Best DMX lighting control software for my situation

[Jealousblues]

Im wondering whats the best DMX lighting software for our curent situation.

 

We are using a magic 260 but I think I want to go to software.

 

Our band is a little different than most and it works in our advantage for this.

- we play with MIDI backing tracks so every song is the same length/speed etc every time and we can send midi signals to a light controller.

 

We dont use a ton of lights 9 strip lights and a few moving heads 4-6 

 

Can you recomend come programs to use (and dongles)

what we want

 

- able to run with MIDI 

- easy to use

- I would prefer some kind of visualization ability so I dont have to set up a show to program it each time and so I can preview them

- as always we dont want to spend too much if we dont have to 

- we run our sequences off of a keyboard but we do have a computer at the gigs we could use for the DMX software

- instead of constantly sending out midi messages for each scene I would like to be able to creat entire shows for each song, then have them triggered by the sequencer when the song starts

(so only one midi signal would be sent per song)

 

Thanks guys!

[Mutha Goose]

Look into DMXis and the associated ShowBuddie. They were made specifically for this type of application.

[StratGuy22]

[Voltage55]

DMXIS with ShowBuddie looks like a great suggestion for what you are trying to do. 

 

Just for the sake of looking around another program I would take a look at is Elation Compu Show.  For what you are running you probably wouldn't need more that the Compu Cue dongle to run it with.  You can do everything with this program that you are looking to accomplish.  But this program might be more geared toward someone actually up there running the board.

 

If you are really feeling saucy, then look into running an Elation MidiCon to run with Compu Show.  It is like having a Magic 260 with the programming power of software to use with it.