag and drop onto the timeline.  These effects can even distinguish between dimmer, RGB, gobo, color, motion, and other fixture channel types and will automatically select the appropriate channels to control in your fixture.   One of the powerful and unique features of VenueMagic is the ability to blend multiple lighting effects onto the same fixture channel.  This opens the door to some amazing effects and capabilities.   We believe that VenueMagic’s unique approach to light show design has many advantages:

  • • The graphical timeline makes it easier to see what is going on in the scene as a whole.
  • • Synchronization of lighting effects to music and other audio clips is much easier.
  • • Changes in the show are easier to make.
  • • Light show designers spend less time with the technical details and more time being creative.
  • • Built-in library of chaser sequences and special lighting effects makes show creation much faster.
  • • Similarities with popular audio editors significantly reduce the learning curve, especially for DJ’s.

VenueMagic includes many additional features that were designed to give it greater appeal in the DJ market.

  • • Full-featured Playlist.
  • • Programmable cue buttons for triggering timelines.
  • • Programmable sliders for controlling lamp and audio levels.
  • • Auto-beat detection and synching.
  • • Beat tapper for real-time manual synchronization of chaser sequences.
  • • MIDI input for triggering timelines and controlling lamp and audio levels.
  • • MIDI output for signaling external controllers.
  • • Channel routing for controlling and adjusting DMX light levels directly with anyMIDI controller.
  • • Channel grouping to allow multiple fixtures to be controlled together simultaneously.
  • • 2-D Show preview window.
  • • Custom chaser sequence design tool.
  • And many other features…

VenueMagic DJ Edition has a suggested retail price of $399.  This price includes:

  • • The VenueMagic 2.0 DJ Edition Software CD
  • • USB DMX interface hardware
  • • Serial cable

The software CD also includes a full user’s manual and nearly an hour of video tutorials that will get users up to speed building sophisticated lightshows in no time.   No other lighting control software on the market offers so many advanced features and capabilities at such a low price.   VenueMagic.  DMX lighting control redefined.

Welcome

Welcome to our company Blog.  We will be using this blog to send out updates about what we are doing as a company and various interesting things we are involved in.  This past Saturday night we did the lighting for our local high school’s homecoming dance.  It was quite exciting to see VenueMagic outperform everyone’s expectations.  We were able to create some awesome effects including a wandering circle where we had four moving head lights with circle gobos following each other in a round circle.  We also shot a bunch of video which will be used in various upcoming marketing materials.  We want to thank SOS Entertainment for allowing us the opportunity to participate in the event.

Ben and Don

New Fixture Forum Created

As part of our continued dedication to being completely revolutionary, we’ve added an additional forum for users to request the addition of their fixtures to our standard database.  We are accepting requests for all manufacturers and types of devices.  Just login and make your request in the forums.  Here is the first post in that forum:

So far I have received the following fixture requests via email. I’ve added them here and invite everyone to add additional requests in this forum to help reduce duplication 

American DJ 46HP LED
American DJ 64WH LED pro
Chauvet Min wash
Omnisistem LED PAR 36
Elation Design PAR 575H
Chauvet Scorpion Series
Additional Generic Fixtures up to 20 Channels

Also on that last note, remember you can chain Generic Channels together to create whatever kind of fixture you need to have. This allows you to basically create any fixture you need immediately. For Example the Scorpion Sky could be put together as follows:

1: Generic 1 Channel – Mode
2: Generic 1 Channel – Pattern Selection
3-4: Generic Scan Head – Pan/Tilt
5: Generic 1 Channel – Size
6: Generic 1 Channel – Speed

You can also double click on each Generic fixture as you added it and change the name to the correct channel name.

Advanced Users Only… Once you create the fixture you can then create a fixture group and combine all of the individual Generic Fixtures you created above into a single group. This will allow you to more conveniently assign the fixture to different tracks in your timeline.

Remember to post whatever you need added as well so we can make our database the most complete in the DJ Lighting Industry.

Store Updated

We have been working hard on getting everything right for the website.  We received a couple comments on the store page and have decided to change it to show the two versions in a table layout you can take a look at the new page VenueMagic Products. We have also enhanced the Flash video on the home page so take a closer look at it to see all of the cool details.  The music for it is still coming and should be done in the next week or so.  Our sales@venuemagic.com email account is starting to get lots of comments and questions, right now the response time is within 24 hours on business days and many times much faster.  We have also completed our first press release so watch for it in the major ezine sites.

1 … 8 9 10 11
>