Syncing watchout from outside machine

[Jamie]

I'm using Watchout for a 3 day event.  For one act in the 3 day event they want to run watchout cues from the audio board ( for the rest of the event we will run audio from the watchout machine. ) What is the best way to trigger watchout from another computer? I've considered timecode, but it seems really complicated, and I don't like the idea of flipping back in forth during a live event from timecode to watchout.

 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated. 

 

Jamie

 

 

[jfk]

Mostly depends on what the audio board can send to WATCHOUT.

 

MIDI Show Control would be a good choice for a cue based show.

Some audio boards include MSC output capabilities, which would make it a really good choice.

 

Timecode is good when playback is one long roll - no pauses / no cues.

Not so much for cue based shows.

[RBeddig]

Jim is of course right, but if it is one continuous part of the show which needs to be triggered you could still use timecode for this. In this case I would program this part using the main timeline and for the rest I would use auxiliary timelines. External timecode will not control any auxiliary timeline.

[Jamie]

Thanks for your help everyone. Do I need any special hardware on my computer to run MSC? What kind of cable would I run from the sound board?

 

This portion of the event is 10 minutes of a 3 day conference. So I should run the whole show on aux timeline in order to achieve this? 

 

Thanks again

 

J

[jfk]

Thanks for your help everyone. Do I need any special hardware on my computer to run MSC?

 

What kind of cable would I run from the sound board?

 

This portion of the event is 10 minutes of a 3 day conference. So I should run the whole show on aux timeline in order to achieve this? 

 

Thanks again

 

J

 

MIDI Show Control requires a MIDI to USB interface for the WATCHOUT MIDI connection.

(and the lowest cost, simplest MIDI interface works the best.)

 

Assuming the sound board supports MSC, it should include a standard MIDI connection.

A standard MIDI cable is needed between the sound board and the MIDI interface.

[Jamie]

Okay great! Thanks. Last question ( I hope)... How does one associate midi channel numbers to cue points in watchout?

 

cheers,

 

J

[jfk]

MIDI Show Control is a system exclusive command set, so channel numbers do not apply per se.

There is a device ID, set it to the value specified by the sending device (your sound board).

 

The two variables in the MSC Go command supported by WATCHOUT are cue number and cue list.

Settings in watchmaker preferences allow adjustments on how the cue list values are handled.

 

At its simplest (Map all to Main Timeline) you name your pause cues with their cue number.

So if a control cue - pause is named 7,

then no matter where the time cursor is, when a MSC "Go cue 7" is received,

it will jump to the pause cue named 7 and run from there.

Of course, if it is already sitting on 7, it will immediately go from there.

 

Any cue number format is supported, i.e. 3.1, 8, 27.3.1 are all valid cue number formats.

 

We have seen some interesting interpretations of the standard,

such as cue number 5 being sent as 5.0, etc.

BTW a control-pause cue named 5 and one named 5.0 are two unique targets.

Because of the need to support non-numeric formats (like 16.1.1)

a text comparison is carried out, not a mathematical comparison.

 

When working with a MIDI device for the first time,

a freeware snooping tool to see the actual command being sent

and the knowledge to interpret the raw data into its command meaning

are valuable tools for anyone working with sound or light boards.

 

Please re- read the WATCHOUT 6.1 User Guide,

Appendix B. MIDI SHOW CONTROL - page 156 for more info.