Dance Studio » Advanced: File Format

The following is a brief description of the .dance file format and is intended only for developers who would like to read/write dance compatible files. Please note that all data is written with the Most Significant Byte (MSB) first (a.k.a.  Big-Endian) encoding. The terms word8, word16, word32, and word64 refer to 8, 16, 32, and 64-bit unsigned values. Similarly, int8...int64 refer to the signed equivalents of word8...word64.

FILE OFFSET	SIZE (bytes)	VALUE	DESCRIPTION
0	1	FIXED: 0xDA	File Type Identification and Verification
1	1	FIXED: 'N'	File Type Identification and Verification
2	1	FIXED: 0XCE	File Type Identification and Verification
3	1	FIXED: '\r'	File Type Identification and Verification
4	1	FIXED: '\n'	File Type Identification and Verification
5	1	FIXED: 'r'	File Type Identification and Verification
6	1	FIXED: 'o'	File Type Identification and Verification
7	1	FIXED: 'b'	File Type Identification and Verification
8	1	FIXED: 'o'	File Type Identification and Verification
9	1	FIXED: '\n'	File Type Identification and Verification
10	1	FIXED: 'D'	File Type Identification and Verification
11	1	FIXED: 'A'	File Type Identification and Verification
12	1	FIXED: 'N'	File Type Identification and Verification
13	1	FIXED: 'C'	File Type Identification and Verification
14	1	FIXED: 'E'	File Type Identification and Verification
15	1	FIXED: '\r'	File Type Identification and Verification
16	4	VARIABLE: word32	The number of motors

For every eighth motor i:

FILE OFFSET	SIZE (bytes)	VALUE	DESCRIPTION
18+i	1	VARIABLE: word8	TRUE/FALSE: are the given motors affected: { i+7,  i+6, i+5, i+3, i+2, i+1, i }

For every motor j:

FILE OFFSET	SIZE (bytes)	VALUE	DESCRIPTION
18 + round up(number of motors/8) + sum[ bufer size motors 0...j-1 ]	4	VARIABLE: word32	The length of the buffer (should be zero for unaffected motors)
22 + round up(number of motors/8) + sum[ bufer size motors 0...j-1 ]	VARIABLE: 4*(size+1)	VARIABLE:  {word32; int32[]}	The motor buffer in this format: word32 size int32[size] data In the above, int32[size] denotes an array (list) containing size elements of type int32. The first element in the array is the motor's initial position. All other elements denote a change in position. Example: { 3, 5, 10, -8 } 3: the number of elements remaining 5: the initial position 10: the difference from 5 -8: the difference from 15 The above list would denote that the motor moved in the positions {5, 15, 7}.