ArtNet Emu

An Art-Net listener for controlling Winamp, VLC media player and ~~iTunes for Windows~~ Support for iTunes is in the code, but not part of the build. You can uncomment the commented lines in Model/Players/ITunesMediaPlayer.cs to add support for iTunes.

Art-Net on Wikipedia

Art-Net is a royalty-free communications protocol for transmitting the DMX512-A lighting control protocol and Remote Device management (RDM) protocol over the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) of the Internet Protocol suite.

Lighting controller

This application makes Winamp, VLC or iTunes into a controllable "lighting" fixture, from within your lighting console.

To be able to send commands through the lighting controller, you must setup a fixture for your controller.

The fixtures uses 5 channel.

Fixture setup

Channel	Name	Description
1	Volume	Audio output volume
2	Group	Group index
3	File	File index
4	Mode	Which action to perform
5	Control	Makes the action execute

Volume (channel 1): 0 - 255: Volume ranging from muted to 100% volume.
Group (channel 2): 0 - 255: Group index for playing specific files.
File (channel 3): 0 - 255: File index for playing specific files.
Mode (channel 4): See table below
Control (channel 5): See table below

Mode ranges

From	To	Mode
0	25	Ignore
26	50	Play file
51	75	Play file and stop
76	100	Stop
101	125	Pause
126	150	Resume
151	175	Next
176	200	Previous
201	255	Reserved

Note about Play file

When executing in Play file mode, playback is only started if the file is found with group index and file index.

Note about Play file and stop

Only Winamp supports stopping playback after the files has played - other players will treat this command as Play file.

Control ranges

From	To	Control
0	245	Ignore
246	255	Execute

Controlling the media player

Group and file are only used in mode Play file and Play file and stop.

Volume changes are always sent to the media player, regardless of other channel values.

Mode changes are only sent, with a value of Execute on the Control parameter.

If you need to play the same file twice, you can change Control to Ignore and then back to Execute. Or you can change Mode to Ignore and then back to Play file.

A note on Play file and stop

This is supported on Winamp only, and done by setting Manual playlist advance to on. The application will switch this setting on and off depending no which mode you choose.

Play file will set Manual playlist advance to off.

Play file and stop will set Manual playlist advance to on.

To manually change this setting in Winamp, go to Preferences -> General Preferences -> Playlist and find the checkbox under Advanced Playback Settings that says Manual playlist advance.

Setting up VLC

The application can control Winamp and iTunes on local machines with no additional setup required.

VLC is controlled over http, and you need to activate this in the settings for VLC.

From the main menu choose: Tools -> Preferences.

In the bottom left corner of the Preferences window where it says Show settings, choose All.

Select Interface -> Main interfaces and check Web.

Select Interface -> Main interfaces -> Lua. Type in a password under Lua HTTP -> Password. Save and restart VLC.

When setting up a VLC Remote configuration, the filepath must be in the form of a File URI, for the remote filesystem.

File control

A media player can be controlled to play individual files, on specific lighting queues.

The files are divided into a maximum of 256 groups, and each group can contain a maximum of 256 files. A maximum total of 65536 individual files.

Files can be given a group and file index by three different methods.

Setting up group and file indexes for files

Filelist

The file list locater are for large projects.

It searches for folder names that contain a number between 0-255, and has a filelist.txt in it.

The filelist.txt contains a list of the files you want to index, with the first line starting at index 0 (zero).

C:\Music
├── 006 Beats
│   ├── deadbeat.wav
│   ├── drop.mp3
│   └── filelist.txt
│
├── Effects 10 for show
│   ├── filelist.txt
│   └── wow.mp3
│
├── Extras 200
│   ├── filelist.txt
│   ├── movie1.mp4
│   └── movie2.avi
│
└── Not found 20
    └── audio.mp3

This will locate the three groups 6, 10 and 200 but not 20 - because of the missing filelist.txt in the Not found 20 folder.

Example of contents of C:\Music\006 Beats\filelist.txt

drop.mp3
deatbeat.wav
missing.mp3

The three files will be index according to line number, starting from zero.

drop.mp3 is indexed with group 6 and file 0.

deatbeat.wav is indexed with group 6 and file 1.

missing.mp3 is indexed with group 6 and file 2, but will show up as a missing file.

Filelists are not supported on VLC Remote player.

Filestructure

Filestructure gets the group index from the foldername, and the fileindex, from the filename.

C:\Music
├── 006 Beats
│   ├── deadbeat 05.wav
│   └── drop 3.mp3
│
├── Effects 10 for show
│   └── 1 wow.mp3
│
├── Extras 200
│   ├── movie1.mp4
│   └── movie2.mp4
│
└── Not found 20
	└── audio.mp3

This will load the following files:

Group 6

3: drop 3.mp3

5: deadbeat 05.wav

Group 10

1: 1 wow.mp3

Group 200

1: movie1.mp4

2: movie2.mp4

Group 20 will not load, because there's no number in audio (extension is not used as file-index).

Regex

If you know about Regex and how to make them, feel free to make your own. The locator for Filestructure is just a preformatted Regex.

Group-index must be first group in the match, and file-index must be seconds group in the match.

Make sure you keep numbers between 0-255, as wrong matches will result in errors.

Taking care of duplicate group/file indexes and missing files

Please notice that the application does not warn about missing files or overlapping group/file indexes. To avoid mistakes in your filelist/file naming, please check your imported files by rightclicking on a configuration, and choose View filelist, View duplicates or View missing. This is also a good indicator for checking the correct fileencoding for your filelist.txt, when working with filelists and international characters.

Common setups

VLC on local machine, using file structure

First setup VLC to allow external control.
Create at folder for your show music.
Add sub folders with the group number in the folder name. The group number can be anywhere in the folder name, not just the end.

Add files into the folders with the file number in the file name.

Add a media player in ArtNet Emu.

Setup the configuration for VLC. Be sure to select Filestructure under File scanning method. Point your Folderpath to the created top folder. Type in the password for VLC, and press OK.

View the file list, to see if Artnet Emu found your files. Be sure to check for duplicates.

Connect you lighting console to Artnet Emu by pressing Start listener, and set the following channels to these values:

Channel 1 (Volume): 100%
Channel 2 (Group): 1
Channel 3 (File): 1
Channel 4 (Mode): 38 (Play)
Channel 5 (Control): 255 (Execute)

The first file in the first group should play.

VLC on local machine, using playlist

First setup VLC to allow external control.
Add a media player in ArtNet Emu.

Setup the configuration for VLC. Point your Folderpath to an empty folder. Type in the password for VLC, and press OK.

Open VLC and add files to the playlist.