The SC - Luminair...Take Control of Your Light Show!

By request! The Sound Couple finally drops an overview of Luminair! This has been one of our most requested videos and we finally did it!
If you have ever wondered how Luminair works..this is the video for you! We cover what is needed to connect the lights to programming some basic scenes.
Helpful information and links:
Bart's layman's definition of DMX:
A system that assigns a range of numbers that reserve functionality for a light fixture. The DMX address Channel range starts at 1 and goes up to 512 with each light fixture reserving a variety of ranges (DMX Mode) that is selectable by the user that best fits their needs. Within each channel contains a sub range between 0-255 that contains specific functions that the light has been designed to perform. With the use of a DMX controller, the user has ability to interface with the fixture and control it.
Links:
DMX primer:
www.chauvetprofessional.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/DMX_Primer.pdf
Luminair:
luminair.app
Luminair manual:
luminair.app/downloads/Luminair%20User%20Manual.pdf
Enttec ODE:
www.enttec.com/product/dmx-distribution/ode-mk3-dmx-ethernet-converter/
Chauvet ColorPalette:
www.chauvetdj.com/products/colorpalette/
Chauvet 4-Bar Quad
www.chauvetdj.com/products/4bar-quad/
See appendix for DMX overview
firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/dealerportal-2fb18.appspot.com/o/products%2F1899%2Fdownloads%2Fprokontrol-mh_manual_rev_b.pdf?alt=media&token=416371a2-6152-453f-a9fd-3d05f1a71f10
0:00 Intro
1:11 Technology needs
3:02 Selecting DMX Mode
3:59 Selection starting DMX address
4:30 Importing Chauvet 4-Bar Quad fixture profile
5:54 Controlling lights
8:54 Luminair Color Wheel
9:30 Using Luminair faders
10:51 Saving scenes
12:33 Locking scenes
13:10 Channel strip parameters
14:47 Importing Chauvet ColorPALETTE
17:32 Sequencing
18:26 Displaying scenes full screen
18:56 Fading and black out
19:14 Summary

[@jackcroker2687]

Hey it’s me again, I’ve had my first gig and it was a blast! Thanks for the tips in the last video they really helped! 😊 Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

[@thesoundcouple]

That's great Jack...we are glad it was successful!

[@DeanKWilson]

As someone who has focused primarily on sound production, this video was very instructive and helpful. Thanks for sharing this information with us.

[@thesoundcouple]

You're welcome...We do think of Luminair as a good controller for non-light people. These days, we need to be able to do lights too and as much as we appreciate a good light show, we will never have the passion. That said, we would like to think that we do a pretty good job faking it and Luminair helps us with that!

[@shaunfine9667]

Great video guys! Thank for taking the time to explain a great program in your own words. Really enjoyed it.

[@thesoundcouple]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@DEWAYNE552]

Thank you Bart. I have wondered how you and Stacy run your lights. Great video.

[@thesoundcouple]

Thanks DeWayne!

[@windowpro11]

Ive been running Luminair for around 5 years its great :)

[@thesoundcouple]

That's great to hear others having success with it well. Feedback from a lot of viewers tend to be not as sold on it. We realize part of our issue is that we don't know what we don't know, but Luminair just makes so many aspects of lighting for us (as a second job) pretty painless to get good nice results.

[@alastairkeith8553]

Great video. Lighting is so important and adds value to any production as it provides atmosphere and sets the quality & tone of an event. Bands and DJ’s without lighting just look like a practice session. I started with Luminaire but moved onto MyDMX and eventually onto console. I liked the simplicity of Luminaire but soon found its limitations on bigger rigs when i started adding house lights to my setup where you had to quickly add the profiles. That’s where the consoles (Avolites and Chamsys) really had an advantage. Lighting gear gets really expensive very quickly so having a simple setup controls costs and setup time and can do a really effective job. Thanks for doing the video.

[@thesoundcouple]

Appreciate the insights Alastair....most important is to have the right tool for the job and that sounds exactly how you approached all of this!

[@harlanchaput]

This video came just in time. I currently use Vibrio. I want to try Luminair but don’t like the subscription method they have now. Watching this makes me want to give a month. It seems easier than Vibrio. Thanks Bart.

[@thesoundcouple]

We do not like subscriptions either, but in this case, it does seem like they are at investing in product development. Let us know how it goes!

[@heatheldridge7127]

Agree. More than happy to pay to buy it, but subscriptions mean you’re likely to end up paying thousands over time.

[@thesoundcouple]

At least it's one less piece of gear to try to dump 😆@@heatheldridge7127

[@JackHodgson-hn1ff]

Amazing Video once again Bart!

[@thesoundcouple]

Thanks Jack! This was a lot of work, so appreciate the comment!

[@RegularTennesseeJoe]

You have me sold on this!

[@thesoundcouple]

Let us know how it works out...and for the record, not that you literally meant it, but we are not affiliated with Luminair in any way. We just like to share what is working for us!

[@RegularTennesseeJoe]

@@thesoundcouplewe have the ADJ program and a standard DMX controller. The ADJ program doesn’t work well with moving heads.

[@thesoundcouple]

We should share our experience with moving heads and Luminair. We noticed substantial performance improvements in moving heads running Luminair with our laptop wired Ethernet to the network (no wireless). We concluded that wireless introduced latency that was impacting the performance of the fixture making them more jerky in their movements.@@RegularTennesseeJoe

[@gasmy2257]

So incredibly easy. I can't wait to receive my DMX to ARTNet adapter and get cracking

[@thesoundcouple]

Cool, let us know how it works out!

[@erikbrenzel8359]

Finally got all my stuff set up. Luminaire hooked up, time to program scenes. Any tricks? Especially changing all colors at once instead of one instrument at a time. Thanks again for all your help.

[@thesoundcouple]

Take your time with it as there are functionality that isn't always apparent. Being able to copy scenes should give you good templates to modify pieces without have to start over.

[@novellendavidson2001]

Thanks for the very informative and detailed videos. Happy New Year and a successful 2024 for you and Stacie from Cape Town, South Africa. Pity Luminair is iOS based.

[@thesoundcouple]

You are welcome! Appreciate you watching from around the world! BTW - Luminair does run on MacOS.

[@MichaelDaviesMusic]

Hi Bart. Are you using the $99 a year subscription based model of Luminair v.4? or the free version v.3?

[@thesoundcouple]

We use the paid version now.

[@bhsaproduction]

Have you seen or used the Chauvet ILS system and if so, what do you think of it? I've seen in your posts a Chauvet D-Fi hub as well. Some DJ's use a lighting controller like a Obey 6 DMX, ADJ Wolfmix or something like the myDMX Go DMX controller. Then of course there are DMX cables, wireless receivers/transmitters and USB or XLR plugs to consider. What are your recommendations on choosing a system that is expandable, that will work across multiple devices and maybe doesn't lock you into a specific brand?

[@thesoundcouple]

We chose to only use fixtures that will support the DMX protocol. The D-Fi Hub is only for transmission to our Freedom Sticks (virtual wire), but they are still controlled via DMX. We primarily use Donner DMX to save time wiring lights. We invested in these before there was the ILS system which only one set of our fixtures will support, so don't see a reason to invest...especially since our Donners work so well. We will still use XLR cables for longer duration events.

[@Hyakman5408]

Based in part on this video, I recently picked up an ENNTEC interface (USB Pro) and put Luminair on a MacBook. I'm using Chauvet D-Fi Wireless USB DMX transceivers with my current lighting setup. Connected to the ENNTEC is a Chauvet wireless DMX transmitter. I have no trouble making a connection to the lights and causing them to change as a result of what I do in Luminair. The main frustration I have is that if I would like to give each fixture a certain color,e.g., I can't simply select them in Luminair to make the change/s and be done with it. I must first depress the little button on the transmitter to select a fixture by cycling through a combination of "led DIP switches" (instead of tiny physical switches that one must manipulate for the same result), adjust in Luminair, select another light, adjust in Luminair, wash/rinse/repeat. This is very time-consuming and tedious and not an efficient use of one's time at a gig. My question: Using your Donner DMX wireless system, are you able to make desired changes to each of your fixtures, either all at once or independently, without having to select each fixture to affect said changes? That is assuming that you are using wireless control (which is what I think I see in your videos). Hopefully, I've been able to communicate my situation and question with enough clarity that doesn't leave you scratching your head and not sure of what I'm asking 😀

[@thesoundcouple]

Haven't worked with the D-Fi to actually change color, but my assumption is that it should work. We use ours for our Freedom Sticks to send programs via DMX, so it's working for us. I don't see this being a Luminair specific issue as it's sending DMX info which is a standardized protocol. With our Donners, we are able to change the colors as they are just taking the place of the cable.

[@ryandavis317]

Bart a few questions…..what is the subscription price for the luminair app? Does this work with any DMX Light? For the Wi-Fi connection is it on the same as your mixer.

[@thesoundcouple]

If I recall, it's $100 per year. It should work with any DMX light since you are able to configure your own DMX profile. In fact, that's how we defined most of our lights since the fixture library was limited at the time. You can run it on the same network, there isn't need to have a dedicated network for any of this.

[@DrumsWithTaylor]

Do you run this on the same network as your console? I assume since it's all hardwired connections, you don't need internet?

[@thesoundcouple]

It's all run on the same network. Luminair doesn't require Internet to operate.

[@mrhalloweenguy]

I have been luminaire for about 5 years doing all sorts of events(weddings, dances, glow parties , etc., and even small stage shows. It’s been great in most aspects except it has one glaring issue, it has no way to sync scenes to the beat other than set some of the fixtures to sound active, so it’s limited in creating next level light shows. Ever since they rolled out the $99 subscription plan I have been emailing them begging for this feature, and every year it gets dismissed. I still love the Luminair 4 iPad layout and it’s great for most things, like first dance and a decent Lightshow, but I just bought “AI lightshow “ for the party mode to get a next level lightshow. That will sync everything including the movers. Note AI lightshow has a dmx bypass called “repeater” that will still allow me to switch between the two systems. Now if Luminaire4 could Add AI to there system I would be all in. AI lightshow can do static scenes, but since you can’t re-label things like you can in Luminare you have to keep track of the layers of buttons since it doesn’t have a good visual display.

[@thesoundcouple]

Thank you for sharing your insights. We haven't' yet found a profound need to change yet. We are not lighting experts so the ease of use at a show is huge for us!

[@GKB.official]

for anyone that uses light rider, how would you compare this with it?

[@thesoundcouple]

Interesting question. Light Rider appears to be really focused on stage lighting and ease of use through presets. Is it to good to be true?

[@GKB.official]

@@thesoundcouple I’ve been using it. It seems to good to be true

[@gabrielboho8733]

Can you add effects to scenes? For example making moving heads move on a circle pattern on a scene

[@thesoundcouple]

Yes you can! With the movement generator, they have presets or you can create your own.

[@gabrielboho8733]

@@thesoundcoupleawesome! Are you also able to have layers? For example one scene layer for colors, another one for movement? And stack them up?

[@thesoundcouple]

@@gabrielboho8733 They have stacks so you can link scenes together and play them. There is only one screen layer per project.

[@jasonlajuene2036]

What's that Ipad case you have there ?

[@thesoundcouple]

The cases are by Otterbox.

[@erikbrenzel8359]

Hey you too, thanks again for the videos. 2 question, can that program run on an iPad and can it run non branded lights. I have a few of each.

[@thesoundcouple]

Yes and Yes…it will support any DMX capable light .

[@erikbrenzel8359]

@@thesoundcouple thank you

[@erikbrenzel8359]

Sorry another question, I don’t have an Ethernet port for my iPad. Can I use a wireless router after the dmx box? Then wireless to my iPad. Thank you

[@thesoundcouple]

Yes, that's exactly what I am doing in the video. The "DMX box" needs to support Ethernet like we demonstrate here with our Enntec ODE box.@@erikbrenzel8359

[@erikbrenzel8359]

@@thesoundcouple thank you again.

[@heatheldridge7127]

I’ve been using luminaire for 5 years and I wish this existed when I started. I’ve been disappointed with their upgrade to luminaire 4. I would be happy to pay for it (even though I previously paid for 3) but I don’t do subscriptions. Don’t use it enough. You can still use the version 3 features but it’s not as smooth as it used to be.

[@thesoundcouple]

We still use version 3 on an older iPad....we just use it when we want to use our Freedom Sticks and the old version with the new project files still works!

[@Michael-Elo]

Great... So subscribe for $25 a month for super basic functions. Super uninspiring and a waist of money. Theres sooo many apps and programmes that does way more and for ether free or a fraction of the price.

[@thesoundcouple]

We pay the $99/year. If you are basing its functionality off this video, our intentions were not to mislead you. This was not a tutorial but instead, an introduction to the program and how to get started. The functionality runs much deeper if that is where you want to go with it.

[@WeeEasak]

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[@thesoundcouple]

ด้วยความยินดี!