ASCII-USITT Data Format



USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology) has defined an ASCII standard for show representation that allows exchange of lighting show data across different-branded consoles in a way that maintains the most of the show features as designed by the lighting designer.

This format uses the standard ASCII character data format (common to all computers regardless of the operating system used), allowing different consoles (e.g. consoles based on IBM or Apple PCs) to exchange data using different media (e.g. floppy, serial lines, etc.).

The purpose of this data organisation standard, called "lighting console data stream" is to transfer lighting data between consoles of totally different nature. The show data, classified in a very logical and intuitive fashion, may even be edited by the user using any editing tool.

The capability to transfer the show across different machines is obviously limited to the features that the two machines have in common, typically covering most of the required features like cue definition/timing, digital patch and other advanced features.

Most of the lighting design simulation and control software tools (e.g. Microlux™ or WYSIWYG™) are capable to export shows in this format, so that ProSceniumDMX may be effectively used as an output device for shows generated by these tools.

ProSceniumDMX complies with Version 3.0 of the Usitt standard, introduced in 1992

Experienced users will find editing the ASCII-USITT saved representation of the show very useful. This can be done, for example, with the text editor provided by ProSceniumDMX and activated with the toolbar icon. In this way, cut-and-paste functions may be used (e.g. to quickly define multiple channels that use the same kind of spots) then the show may be saved and read back on ProSceniumDMX using the "Update to ProSceniumDMX Memory" function.



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