GDTF Hub

GDTF Hub - An Independent Resource for GDTF & MVR News, Tools, and Documentation.


Latest news

Jacob Waite: Discover what GDTF and MVR can offer

Jacob Waite in his article for TPI discovers what what GDTF and MVR can offer the live entertainment sector and how it is striving to challenge and unify the exchange of data among live entertainment systems in a conversation with the founding partners of General Device Type Format (GDTF) and My Virtual Rig (MVR).

Posted January 19, 2025  ‐ Categories: GDTF

Chris Lose: Unlocking the Power of GDTF

Article written by Chris Lose at PLSN: Unlocking the Power of GDTF discusses the challenges programmers face with the increasing complexity of modern lighting fixtures, and how the industry has developed the GDTF standard to address this by providing a unified, collaborative, and customizable system for describing fixtures across software platforms.

Posted January 14, 2025  ‐ Categories: GDTF

Tutorial to GDTF by FatBoozy

FatBoozy streamed the process of creating a multipixel LED GDTF wash/beam fixture. In Spanish.

Posted January 5, 2025  ‐ Categories: GDTF, MVR

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GDTF & MVR

GDTF: The General Device Type Format is an open standard for describing devices of the entertainment industry. These devices may be lighting fixtures, trusses, distribution boxes, media servers, lasers or other devices used in the entertainment industry. This documentation describes DIN SPEC 15800:2022-02 also known as GDTF Version 1.2.

MVR: The My Virtual Rig file format is an open standard which allows programs to share data and geometry of a scene for the entertainment industry. A scene is a set of parametric objects such as fixtures, trusses, video screens, and other objects that are used in the entertainment industry. This documentation describes DIN SPEC 15801:2023-12 also known as MVR Version 1.6.



Describing devices of the entertainment industry

DMX Modes

Fixtures can have many modes which change its available capabilities. These are all specified in a single file.

Channel Mappings

Channel mappings available in the fixture are associated with which values produce which responses.

Color & Gobo wheels

Bundled image files provide gobo patterns and color mappings define virtual or physical color wheels.

Fixture Geometry

Bundeled glTF, glb or 3DS files specify the specific geometry of lighting fixtures. Fixture functions are tied to these models.

Color Information

sRGB, ANSI standard, and ProPhoto values can be used to specify the calibrated color space of the light.

Physical properties

Power consumption, weight, operating temperature, and more specify the physical properties of a fixture.


Describing the entertainment scene

Scene description

Scenes are organized into groups, layers and child lists of objects with custom classing, positions, rotations, geometries, addresses and connections.

GDTF Fixture

Using the GDTF Specification, detailed description of lighting fixtures, trusses, distribution boxes, lasers and other devices is possible.

Symbol reuse

Objects can be defined as symbols and inserted into the scene multiple times with instance specific properties.

MVR xchange

MVR-xchange - allows multiple clients within the same network to share MVR files.