Isadora to Lights
Stream an Isadora Stage or Virtual Stage over NDI so Spectralite can drive lighting fixtures from an interactive Isadora patch.
Isadora patches usually react to something: a sensor, a performer, a cue from stage management. Publishing a Stage over NDI carries that reactivity into the lighting rig, so the fixtures respond to the same input the video does rather than waiting for an operator to follow along.
Turn on NDI for a Stage
Go to Output > Stage Setup and select the Stage you want to send. In the External Outputs section of the Stage Settings, tick NDI. That Stage now publishes over the network.
For a feed that exists only to drive lighting, use a Virtual Stage instead. A Virtual Stage works like an ordinary Stage, receiving video and carrying a stage number, but has no display hardware behind it, which is exactly what you want for output to Syphon, Spout, or NDI. Isadora supports up to 48 Stages across both kinds.
TroikaTronix covers Stage Setup itself in Quick Start with Stage Setup, and the NDI side in Basics of NDI Input and Output.
Pick up the stream in Spectralite
Open Edit > Inputs > NDI and enable NDI input enabled and Auto-discover sources.
Put the video on your fixtures
Add a Timeline layer with the built-in NDI Input effect, or place an NDI Input node in the Node Editor to decide how the pixels drive your rig.
Sending control values, not just pictures
A Virtual Stage does not have to hold a picture. Render solid rectangles whose brightness comes from your patch, one rectangle per fixture group, and you have turned the video stream into a set of control channels. Point each fixture at its own rectangle in the Spectralite position map and the patch drives them individually.
Keep a Virtual Stage small when you use it this way. The resolution only needs to be large enough to hold one distinct region per group, and a small stage costs almost nothing to encode.
Related
- Receive video from another app: shared performance and troubleshooting.
- Position Map Editor: assign each fixture a sampling position.
- Node Editor: shape the sampled values.
- Connect Your Software: guides for other applications.