Anyone know of a way to capture the incoming MTC in real time and make an video event automatically.

[Frank V. Farrell]

This would make my world a lot easier if I could play an audio multi track like protools sending MTC to Qlab and click a button to add a cue with the current MTC as it plays.

The script could add a blank slug of video at the captured time with a advancing label,  then i could go back and replace with the video or jpeg after the fact.

Any Ideas

fvf

[Tyler]

I believe I've asked for TC learn functionality some time ago. Same technology most high end LX consoles have

[Rich Walsh]

Have a look at these threads:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qlab/0eWK8mrVG08/discussion

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qlab/8HxjO0Sprzk/discussion

You could make a Wait Cue that is triggered by the start of the incoming timecode and then use its action elapsed to deduce the current timecode – although that's not going to work if you're jumping around in Pro Tools a lot; it's only useful if you're running PT from the top each time.

You might be better off making markers in PT, exporting those to text and building cues from there…

Rich

[Frank V. Farrell]

Thank you for your reply.  

I use qlab in a nonlinear fashion.  This might be long winded but I'll share my journey into automation.  

About 1995 I started working for an entertainer as the Monitor Eng. / TD and at that time he was using a live horn section and a live string section.  After time had passed we found that in many parts of the US and world the inconsistency of players was to great.  Add to that the rehearsal time and cost of 14 players, we had to do something.   So at first I found a Denon Mini Disc player that had 8 hot keys on the front panel so I mixed down strings and horns on one side and a click on the other.  It Worked,  but we soon found that trying to mix horns and strings on a single track problematic.  

Along came the "8 track separator". 

I went to my boss one day and asked him if I could spend a bit of his money on a digital sound card and a 8 channel converter.  he asked why.  So I told him we need to have 8 separate tracks to make the sound better for him and to give the house mixer a chance.  He agreed and the 8 track separator, as he called it was born.

The program I found was SAW 32.  It gave me a very rock solid app and later gave me a Video track tied to the same timeline and the audio.

For hardware I used RME hammerfall 9652 and a 37 note keyboard to trigger from.  ( it also will output serial data and hex so I've triggered video routers and triggered screens to come in)

SAW allows me to link a MIDI note to a marker on the timeline and trigger it with note on or off commands.  If one uses the note off command then when you press the note on it preloads the buffer and starts playback on the release ( note off ).  The way I implemented the system was to have the trigger ( the keyboard ) at the drummers location so he could start each song in any order.   This system has worked without any problems for 20 years.  

Over time I have changed out the keyboard for a launchpad and other hardware upgrades.

As of 3 years ago my boss is needing a bit of help with lyrics. 

Inter Qlab.  

So here's how it all works.  

Drummer presses one of the 64 keys on the launchpad. I have a 75 foot USB cable going into a Macbook air.  The launchpad triggers the automap applet and sends a midi note off command from a midi usb interface to a MIDI split that goes into 3 separate rackmount computers all running SAW Studio ( DAW ).  The master DAW of the 3 computers outputs MTC to a MIDI split that goes to my digital console firing cues and also back into the same Macbook air running QLab.  ( MTC also goes into a Green Hippo for sync with it's video content.)

Qlab reads the timecode and broadcast Jpeg stills to three 20 inch videos monitors that are positioned between the audio monitors wedges with the lyrics, around 2 sentences at a time.  After he sings the last word that is being broadcasted for Qlab I trigger with timecode to stop the current Jpeg and trigger the next jpeg. It takes about 12 to 16 jpeg to map a songs lyrics.

Our timeline in the DAW is now about 12 hours long and our boss can call songs from way back in any order.  He has 70 albums.  The good news is he's not a vamping kinda guy so each song is as it plays down.

For my use these things could be added to Qlab.

1. A cue of  "stop all"  command to clear any rogue jpegs so I don't have to target each jpeg independently with a stop command.

2.  A "capture current MTC and add video cue" so i can ruff in all my jpegs.

thanks

fvf

[Rich Walsh]

On 19 Nov 2015, at 22:13, Frank V. Farrell <fvfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for your reply.  

I use qlab in a nonlinear fashion.  This might be long winded but I'll share my journey into automation.  

<snip>

Drummer presses one of the 64 keys on the launchpad. I have a 75 foot USB cable going into a Macbook air.  The launchpad triggers the automap applet and sends a midi note off command from a midi usb interface to a MIDI split that goes into 3 separate rackmount computers all running SAW Studio ( DAW ).  The master DAW of the 3 computers outputs MTC to a MIDI split that goes to my digital console firing cues and also back into the same Macbook air running QLab.  ( MTC also goes into a Green Hippo for sync with it's video content.)

Qlab reads the timecode and broadcast Jpeg stills to three 20 inch videos monitors that are positioned between the audio monitors wedges with the lyrics, around 2 sentences at a time.  After he sings the last word that is being broadcasted for Qlab I trigger with timecode to stop the current Jpeg and trigger the next jpeg. It takes about 12 to 16 jpeg to map a songs lyrics.

Our timeline in the DAW is now about 12 hours long and our boss can call songs from way back in any order.  He has 70 albums.  The good news is he's not a vamping kinda guy so each song is as it plays down.

For my use these things could be added to Qlab.

1. A cue of  "stop all"  command to clear any rogue jpegs so I don't have to target each jpeg independently with a stop command.

2.  A "capture current MTC and add video cue" so i can ruff in all my jpegs.

You might be randomly accessing sections of the timeline in a nonlinear way, but each song is linear once it's running – so all you need to do is mark the trigger timecodes once, without having to handle jumping around within a song while capturing the timecodes on the fly. Hence, triggering a single cue at the start of the song and capturing its action elapsed will work. Once you've captured the timecodes you can delete that helper cue.

There are a number of ways you can "stop all": ESC, OSC panic & hardStop, AppleScript panic & hardStop. With some planning of cue numbers you can use OSC wildcards to only stop cues 50-59, for example – or you can have AppleScript stop all cues whose q type is "Video".

Rich

[Andy Dolph]

I know you have a system that works, but it seems like it would be much simpler to just run everything out of Qlab - it could certainly handle the audio playback and the lyric screens, and depending on what you're doing with the video server it could potentially replace that...

Do a 2 or 3 way redundant QLab rig and be done with it....

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[Frank V. Farrell]

Hi Andy:

I've looked at Qlab for audio and have used it in shows that are 2 track based.  With this show there is a need to keep the audio in a multi track format.  I mix down in the box to 8 outputs but I have as much as 60 tracks on the timeline of the DAW.   At times I also record 64 channels into this box so Qlab has a place in my world but it's not the end all program.   I do love it but it's not a Hippo.

thanks for the reply

fvf

[Frank V. Farrell]

Hi Rich:

You are right, each song just runs top to bottom so there is not problem with that.  

Maybe I'm just being lazy but as on now i must play a song from the start and then stop along the way at each point I need a jpeg,  write in the timecode number in Qlab then back up and start again until i get to the next place I need a jpeg,   add a stop cue for the current jpeg showing and also add a new video cue adding the timecode again.   I repeat this about 15 times a song.  Not a big deal but seems it could be automated.   

thanks for replying 

fvf

[Andy Lang]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 12:42 PM Frank V. Farrell fvfa...@gmail.com wrote:

I've looked at Qlab for audio and have used it in shows that are 2 track based.  With this show there is a need to keep the audio in a multi track format.  I mix down in the box to 8 outputs but I have as much as 60 tracks on the timeline of the DAW.   

Just to clarify, Frank, QLab is not limited to 2 channel files. It can support up to 24 tracks in a single multi-channel WAV or AIFF, and output them to up to 48 outputs. So if you’re mixing down to 8 stems, that would be pretty straightforward to bounce out, and then use the free SoundFilesMerger utility to interleave them into a single 8-channel WAV.

http://www.e--j.com/index.php/soundfilesmerger/

(Of course, you could do, say, three 20-channel files, and group them together, to get the individual 60 in QLab itself. But if you’re already mixing them down to 8, that simplifies things by making it a single audio cue, rather than three grouped cues.)

As a matter of fact, at least one major national live broadcast event in the last year or two used exactly this sort of arrangement to play back, vamp, etc their orchestral stems for their show, with much success.

Not that your current system isn’t working, or that there’s anything wrong with it, but it might be useful by simplifying a lot of the system, and reducing the number of potential links in the chain that could fail :-)

Best always,
Another Andy

—
Andy Lang
@SoundGuyAndy
sup...@figure53.com

​

[Rich Walsh]

It can be automated: the tools to do it are in those threads, plus you may want to look at discussions about automatically making slideshows.

The steps are:

• Make a Wait Cue that is longer than the song and will trigger with the song's starting timecode
• Make a Hot Key Script Cue that will:
1. Capture the action elapsed time from the Wait Cue
2. Add it to the Wait Cue's timecode trigger time to get the current timecode
3. Make a fire-all Group Cue triggered at that timecode (with some ugly UI scripting…)
4. Put a Video Cue in that Group Cue
5. (If not the first) put a Stop Cue in that Group Cue, targeting the Video Cue before – or stop all Video Cues except the one you just made
• Run the song
• Capture the times
• Recycle the two helper cues to do the next song

Rich

[Frank V. Farrell]

Thank you for this listing of how one could do it.  I follow your train of through but if this is the steps one must do and I  only have a few more song to code.  It is about a wash in my time to manually write in the timecode.  I  do appreciate your time and others who have shared ideas on my quest. 

With the daw that I use it retains the last midi note struck so it's easy to assign cues in my time line with midi.   I  was hoping for the same ease in Qlab. 

I still love the program and it sounds like I need to spend more time with it to get a better feel how I might stream line my show.

Thanks
Fvf

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[Frank V. Farrell]

Andy:

I Will look at multi channel wav files in Qlab.  My reservation would the lack of ease of editing each song.  Having a full multi track of each song gives me anything my artist  wants as he waits. 
New fades, Key changes, Take out a verse.  I'm not saying Qlab can't do those thing but I'm a beleaver in a big tool box with lots of tools.

Sounds like there are a lot of good people here with good ideas.  Would it correct to say you guys lean more to the Broadway or theater side of audio  production?   My world has been concert sound mostly from stadiums in the 80s when I worked for Clair bros. To PAC and festivals and all in between.    

I plan to keep my ears and eyes open around this place.  I  might learn a thing or 2.

Thanks again
Fvf

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[Dave Tosti-Lane]

Hey Frank - great to see you over here! My, the world has moved a mile
or two since those Saw32 days! I think that it's fair to say that QLab
grew out of the theatre side, although my impression is that as people
started to play with it, the horizons expanded with each person trying
something new. The great thing about the QLab team is that they
really pay attention, and are open to ideas about how things work for
users. At the same time, they're careful not to break stuff along the
way.

The basic interface fits the theatre (and industrial-show) world
beautifully - even lighting people can figure it out! (with a little
help) Years ago, I often talked with Bob L about this kind of
interface, as much as I appreciated what SAW, then SawPlus, and
ultimately Studio were, and how easy they were to use as editors, they
just didn't easily translate to tech rehearsals and the kind of
actor-variable live performance sequencing that is our world in live
theatre. I know folks who made them work - I even ran a few shows with
SAW and SAW+32 in the day - but then tools like SFX and QLab came
along that were really tailored to our world.

I think people here don't fully grok the universe you're working in
with your shows though - Studio still seems to me to be a hard-to-beat
solution for the audio side rapid high-count multi-track
make-it-happen-between-songs environment you live in. On the video
side though, I'm pretty sure this is the kind of tool that is just the
ticket. I bet it could also simplify pre-show, intermission,
announcements, and odds and ends of FX sound if you go there.

Bob's software changed the way I did everything in designing and
building sounds, but SFX and QLab were the game-changers for how I
used those sounds in the theatre. As video became part of QLab, that
made another expansion in capability and possibilities. QLab is the
key application that cemented my move from Win to Mac - once it became
the indispensable tool for working in the theatre, it made sense to
move my full operation over to the Mac platform. Ultimately, that's
the main thing that moved me away from Studio as a primary editor.

Anyway - forgive the rambling - but you're right, this is a great
group of folks - not unlike the various SAW lists over the years.

Dave Tosti-Lane

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[Frank V. Farrell]

Wow, Dave glad to hear your here.  Thanks for your comments.  I plan to lurk about and try and learn what i can.  As you might have heard Kenny has announced his retirement so I don't think I will be  replacing my stock rig.   Qlab has been great for my teleprompter needs it tracks Saw like crazy.

Good to hear your words
Thanks

Fvf

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