Conductor is the application for effect and motion programming. Everything in the installation that moves or changes but is not the picture — lighting, automation, motion, audio, serial devices — is drawn as a curve against time on one timeline, and Conductor evaluates it frame by frame and sends the result out. The show logic lives in Backstage. Conductor programs what the show sets in motion, and the two run to the same clock.

It is built for permanent installations: visitor attractions, dome theatres, themed entertainment, museums, ride and animatronic control, media facades.

What belongs in Backstage

Much of what an installation needs is already in Backstage, and that is the shorter route. Backstage drives Art-Net and sACN devices directly, maps a media facade onto the 3D scene it already holds, and draws curves, colors and strings along a sequencer channel out to any Art-Net or sACN device. For straightforward work, none of that needs Conductor.

Conductor is for when it stops being straightforward — motion programming above all. The rule of thumb is simple: do it in Backstage if Backstage can. If it cannot, Conductor probably can.

Programming on a timeline

Every numeric output is a curve. Add control points, drag them, or type exact values, and choose how Conductor interpolates between any two of them — Linear, Step, Hermite or Bézier. Continuous movement can be drawn freehand or with the smudge tool, then optimized, scaled, inverted, stretched or shifted in time across a selection.

The tree runs timeline, groups, devices, channels. Every item can be cloned, hidden and muted individually while the show is playing, so a single channel can be taken out of the picture without stopping anything else.

Realtime mode

A timeline that drives a motion base is a different proposition from one that drives lights. A lamp will accept any value you send it; a platform will not, and the curve that looks correct on screen can still ask the machine for a step it cannot make. With realtime mode on, every numeric channel enforces speed and acceleration limits, with a separate limit pair for the stopped state and a decay factor. Limited regions can be marked in the curve, and the channel can output the restricted value rather than the programmed one.

Zones apply the same discipline at edit time. A control point cannot be dragged past the vertical range set for its channel, so a programmed axis stays inside its range while it is being written, not only while it is being played. A zone edit can be applied across several channels at once. This is what lets the timeline that runs the lighting also run the motion.

Realtime motion on the PLC

Where the motion is a ride, the limits should not live only in the software that drew the curve. An optional module runs inside the Beckhoff TwinCAT realtime kernel and takes Conductor’s channel data directly, at up to 1000 updates per second. The speed and acceleration limits set on the timeline are synchronized to that module and enforced there, in the realtime kernel, rather than trusted to arrive intact over a network.

The transfer is overlapped and redundant, so a lost packet does not become a lost step of motion. Two independent places then hold the same limits: the timeline that was programmed, and the controller that actually moves the machine.

Recording from a physical control

Some movement is faster to perform than to draw. Map a real control to a channel, punch in, and Conductor records the movement as points — keyboard, mouse, MIDI controllers, joysticks, gamepads, PosiStageNet, generic OSC devices and sACN. Each mapping carries its own hardware range, mapped range, scaling, inversion and ease-in and ease-out, and a missing device, property or channel is reported rather than failing quietly.

Recording groups punch in and out by button, by marker, or globally across every group at once. A control can also be bound to an action instead of a value, so the same surface that writes the curve can run transport, move the Locator and set the punch points.

Points and editing

What a performance leaves behind is points, so it edits like anything drawn by hand. The Point Sliders panel steps from one control point to the next and trims its value on a fader, which is how a recorded pass gets tidied without redrawing it.

Merge plots overlay several channels in one lane for comparison, and pin groups hold unrelated channels side by side when the two things that have to agree are at opposite ends of the tree. Anything worth keeping goes into the library as a reusable part — a channel, a group, or a set of points — and comes back into the next show.

Audio

Audio sits on the same timeline as everything else: 2 to 32 internal channels, with per-file volume envelopes drawn as curves and a mixer panel showing live levels. Files import as .wav, .w64, .ogg or .mp3, and the waveform display is backed by cached peak files so a long file scrubs without stalling.

Internal channels are muxed to physical outputs with separate regular and downmix maps, an optional forced stereo downmix and optional 16-bit conversion. Waveform generators produce tones and value curves that feed the audio graph and numeric channels alike, so the same generator can shape a sound and a movement.

Recording a lighting rig

A rig that has already been programmed elsewhere does not have to be programmed again. Conductor records incoming DMX, Art-Net or sACN and keeps the capture alongside the show — up to 1000 sACN universes in a single session — with a live monitor of the incoming universes and an updates-per-second readout while it runs.

A capture can also be a starting point. Selected DMX channels are extracted into real, editable channels — a handful at a time rather than a whole capture, because DMX carries far more points than a timeline wants — and can then be merged, shifted and converted. Timecode comes from Art-Net timecode, from passive mode, or by hand, and can be preserved when the recording is imported.

Programming against picture

Video imports as a reference layer so effects are programmed against the picture, frame by frame, before anyone is in the room. Preview width and quality are configurable and previews are cached, so scrubbing stays responsive on a long file.

Video here is a programming reference. Playback to an audience is Backstage's job, and when Backstage is on the other end of the link, the reference is not a copy at all.

Passive mode

Conductor can follow an external clock instead of running its own. The source can be Backstage, an earlier Brainsalt playback server, a standalone show controller, LTC from a hardware timecode card, the system clock for time-of-day scheduling, or a Beckhoff PLC reached over TwinCAT ADS. Timecode offset, out-of-sync tolerance and 24 fps against 23.976 interpretation are all set per installation.

The Backstage link

Every other clock source is one-way: Conductor follows. Backstage is a two-way sync, and it is the deepest integration in the suite. Backstage picks the show — Conductor matches the Backstage sequence name against its open timelines, brings the matching timeline to the front and plays it, and follows stop, pause and position from there. An operator working in Backstage never touches Conductor.

Conductor drives Backstage back: play, pause and, most usefully, seek. Drag the Conductor Locator and Backstage's picture follows to the same frame, so programming an effect against a moment in the video means scrubbing one timeline instead of keeping two in step by hand. A Conductor timeline can also represent a segment inside a longer Backstage sequence, with the offset applied automatically.

The link is built to survive a bad network. Control messages go out twice, over multicast and over an acknowledged channel, so a command is not lost to a dropped datagram. Conductor runs its own high-resolution clock and lets Backstage correct it rather than stepping to each packet: small drift is absorbed, a large jump is followed immediately, and if Backstage stops sending, Conductor holds position rather than drifting. One Backstage server is whitelisted by name, so a shared announcement group cannot hand control to another host. On a Brainsalt server this is the default posture — Conductor starts minimized, in passive mode, following Backstage.

Pixel output from the video frame

Media facade mapping belongs in Backstage — it holds the 3D scene the facade is mapped onto, and drives the Art-Net and sACN devices itself. Where that pixel output has to sit inside a Conductor show alongside everything else on the timeline, Conductor’s Backstage Art-Net and Backstage sACN devices take the live frame Backstage is playing and split its pixels across DMX universes, with RGBW and configurable update modes.

What reaches the pixel hardware is the frame on screen, not a second version of the content prepared and timed separately. There is nothing to keep in sync, because there is only one source.

Command channels and scripting

A command channel sends string commands over TCP, UDP or serial, with values substituted from other channels. A command point fires once, or stays open across a time range and re-sends whenever its source channels change — which turns a curve into a stream of live values for any device that speaks text. Command lists are stored as reusable files.

Where a value has to be computed rather than drawn, scripts are real C#, compiled in-process and evaluated at the current timeline position. A script reaches any item by index or by name anywhere in the tree, reads its last evaluated value, mutes it, or forces an evaluation at a given time; compiler and runtime errors surface in the editor. Separate power-on, power-off and reset scripts put the installation into a known state, and any timeline's current state can be exported as one.

The installed machine

Conductor starts minimized and loads its show automatically. A UDP text protocol with a configurable port, reply port and IP whitelist covers transport, jumps, opening shows, recording, muting, seat selection, triggering scripts and entering or leaving passive mode; every command answers Success or Failed, and markers can enable and disable the listener partway through a show.

Operations have somewhere to look when something is wrong: per-severity logging with syslog forwarding, incoming and outgoing traffic logging with dump files, network statistics and a connection panel. A programmed show can also be built into a deployment package and uploaded to standalone show hardware, where it runs with no PC present at all.

Specifications

Timeline and curves

Timing and frame rates

Recording from physical controls

Lighting and data protocols

Supported devices and platforms

Audio

Video for offline programming

Scripting and command channels

Synchronization

Remote control and operations