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    Lucas van Wijk
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During busking, store an effect in a sub without visibly running the effect

For busking I thought it would be nice to be able to have deferred effect activation, so dynamically putting a channel selection in some effect, but not having that effect activate yet. But instead the channel selection would have that effect applied within a submaster, so I can bump the submaster to hold when I actually want to run the effect. I could of course go into blind sub and put an effect on the channel selection, but I would like to stay in live, so that the layout of the desk stays the same at all times. Going into blind via a background macro is not the problem, because that doesn't change the visible layout.

So I would like to type something like this: '91 Thru 100 Effect 141' and then press a macro that puts that thought into some dedicated submaster. The submaster would then configured to be a rate + size submaster, so I have great control over the effect as soon as I actually activate the effect through said submaster.

So this requires some hacks. And the approach I tried was to have the macro press enter for me, so the effect is activated in live, then store the effect in submaster 61 and quickly remove specifically only that very effect from live output again (through quick macros, so it's not noticable). So I need some sort of mask to only remove the effect I just typed in and then get back the previous manual values. So after some trial and error I figured out that putting a sub in LTP and then bumping twice would first overtake the effect (source is now the sub) and then stop the effect (effect stops entirely and does not go to manual source effect).

Macro 1 (foreground): 'Enter', 'Macro Button 2 Enter'.

Macro 2 (background): 'Select Last Effect Record Only Sub 62 Enter', 'Sub 62 LTP', 'BLIND Sub 61: Effect Recall From Sub 62 Enter', 'SubOn 62 Enter', 'SubOff 62 Enter', 'Delete Sub 62 Enter Enter'.

This sort of works, but it's not reliable, because it sometimes fails to disable the manual effect (the last part of the macro, but it does delete sub 62) and you see a slight flicker (for an intensity effect at least, focus effect would be slight movement), because the effect is activated in live output and not turned off quickly enough.

So does anyone have any ideas?

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  • 0

    A lot of Macro action... puh.

    Not tested:
    You could nest different macros into each other.
    1. [Learn] a macro with you selection and the FX
    2. [learn] your Sub
    3. in background -> go to blind Sub, use macro(2.) to create your Sub and edit it to contain your desired contant with macro(1.)

    I don't know if you are not faster if you create the sub in blind yourself.

    ----

    other thing that pops in mind is, can you use Stagging Mode?
    Than you maybe don't have to enter blind at all.

  • 0 in reply to mathilda

    Since it's always sub 61, I can just hardcode it. If you meant the following:
    511: '91 Thru 100 Effect 141 Enter'
    512 (background): 'BLIND sub 61 Enter', 'Macro Button 511 Enter'

    Unfortunately it doesn't work. Macro 512 has to be background, or else it will visibly go into blind. If macro 511 is foreground, then the effect just activates in live. If macro 512 is background, then it doesn't work either, because a background macro for some reason always starts in live (user 0, but in live), which I can see in Tab 99. So the idea of macro 512 'presetting' the blind sub layout for macro 511 to then do its work there, doesn't seem to be possible.

    And staging mode changes my layout, and I don't like the idea of not having immediate control at pivotal moments. And I thought about maybe including a dynamic snapshot at the end of every macro (so record a snapshot to some throwaway hardcoded number and restore at the end of the macro), but I think that only complicates the problem.

  • 0 in reply to Lucas van Wijk

    As your main macro needs to be background, you would need hardcoded numbers for everything you will refer to in that macro. Right?

    So use a group in your macro . Have a second Macro using from live to store your selection into that group.

    have a third macro ( or set of macros) to copy your desired fx to a fixed number. ( assuming the number of different fx you want to use in a busking situation is not to big)

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  • 0 in reply to Lucas van Wijk

    As your main macro needs to be background, you would need hardcoded numbers for everything you will refer to in that macro. Right?

    So use a group in your macro . Have a second Macro using from live to store your selection into that group.

    have a third macro ( or set of macros) to copy your desired fx to a fixed number. ( assuming the number of different fx you want to use in a busking situation is not to big)

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  • 0 in reply to Philip77739

    Yeah I thought about this: split the idea into GROUP + FX, have hardcoded targets for both, and then make the background macro combine the two and put them into the sub. So say you have a macro that does GROUP copy to TEMP_GROUP and another macro that does FX Copy to TEMP_FX. The background macro then goes into BLIND sub and does TEMP_GROUP TEMP_FX.

    But the problem is that the effect in the sub (TEMP_FX) is now a copy of the effect (FX) that I wanted to put into the sub. So If I change the original effect (FX), the sub's effect (TEMP_FX) does not change with it.

    And what if I want to have more than one effect in the sub? Since it's the same hardcoded number for the effect, the original channel selection will then start doing the second effect as well, even though they should keep doing the first effect and the new channel selection should do the second effect.

    So what about a symmetrical focus effect for example? The way I know how to build it, is to have two identical circle effects, but with opposite directions. Then half the rig gets one effect, the other half the reversed effect, which gives a nice symmetrical circle. So two effects in one sub.

    For convenience, I store both symmetrical circle effects with their correct half rig channels in a preset, so that I can just activate the preset and during busking I don't have to think about which half needs to get mirrored etc, saving thought and keystrokes (besides if you don't use deferred effect activation, a preset is a nice way to start both effects exactly at the same time, so the two effects are in sync). But because the syntax is now limited to GROUP + FX, I cannot do GROUP + PRESET.

    My whole idea is to have deferred effects activation + rate and size control (a x2 sub). So a symmetrical focus effect is exactly the kind of thing I would want to put on an 'effect fader pair' as I call it. And I get that I'm trying to build something that isn't exactly possible, but I am currently revamping my showfile, so if I can already think of limitations of my new effects system, I will of course definitely try to see if there's a way around it.

    ------

    Currently, I have gone back to the previous sub 62 approach, which seems to work 100% of the time, if I put Macro Wait 0 in between Sub 62 @ 100 (SubOn 62 Enter) and Sub 62 @ 0 (SubOff 62 Enter), because that tiny delay is very important for some reason. But the major flaw of the system is that it's still not fast enough, so you can see the effect very briefly activated in live output.

    Maybe doing something with a global size could fix this, but if other effects are running, then will be de-activated very briefly, so I would rather have a global size on the effect only, but since it can be any effect, it cannot be like an effect filter.

    Ideally, there would be a global fader or something that influences the entry time of every effect, so I could put that fader hidden on some page and then set that fader to 10 sec, so the entry time of every effect (including the one I am going to very briefly activate) becomes 10 sec and then I just reset the global fader to 0 sec after I'm done.

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