MIDI Cues Explanation

Robbie Bott
Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

The MIDI command " Go to service item in Service Section...

The description shows that it is controlled by velocity, however if I use a velocity of 1 it bring me to the very first item in the Pre-Service Loop.. I thought it was supposed to bring me to items in the "Service" section... is this proper behavior?

If so what use is that? If any item is added or removed anywhere before the service items or whatever item you may be calling it throws all of the cues off....

Comments

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,539

    bump 2

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Jordan Sjodin
    Jordan Sjodin Member, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 994

    Hi, Robbie, sorry for the delayed response. I will look into this. It should go to the first service item in the service section, if it is not then that is a bug!

    The reason fro these is to have more definitive control when controlling Proclaim with something like Ableton. Relying on things like 'Next Slide' or even go to 'Verse 1' falls apart when you get out of order during practice or your verses have multiple slides.

    Going straight to a slide via index lets you pair up a song in Ableton or another DAW with Proclaim and be guaranteed you will go to the right slide at the right time, even while scrubbing or jumping around.

    Only caveat as you say is changes to the presentation. So if you make some you will just need to update the midi app/device accordingly.

    This article links to some pre-made midi clips for Ableton which makes this a snap: https://support.faithlife.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007128892-How-to-Automate-Song-Slides-with-Ableton-Live

    (You might not use Ableton but that article can still show it in action)

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  • Robbie Bott
    Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

    Hi @Jordan Sjodin,

    It is a bug, I worked with Slav Pakhnyuk yesterday and he confirmed that is no proper behavior. I was able to visually show him the behavior I am experiencing. We use Abelton and Loop Community's Prime App.

    Any idea when a fix for this would be available? 

    Also, have you been notified of the "Bride" issue I have been having as well? Basically a second call for the bridge makes the bridge slide go blank. This behavior is not the same with chorus, verse and etc.. only the bridge.

    Here is a link to a video so you can see the behavior of the bridge issue: 

    https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZuoSqkZ8vwbDdFsrRjYX5QmAIFnvF5lL34k

    and another:

    https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZVChqkZ93uaV08gsS5hG9Sk6laMhFpz9a6k

    Thank You,

    Robbie Bott

  • Jordan Sjodin
    Jordan Sjodin Member, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 994

    Ok, so I have looked into the discrepancy between the instructions and the behavior. It turns out its been this way since we released the feature.... 

    So now I'm wondering what to do; other users may have grown accustomed to the current behavior and if I change it you will no longer be able to jump directly to the Warm-up or preservice loop.

    I'm leaning towards changing the name and the instructions to represent what it is today: velocity is the overall index into the presentation. This lets you do what you want but starting at the index after the warmup, but also allows things like jumping backgrounds to the pre-service loop, or going to the warm up.

    As for the Bridge issue, looks like this behaves the same as the keyboard shortcuts... Since both bridge and blank start with B, hitting B on the keyboard will take you to the closest future item that starts with a B, and additional presses will cycle through the other options and then circle back around.

    Looks like we piggy-backed off the keyboard shortcuts for MIDI, you would have a similar issue 'chorus 2' if you had one. In your setup, where is this proving to be an issue? Since your blank slide is first, I would think it would go to Bridge as expected? Oh I guess, if you had some verses after the bridge it would take you to blank instead of bridge... A workaround would be to always put the bridge last. That way it will always be the 'next' B verse so you don't jump back to Blank on accident.

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  • Robbie Bott
    Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

    Hi Jordan,

    I am showing two commands:

    Go to Service item in Service section...

    Go to Service Item slide...

    Both are controlled by velocity to determine where to jump to... IMHO They can continue to use the second command to jump anywhere they want to service or pre loop or etc, am I wrong about that?

    The Go to Service item in Service section needs to perform exactly as it states.. simply because most other workers will not add items to the service section.. they will add to the pre loop, warm-up, and post loop sections... with the most common changes occurring there we have our songs prepped with MIDI cues through the week and if someone decides at the last min to add two slides in the pre loop our MIDI cues in our songs will all be wrong...

    We need a way to jump directly to items in the "Service" area without it being affected by what happens in the areas before it.

    For the bridge issue... it is a very long explanation and can be very confusing, without a proper rundown of how things work for us. Is there any way for you to remote into my computer like you first-tier techs do so I can explain things...

    If not I will try to make a video to elaborate on the what and why... basically it all balls down to once again the band decided to move things around at the last minute during practice. We use Loop Community Prime to play our tracks, it gives the band the ability to rearrange the song on the fly, and normally the cues follow the rearranging. However, our bands like the lyrics to show up a little early on the confidence monitor so we call things a little early, because we call things a little early if they move the bridge around the cue won't work right until it gets the next verse or chorus cue.

    Note: If you call the verse twice the slide stays up it does not go to verse two or etc, how are yall doing that for verses and not the bridge and chorus? Whatever code you have running the verses needs to be carried over to the others.

    Note 2 -  we need a chorus 2 and 3 commands.. that using verses 8 and 9 or etc works but is definitely not ideal.

    Note 3 - While you are in there tinkering around fix the "I" or "i" in the word "item"... make then the same case... see screenshot above.

  • Robbie Bott
    Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

    Proclaim is absolutely killing us over here...

    New issue "No Text Quick Screen"

    When we trigger this command it works however if the next command comes in to "close" or "soon" it is ignored...

    If we trigger the no text command and then wait long enough to send the next command the second command will work...

    Is there a time delay for quick screens of some sort?

    Thank You,

    Robbie Bott

  • Jordan Sjodin
    Jordan Sjodin Member, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 994

    Go to Service item in Service section...

    Good point, I'll look at restoring the correct behavior for 'Go to service item in service section'. I.e. it should be an index from the service section start.

    Both are controlled by velocity to determine where to jump to... IMHO They can continue to use the second command to jump anywhere they want to service or pre loop or etc, am I wrong about that?

    Go to service item slide... will go to a particular slide in a service item. This is why I talked about it as a better option than the 'verse 1', 'chorus', 'bridge' commands.

    For example, you want a song paired with music, you could uncheck the verse order in Proclaim so each verse, chorus and bridge appear once.

    Then use 'Go to Service Item Slide' to jump to any spot in the service item. First slide is velocity 1, second is 2, etc. And this is specific to this item. Since the song's content shouldn't change, you shouldn't need to update this in the future. 

    Your band can still rearrange the song on the fly, and because you have it done by index, it will always be the exact slide you want. Where as the verse 1, bridge, next slide, etc require knowing some state that your third party software won't know (which slide am I on now?).

    So the flow would then be, the Proclaim operator clicks the song, or you utilize the 'Go to service item in service section' command to select it. Then since you are on that song now, it is controlled via the second command, 'Go to Service Item slide'. Of course, since ''Go to service item in service section' is actually based on overall presentation index right now, you would need to handle that or not use that command until I ship the fix.

    I cant reproduce this issue with the no text quickscreen. Which two commands are you sending in quick succession? I am able to hit no text, followed by next slide very quickly and it all works as expected. (no text starts to transition and then is cut off by next slide)

    Note: If you call the verse twice the slide stays up it does not go to verse two or etc, how are yall doing that for verses and not the bridge and chorus? Whatever code you have running the verses needs to be carried over to the others.

    If you had two Verse 1s in your order it would work the same way. However, that wouldn't cause an issues since they are the same. We should probably disable B for Blank in order to make moving to the Bridge more explicit.

    Note 2 -  we need a chorus 2 and 3 commands.. that using verses 8 and 9 or etc works but is definitely not ideal.

    I still think 'Go to service item slide' is best for your use case. Let me know if my explanation above makes sense.

    Note 3 - While you are in there tinkering around fix the "I" or "i" in the word "item"... make then the same case... see screenshot above.

    [:$] yes will do!

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  • Robbie Bott
    Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

    For some odd reason, I never got an email with your response... I actually came back here to post an update to those following this..

    Anyways if we stop using the song order how does the confidence monitor output know what line to display for the band to know what's coming next? I assume it displays the next slide.

    We normally pull in our songs from our CCLI SongSelect account, we don't always follow the order they are in. From what I gather what the confidence monitor displays is the current lyric centered and the next slide smaller at the bottom. So if CCLI has it as V1,C,V2,V3,Pre-C but the band decides to do V1,V2,C,V3 the confidence monitor when on the last lyric slide would not show the proper whats next lyric am I correct on that?

    To elaborate, using the CCLI format, when at the end of verse 1 the confidence monitor would be displaying the next lyric as the first line of the chorus which would be wrong because the band intends to go to V2. Then if we change the song order around in the edit area it throws all the slides off...This is why we use the song order that can be changed pretty quickly, and then the cues we simply do the next slide, so no matter where things have moved the verse or chorus or etc. will always have X slides...whereas if we use your method if the verse 2 and chorus have a different number of lines if we swap them in the edit area then the count is no longer right. So moving the song around with your method can not be done quickly at the last minute.

    We also do our live stream lyrics line by line.. do you realize how much counting that is?? There has to be a better way to do this...

    With 4 songs I'm sure there will be times when there are not enough velocities to cover slides... I would have to add in another command using a different channel...geez louise... Showing line by line is also something yall need to start thinking about with the planned future implementation of the lower third option into Proclaim.

    I know you are a busy man but you really need to find about 15 min to have a remote session with me... maybe we are just doing things completely wrong.

  • Jordan Sjodin
    Jordan Sjodin Member, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 994

    With 4 songs I'm sure there will be times when there are not enough velocities to cover

    they would reset each song so it would only be an issue if you had more that 127 slides in your song 


    Ah yes, my workflow falls apart if you rely on the next slide in confidence monitor. 

    sure, I’ll send you an email and we can do a TeamViewer session, take a look at your setup, and discuss things easier then text!

    also we have the ‘go to service item in service section’ command fixed and are looking to ship it soon. (Perhaps even on Monday!)

    Mac | iOS | Android | Windows | Web Developer 

  • Robbie Bott
    Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

    Ok so I miss understood how that command worked, I assumed it worked to get you anywhere in the presentation however it only works inside of that particular item that you are presenting.

    Now that you realize that your workflow can fall apart to make the confidence monitor function like it should can we get some consideration on the Chorus 2 & 3 commands?

    I think you are understanding pretty well how we are using this, however, if you are still up to see just how we are using this in the real world I am all game for a remote session. Who knows we may both learn something... the main thing to remember is in real usage things can change in a second with not a lot of time to correct 50 different things to account for that change.

    The confidence monitor needs to display correctly all the time, if it doesn't the singer looses confidence in it and doesn't follow it, or becomes hesitant to sing when she/he doesn't know the words and doesn't feel they can trust the monitor. We have about 6 different singers and the girl you will see shortly is our 7th and newest singer. If you go to this page (sorry our mix was a little hot that week and right on the verge of clipping) https://forestparkchurch.org/sermons/living-for-you/ and about 30 min into the video or chapter 4 you will see we have a young new singer who is very nervous. Notice I have the words showing up just before she is supposed to sing but she jumped the gun, she didn't trust the monitor. Obviously, once she gets her nerves straightened out and more accustomed to singing she won't need to rely on the monitor as much on the monitor but I need them to know that if they get in a bind they can trust that monitor. I review these songs and lyrics about 5 times before Sunday to make sure the lyrics and words are right and on time...

    FYI the intro/title video that you see is all being displayed using Proclaim going into our ATEM... all being triggered using MIDI from the tracks. We jumped into using MIDI commands full force. I wish I could figure out how to make proclaim control two different presentations because I would make the cues control the FOH presentation at the same time. HINT HINT... feature request right there... I wish there was a way for me to make commands for one presentation (our live stream) and a different set of commands for another presentation (our FOH).

    That is fantastic!! We will definitely be using it for the following Sunday, maybe even for our Wednesday service if I can get the cues in place on time...

  • Luis Santana
    Luis Santana Member Posts: 8 ✭✭

    Is there a tutorial for this or more detailed explanation for the commands? I've read the proclaim articles and have seen a couple of videos though not for Proclaim. Everything is working fine as far as the midi network goes and receiving the MIDI notes, but, I'm still kind of lost when it comes to using other commands besides "next slide".

  • Robbie Bott
    Robbie Bott Member Posts: 21 ✭✭

    I don't know of a tutorial. Is there anything in particular you have a question about?

    No text quick screen calls a screen with the current background and no text.

    Go to Service Item in service section well goes to whatever item in the service section so if you set the velocity to 3 for example it will go to the 3rd item in the "Service" section of the presentation.

    Go to service item slide basically will go to whatever slide on that item. If you are on a song for example and you have the midi cue velocity set for 5 it will go to the 5th slide of that song.

    Any other items you want to know about?

  • Sean Metcalfe(Faithlife)
    Sean Metcalfe(Faithlife) Member Posts: 87 ✭✭

    Hi Luis,

    We don't have an in depth tutorial on this outside of the support articles we provide. Do you have a specific question or maybe a midi device to reference? If it's not clear you can assign different commands to different buttons, keys, etc from your midi device. That button sends a unique midi key out that Proclaim will pick up and assign a command to.