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OpenSoundControl Specification 1.0

Version 1.0, March 26 2002, Matt Wright

Introduction

Open Sound Control (OSC) is an open, transport-independent, message-based protocol developed for communication among computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices.

OSC Syntax

This section defines the syntax of OSC data.

Atomic Data Types

All OSC data is composed of the following fundamental data types:

int32

32-bit big-endian two’s complement integer

OSC-timetag

64-bit big-endian fixed-point time tag, semantics defined below

float32

32-bit big-endian IEEE 754 floating point number

OSC-string

A sequence of non-null ASCII characters followed by a null, followed by 0-3 additional null characters to make the total number of bits a multiple of 32. (OSC-string examples) In this document, example OSC-strings will be written without the null characters, surrounded by double quotes.

OSC-blob

An int32 size count, followed by that many 8-bit bytes of arbitrary binary data, followed by 0-3 additional zero bytes to make the total number of bits a multiple of 32.

The size of every atomic data type in OSC is a multiple of 32 bits. This guarantees that if the beginning of a block of OSC data is 32-bit aligned, every number in the OSC data will be 32-bit aligned.

OSC Packets

The unit of transmission of OSC is an OSC Packet. Any application that sends OSC Packets is an OSC Client; any application that receives OSC Packets is an OSC Server.

An OSC packet consists of its contents , a contiguous block of binary data, and its size , the number of 8-bit bytes that comprise the contents. The size of an OSC packet is always a multiple of 4.

The underlying network that delivers an OSC packet is responsible for delivering both the contents and the size to the OSC application. An OSC packet can be naturally represented by a datagram by a network protocol such as UDP. In a stream-based protocol such as TCP, the stream should begin with an int32 giving the size of the first packet, followed by the contents of the first packet, followed by the size of the second packet, etc.

The contents of an OSC packet must be either an OSC Message or an OSC Bundle. The first byte of the packet’s contents unambiguously distinguishes between these two alternatives.

OSC Messages

An OSC message consists of an OSC Address Pattern followed by an OSC Type Tag String followed by zero or more OSC Arguments.

Note: some older implementations of OSC may omit the OSC Type Tag string. Until all such implementations are updated, OSC implementations should be robust in the case of a missing OSC Type Tag String.

OSC Address Patterns

An OSC Address Pattern is an OSC-string beginning with the character ‘/’ (forward slash).

OSC Type Tag String

An OSC Type Tag String is an OSC-string beginning with the character ‘,’ (comma) followed by a sequence of characters corresponding exactly to the sequence of OSC Arguments in the given message. Each character after the comma is called an OSC Type Tag and represents the type of the corresponding OSC Argument. (The requirement for OSC Type Tag Strings to start with a comma makes it easier for the recipient of an OSC Message to determine whether that OSC Message is lacking an OSC Type Tag String.)

This table lists the correspondance between each OSC Type Tag and the type of its corresponding OSC Argument:

Some OSC applications communicate among instances of themselves with additional, nonstandard argument types beyond those specified above. OSC applications are not required to recognize these types; an OSC application should discard any message whose OSC Type Tag String contains any unrecognized OSC Type Tags. An application that does use any additional argument types must encode them with the OSC Type Tags in this table:

OSC Type Tag String examples.

OSC Arguments

A sequence of OSC Arguments is represented by a contiguous sequence of the binary representations of each argument.

OSC Bundles

An OSC Bundle consists of the OSC-string “#bundle” followed by an OSC Time Tag , followed by zero or more OSC Bundle Elements. The OSC-timetag is a 64-bit fixed point time tag whose semantics are described below.

An OSC Bundle Element consists of its size and its contents. The size is an int32 representing the number of 8-bit bytes in the contents, and will always be a multiple of 4. The contents are either an OSC Message or an OSC Bundle.

Note this recursive definition: bundle may contain bundles.

This table shows the parts of a two-or-more-element OSC Bundle and the size (in 8-bit bytes) of each part.

OSC Semantics

This section defines the semantics of OSC data.

OSC Address Spaces and OSC Addresses

Every OSC server has a set of OSC Methods. OSC Methods are the potential destinations of OSC messages received by the OSC server and correspond to each of the points of control that the application makes available. “Invoking” an OSC method is analogous to a procedure call; it means supplying the method with arguments and causing the method’s effect to take place.

An OSC Server’s OSC Methods are arranged in a tree strcuture called an OSC Address Space. The leaves of this tree are the OSC Methods and the branch nodes are called OSC Containers. An OSC Server’s OSC Address Space can be dynamic; that is, its contents and shape can change over time.

Each OSC Method and each OSC Container other than the root of the tree has a symbolic name, an ASCII string consiting of printable characters other than the following:

The OSC Address of an OSC Method is a symbolic name giving the full path to the OSC Method in the OSC Address Space, starting from the root of the tree. An OSC Method’s OSC Address begins with the character ‘/’ (forward slash), followed by the names of all the containers, in order, along the path from the root of the tree to the OSC Method, separated by forward slash characters, followed by the name of the OSC Method. The syntax of OSC Addresses was chosen to match the syntax of URLs. (OSC Address Examples)

OSC Message Dispatching and Pattern Matching

When an OSC server receives an OSC Message, it must invoke the appropriate OSC Methods in its OSC Address Space based on the OSC Message’s OSC Address Pattern. This process is called dispatching the OSC Message to the OSC Methods that match its OSC Address Pattern. All the matching OSC Methods are invoked with the same argument data, namely, the OSC Arguments in the OSC Message.

The parts of an OSC Address or an OSC Address Pattern are the substrings between adjacent pairs of forward slash characters and the substring after the last forward slash character. (examples)

A received OSC Message must be disptched to every OSC method in the current OSC Address Space whose OSC Address matches the OSC Message’s OSC Address Pattern. An OSC Address Pattern matches an OSC Address if

1. The OSC Address and the OSC Address Pattern contain the same number of parts; and
2. Each part of the OSC Address Pattern matches the corresponding part of the OSC Address.

A part of an OSC Address Pattern matches a part of an OSC Address if every consecutive character in the OSC Address Pattern matches the next consecutive substring of the OSC Address and every character in the OSC Address is matched by something in the OSC Address Pattern. These are the matching rules for characters in the OSC Address Pattern:

1. ‘?’ in the OSC Address Pattern matches any single character
2. ‘*’ in the OSC Address Pattern matches any sequence of zero or more characters
3. A string of characters in square brackets (e.g., “[string]”) in the OSC Address Pattern matches any character in the string. Inside square brackets, the minus sign (-) and exclamation point (!) have special meanings:
   • two characters separated by a minus sign indicate the range of characters between the given two in ASCII collating sequence. (A minus sign at the end of the string has no special meaning.)
   • An exclamation point at the beginning of a bracketed string negates the sense of the list, meaning that the list matches any character not in the list. (An exclamation point anywhere besides the first character after the open bracket has no special meaning.)
4. A comma-separated list of strings enclosed in curly braces (e.g., “{foo,bar}”) in the OSC Address Pattern matches any of the strings in the list.
5. Any other character in an OSC Address Pattern can match only the same character.

Temporal Semantics and OSC Time Tags

An OSC server must have access to a representation of the correct current absolute time. OSC does not provide any mechanism for clock synchronization.

When a received OSC Packet contains only a single OSC Message, the OSC Server should invoke the correponding OSC Methods immediately, i.e., as soon as possible after receipt of the packet. Otherwise a received OSC Packet contains an OSC Bundle, in which case the OSC Bundle’s OSC Time Tag determines when the OSC Bundle’s OSC Messages’ corresponding OSC Methods should be invoked. If the time represented by the OSC Time Tag is before or equal to the current time, the OSC Server should invoke the methods immediately (unless the user has configured the OSC Server to discard messages that arrive too late). Otherwise the OSC Time Tag represents a time in the future, and the OSC server must store the OSC Bundle until the specified time and then invoke the appropriate OSC Methods.

Time tags are represented by a 64 bit fixed point number. The first 32 bits specify the number of seconds since midnight on January 1, 1900, and the last 32 bits specify fractional parts of a second to a precision of about 200 picoseconds. This is the representation used by Internet NTP timestamps.The time tag value consisting of 63 zero bits followed by a one in the least signifigant bit is a special case meaning “immediately.”

OSC Messages in the same OSC Bundle are atomic; their corresponding OSC Methods should be invoked in immediate succession as if no other processing took place between the OSC Method invocations.

When an OSC Address Pattern is dispatched to multiple OSC Methods, the order in which the matching OSC Methods are invoked is unspecified. When an OSC Bundle contains multiple OSC Messages, the sets of OSC Methods corresponding to the OSC Messages must be invoked in the same order as the OSC Messages appear in the packet. (example)

When bundles contain other bundles, the OSC Time Tag of the enclosed bundle must be greater than or equal to the OSC Time Tag of the enclosing bundle. The atomicity requirement for OSC Messages in the same OSC Bundle does not apply to OSC Bundles within an OSC Bundle.

This page of OpenSoundControl website updated Wed Apr 7 15:47:11 PDT 2021 by matt (license: CC BY).