ORIGINAL: Blades

Hey info@tomflair.com - You can assign as many "sets of faders as you want". You can use the bank advance to move amongst 8-channel groupings, or you can "shift-advance" to move the bank a track t a time. For example, in bank mode, you would be on tracks 1-8, bank advance to 9-16, bank advance to 17-24, etc. Or you could "shift-advance" and the selected regions would be shifted by one track, so you'd be controlling tracks 1-8, 2-9, 3-10, etc.

You can automate as many faders as you want and they will animate according to which tracks are currently selected for the Mackie mode to control in Sonar. There is a display beside each track that indicates which channels on the BCF are controlling which Sonar tracks.

If you add a track in Sonar in the middle of an already selected group of tracks to control, the channel will be inserted into the middle and push the others out. The BCF is always linearly tied to the track order in Sonar.

I have a video that I'm working on that shows the installation of the BCF and the use in Sonar with the different modes, but I've not yet completed it. I think it coverws everything you'd want to know when starting out with it. Hopefully I can get it finished and posted so it can either help you make a decision or help you to use it if you've already purchased it. It is a little hard to get your head around at first, but pretty cool to have, nonetheless.

HTH

THANKS MAN !!
great post - very helpful - now i know what was needed to be known ;-)
would be very cool to see that vid too ...

again THANKS!!!!

btw: so the unit is a ral deal breaker in the end isnt it? in the end the price is "almost peanuts" ... is the hardware quality very cheesy or ok??? i guess ill order one tomorrow...I WANT REAL FADRES BACK IN MY LIFE !!!

hi blades - just bought one on ebay five minutes ago....i am really curious to see wehther i will have to rethink my opinion about behringer ;-) had some of their stuff in my early days and their units were also the first i resold ....
sound almost pathetic, but you cant imagine how much i am lookibng forward to NOT edit volumes with a mouse ...that will be such a relief...

once again - thanks for you help


cheers

bumping for help :-)

thanks

OK. When you turn on the BCF, it should say NCMS mode (Note;I do not have the BCf's anymore) It seems like you need to start the BCf and press down the 4th button when turning it on. This will bring it to MCNS mode or something like that, i forget, but its close to that. After you get the lcd to say that, then start sonar and define the BCG as a mackie mode in the control surface and the lcd will turn into TR and your ready to go
Cj

The buttons below the mutes are the solo when pressing shift. you do not asign buttons in mackie mode. Its written how its written as far as i know.
NOTE: You can control the bus pane and the mains by pressing one of the 4 buttons on the right of the bcf. The knobs that turn are for the pans, if you didint know already. I dont have the bcf's anymore, so im trying to remember and visualize it. If i think of anymore things, ill respond back.
Your welcome Tom
Cj

just to mention it:

thanks to all who tried to help me.. after a day of working with the unit and liking the concept i have to say that i am totally F&%ed up...i HATE behringer stuff - that silly piece of crap worked perfectly for 1 day and then - out of nowhere - problems started: firmware udates do not work anymore - so i do it with the ox, ok / unit again works in sonar as it switches to "tr" i save the tempalate file / later the unit when reopening is stuck - firmware again / reinstall drivers on a CLEAN xp image....same ****, doing an fresh image again / changed usb cable ...bla bla bla..hey this piece of plastic has wasted about 10 hours of my life in only 2 days - its more prone to crash/stuck/suck than software...wow!!! normally i get along quite well with tech problems - not this time...i am soooo frustrated ....

saying this the manual is full of WRONG installation explanations.... i knew i hated behringer - as soon as i can ill go for the real thing from mackie and %&ck the damn trash from germany

edit: again in the end i made it - still this unit is as intuitive as a hammer on your head....

Just to update this post like I said I would...
------
I have (finally) put together my tutorial for how to setup the BCF2000 from Behringer in Mackie Emulation mode for Sonar. This tutorial covers all from where to get the downloads and what to do with them once you have them to make Sonar ready to use the BCF2000. There is another video following (within the day, hopefully) showing how to use the BCF2000 within Sonar.

These are pretty big Flash movies, so you need Flash installed to view them, and if you have a slow connection, you will need to have some patience until the video loads - I didn't cerate a "per-loader" flash movie to go with it

I hope that these videos are helpful. Check part one out here: Behringer BCF2000 Tutorial Part 1

edit: link changed to smaller version of vid in FLV format - hopefully won't have any more issues

Link edited - please try again.

Blades,

I can't thank you enough for the effort in putting together that video. Very thoughtful and helpful. It took me a few times to get Firefox to play through it without crashing, but you've consolidated the steps that I've found on the Sonar forums and in Behringer's FAQs.

Sadly, in my case, it just doesn't work. I've done these steps repeatedly already, and when I watched the video tonight I did them all again. I'm one of those unlucky souls that get the perpetual "Connecting..." display without ever getting to "Connected".

I've wracked my brains trying to figure out why. I've tried:

- different device ID's

- turning off all external midi devices feeding my M-Audio MIDI ports

- turning off all ports except the BCF2000 in Sonar

- several other modes besides u-1

- changing the midi data Interval on the BCF to longer and shorter values

- contacting Behringer support (which referred me back to the same FAQs and guides I'd already tried.

- verified that the unit is actually transmitting MIDI by testing it with MIDI-OX and ACT. (Note that I'm not actually trying to use ACT with it, I just tested it to make sure Sonar could see it)

- reapplying the 1.10 firmware even though that's what the unit was shipped to me with, just in case something had gotten garbled.

- sprinkling chicken blood around my desk and chanted any number of implausible phrases in the hopes of invoking some MIDI god to my rescue.

Other than that, I'm out of options. Any suggestions?

-grey

I do have other controllers, but not plugged in while I'm testing. Specifically a Korg MS-20 and an Evolution UC-33e. So while neither one is plugged in, there are drivers on the system for them.

To amend my list:

- I always start the BCF before starting Sonar.

- I am using NCSo mode in the BCF

- I've tried Sonar with the BCFView active and inactive, but all my tests now leave out BCFView because it seems unnecessary to establish an initial connection.

- Additionally, I've tried a different USB port, which required reinstalling the Windows drivers.

I saw in the video that you have more than one BCF midi port as you mention. Curious. I only have one. Are you using U-1 mode on the BCF? I am, since all the guides I've consulted have recommended that, but I'm willing to try anything at this point.

My OS is XP Pro (32-bit)

-grey

For anyone interested, here's part two, covering the actual usage of the bcf2000 in Sonar: Behringer BCF2000 and Sonar - Part 2

Sonar is trying to send a handshake string to the BCF2000 that's not getting returned.

Sonar Output: 240 0 0 102 20 26 0 247

BCF2000 Output: 240 0 0 102 20 27 84 90 66 71 45 65 45 247

I was reading about an a program called GenMce, which turns any midi controller into an emulated Mackie Control device. But the notes for it say that Sonar and Vegas require a sysex handshake to get Mackie Control working, which seems to parallel the problems users like me are having. To initiate a connection, GenMce uses:


GenMCE: 240 0 0 102 20 27 88 89 90 0 0 0 0 247


So if both the GenMCE and the BCF2000 are trying to emulate Mackie Control, shouldn't they be using exactly the same handshake, or am I completely off base on this one?

Why do some people's BCF's not have trouble generating the handshake and others do?

Is there a way to manually force a handshake from the BCF? Some Vulcan death grip sort of key combo maybe?

Would someone be willing to use MIDI-OX and post the handshake from a working BCF2000?

-grey

I don't know what the deal is with the folks that are having issues with this - I'm interested if part 2 plays right, as it IS different, done as an flv file instead of a swf file, but in both cases, the presentation to the web page is done by swfobject, which seems to be a fairly popular method.

Regarding the cam: I actually had to do it this way. Camtasia has a built-in way to deal with capturing video at the same time via whatever camera you have connected, but whether I used my webcam or my Sony Handycam connected to a USB video converter, the built-in vid capture always had the audio WAY off from the video - so I wound up with this method, which works well enough, I suppose.

Let me know if p2 works for you.

Got it working!

Now I'll see if I can play Blades vids

I have modified the link to the first video to the new version that has been uploaded, using flv rather than swf, and a much smaller download.

So - here are the links:

Part 1: Behringer BCF2000 and Sonar - Part 1
Part 2: Behringer BCF2000 and Sonar - Part 2