GLP JDC2 IP Firmware V2 Explained: DigiFX, Canvas Mapping, and FVP
The JDC2 IP has never been short on impact. GLP’s V2 firmware update unlocks more of the creative potential behind that output, giving programmers deeper effects control, more flexible mapping, and new ways to build looks across the rig. The big strobe hit is still there, but this update gives you more reasons to reach for the JDC2 between those moments.
Three things carry that claim: an expanded DigiFX engine, the new Canvas Mapping System, and FVP, GLP's protocol for feeding each fixture only the piece of video it actually needs to display. The update got its first touring workout on Spiritbox's North American run this year, where designer PJ Carruth built the entire look out of 20 JDC2 IPs and nothing else, which is about as honest a stress test as a firmware release gets.
DigiFX in Firmware V2: A Bigger Library and Faster Recall
Start with an important distinction: DigiFX are not prerecorded movie clips stored inside the fixture. They are shader-based graphics generated in real time by the JDC2’s onboard GPU. That is what makes them adjustable and user friendly. Instead of addressing 1,728 RGB pixels by hand, you pull a digital animation off the fixture and treat it like a gobo.
V2 widens that library to over 60 animations and, more usefully for programmers, tightens how you get to them. The preset structure is worth learning: odd-numbered presets are locked, with fixed parameters you cannot touch, while even-numbered presets open up for customization.
You get two colormix layers, DigiFX Color 1 running as the main mix and Color 2 as the secondary, four Shape FX channels whose behavior changes depending on which effect you have loaded, plus speed, zoom, and orientation. The channel that earns its keep is DigiFX/NDI Transition, which crossfades between effects rather than hard cutting. Anyone who has tried to swap animations mid-song and watched the plate snap will understand why that one matters. For a complete breakdown of DigiFX and how they work dive into GLP’s DigiFX and NDI Guide.
The Canvas Mapping System: Absolute, Relative, and Segmented
Canvas Mapping is the conceptual shift in V2. You define a canvas and tell each fixture where it lives inside that canvas, so a single piece of content can travel across the whole rig as one continuous surface.
GLP gives you three ways to describe that geometry. Absolute mode is pixel-precise, up to 65,535 pixels on each axis, with each fixture placed by pixel offset from the origin. It is the most exact and the most work, since you are dividing real-world dimensions by the 7mm pixel pitch to get there. Segmented mode treats each fixture as a single unit in a device matrix, 62 by 44 pixels per device, which is how most of us actually think about an upstage row of strobes and by far the fastest way to rough in a layout. Relative mode lets you drive fixture position on a relative basis from 0 to 100 percent, minimum to maximum. You also pick your origin corner, top left, bottom left, top right, or bottom right, with the axis directions following from that choice.
Another upside is that canvas behavior is programmable on a cue by cue basis. A row that reads as one continuous surface in the first chorus can break into 20 independent fixtures for the breakdown and come back together for the last hit, and none of that requires touching the fixture menu once the show is loaded.
FVP: Sending Each Fixture Only the Slice of Video It Needs
FVP is the piece that makes video on a strobe rig practical at scale. The JDC2 IP has accepted NDI streams for a while, up to four external streams. The limitation was always what happens when you point a full canvas at a room full of fixtures and ask each one to figure out its own crop.
FVP handles that upstream. Rather than processing the entire video canvas at every fixture, the protocol extracts and sends only the specific viewport, the slice of video that corresponds to that fixture's physical pixel layout. Bandwidth drops significantly, and playback stays synchronous across a large count with no visible latency. It also lifts the resolution ceiling, since direct NDI reception on the fixture tops out at 640 by 480.
For programmers, the payoff is that each JDC2 face can be mapped into the content individually, and like canvas position, that mapping is programmable cue to cue. Carruth's report from the Spiritbox rig is the useful data point here: latency was low enough that the video walls and the projector were arriving behind the JDC2s, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about a strobe.
Photographer: Alex Bemis
From Us: What to Know Before You Update
V2 is not show or patch compatible with anything before it. The DMX channel layout was revised and the channel count went up, so an existing show file does not simply inherit the new features. Base channels carry over, and a competent console will translate those correctly, but anything you had built on DigiFX or NDI needs to be rebuilt.
Also, V2.0.3 update adds a Live Diagnostic Menu to the Quick Menu and fixes two relevant issues: a nonfunctioning DigiFX Transition channel and a coordinate calculation error when both the unit and axis differ from their defaults.
How To Update GLP JDC2 IP Firmware To V2
For the walkthrough, start with GLP’s JDC2 V2 feature tutorial and its step-by-step firmware update tutorial. Additionally, here is a link to GLP’s update guide.
Comments