The MSC commands will be placed on MIDI tracks. The easiest way I have found to keep track of everything is to make separate MIDI tracks for each cuelist that you are wanting to control. I keep a cuelist for every song that we do. In addition I have a cuelist for the basic flow for a weekend (walk in, 180, message, call to Christ, celebrate, closing videos, etc…). For me a typical weekend session has 7 MIDI tracks. This is really a preference as everything could be placed on a single MIDI track. However, trust me… don’t put everything on a single track. Use a MIDI track per cuelist. In the context of Vista and Protools MSC is no different from someone standing at the Vista console and pressing the play button. It is more correct to say it is the same as someone pressing the play button for a particular cue inside of a particular cuelist. For instance the above default flow cuelist I mentioned. Cue 1 would be walk in, Cue 2 would be 180. If you ever add cues you may end up with cue 1.5. Additionally if you delete cues you may end up with non consecutive cue numbers inside of a cuelist. I only bring this up because my current workflow only accounts for cuelists with consecutive cue numbers. It is super easy to edit the cue numbers inside of a cuelist. Edit the cuelist, right-click on any cue, select Renumber Cues…, click select all then click OK, close and save the cuelist. Unless you have changed the defaults this will renumber the cues with consecutive whole numbers starting at cue 1. Provided that you will be connecting to the MIDI In port on the back of your Vista console the only other setting to check in Vista is the Device ID. This can be found in User Preferences, MIDI tab, MIDI Show Control section, Device ID. Change the value to 1. So the MIDI file is basically just going to tell Vista what cue number to play for a specific cuelist. The cuelist number is the ID field as seen on the Playback page in Vista. The icon on the top left with the big play button. In ProTools the process is really simple. Drop in a MIDI file, select the desired MIDI output device, and drag cues to position them in the proper place. There are more options such as exporting MIDI files once you have positioned the cues but this should get you on the right track.
Once all the settings discussed above are correct the process is as follows.
- Log in to https://www.midishowcontrol.com
- Click Build MIDI Files
- Enter the cuelist number
- Enter the number of cues in the cuelist
- Click download
- At this point a couple of different thing might happen. If you are using safari and Protools is open the default behavior is to automagically import the MIDI file into Protools. Protools will present you with the option of putting it in the clips list or making a new track. Typically if you are using the website you are dealing with new songs or cuelists. In this case I just insert a new track.
- Select the MIDI output device
- It really doesn’t matter but I always output to channel 1.
- Change the track view to sysex
- At this point you should see evenly spaced boxes. These boxes correspond to each cue for the given cuelist. There is also an additional cue at the very end that will release the cuelist.
- Slide the boxes into position
- On rare occasions when you are near the beginning or the end of the original file as you drag you will notice the sysex boxes will disappear. If this happens just undo and move it again. This is a Protools issue not limited to MSC and would happen with any sysex commands. The other thing you will notice is that there is not a good way inside of Protools to keep track of what is what. All the boxes look identical. I have yet to find a way to determine in Protools the value of the sysex command.
- Play the track and adjust the positions as needed
- There are options inside of Protools for adjusting the MIDI offset. I have never had to adjust anything the latency is always low enough that if I need something to happen on a particular beat I line the sysex command up with the click. This is a good time to bring up tempo. The MIDI files from my website and the default for Protools are tick based. If you change the tempo the cues will move to adjust to the new tempo. Just something to be aware of. I typically leave the tempo the default 120 at all times. If you are changing the tempo for every song just be aware the once you line up the sysex commands they will be lined up to that tempo.
MIDI Show Control Overview