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Upgrading to Beam 2

This guide will help you upgrade your existing Beam 1.x projects to Beam 2.0.

warning

Beam for Live 2 is a major update. We have designed it to be as backwards compatible as possible with older projects, but some changes may lead to things looking or behaving differently. Only upgrade if you have a chance to thoroughly test your setup before using it in a live performance.

Install Beam 2​

This guide assumes you already have Beam 2 installed. If you don't, you can download it here. Before proceeding with the steps below, run Beam 2 at least once to complete the installation process and quit it.

Fixture Profiles​

Beam 2 uses a new location for fixture profiles. To migrate your existing fixture profiles, follow these steps:

  1. Quit Beam 2 if it is running.
  2. Run Beam 1.6 and open the Fixture Profiles folder by selecting Beam > Fixture Profiles... from the menu bar.
  3. Copy all the fixture profiles from Fixture Profiles/User folder to the new fixture profiles location in Documents/Beam/Fixture Profiles/User.
info

Beam for Live 2 implements a new fixture profile format (schema version 3). To allow opening your existing fixture patch files, older fixture profiles continue to work. However, they are now deprecated, and some of the newer features and improvements are not available. If an equivalent fixture profile is available among the factory profiles, we recommend using that instead by selecting it in the Fixture Patch's Inspector panel. You can also share your user fixture profiles with us, and we will update them to the new format.

If you want to create profiles yourself, you can use the web fixture profile editor. The built-in Fixture Editor no longer exists in Beam 2.

Selecting output interface​

Beam 2 implements a new way to select DMX Input and Output interfaces through the new dedicated Inputs/Outputs tab. To use your USB DMX interface or Art-Net node, follow these steps:

  1. Connect your USB DMX interface or Art-Net node to your computer.
  2. Open your Fixture Patch file and make note of the Universes your fixtures are patched in.
  3. Go to Inputs/Outputs tab and add your DMX interface by clicking the + button.
info

In the context of output devices, Source Universe refers to a Beam Universe as defined in the Fixture Patch. USB Output's Target Universe is always set to 0, as Beam only supports one universe per USB DMX interface. When it comes to Art-Net (Node) Output, Target Universe refers to the absolute index of the DMX Art-Net Universe to which the Source Universe will be mapped to. If you don't want to specify individual universes, you can use Output All to output all Beam Universes to corresponding Art-Net Universes with the same index minus one.

Devices​

Open your Live Set, and replace all the existing Beam devices with the new ones, found in Beam/2.0 Devices in the Browser.

warning

The old devices will still connect to Beam and produce output, but we highly recommend replacing them with the new ones, as they fix some critical issues.

If you run into any issues, please get in touch. We are here to help you with the transition.