- Intro and Inputs
- Outputs (and a bit more on Inputs)
- Patchbay
- Presets (and some Input bonus)
- Files [this post]
The VENUE console is basically a computer that controls a bunch of signal processors, with an input device that looks an awful lot like a regular mixer.
With an analog console, it can be difficult to handle overlapping events. You know, like when the Sunday service rehearsal is on Tuesday, the rehearsal for Saturday's concert has to wrap up early to make room for the Wednesday family night event, and there is a wedding Friday night. Suddenly, you're negotiating for blocks of channels and figuring out how not to ruin a fellow sound guy's day.
With Watershed, we were guests in a church that had their Sunday rehearsal on Tuesday or Wednesday. We met on Thursday. They had a fairly small board, so our sound guy would get there early to mark all of the control settings on a printed diagram of the board. After Watershed met, the sound guy would re-set the board according to his notes. It was a bit on the tedious side.
Digital boards can handle situations like this much better.
For you older guys, remember the days of typing papers (or writing them out by hand!), proofreading, revising, and re-typing? Kids these days may never have experienced that. They'll type up a paper, save it, print it, have it revised, and then they just load the file, make a few changes, and print the final draft.
Digital boards make your life easier, just like kids have it these days. And it's exactly the same way: saving files.
Okay, you've been very patient and I've kept you waiting long enough. Start up D-Show if it's not running, and let's begin.
Click on "FILING" on the bar across the top of the screen. This should look much different than any other screen you've seen. There are tabs across the top labeled "Load", "Save", "Transfer", and "History".
"History" is pretty slick. Think of it like Word's auto-save feature, but for mixer settings. Like Word's auto-save feature, it'll periodically save your work. Like Word's auto-save feature, you shouldn't rely on it. That's all I'm going to say about it for now. You have more pressing things to learn.
If you've been going through the walkthroughs, it's about time you saved your work. Click on the "Save" tab. There are three columns under the "Save" tab.
The left column is labeled "Show Folders". Let's create a new folder to put our work into. Click the "New" button under the left column. Call the folder "Walkthrough", then hit Enter.
Now look at the center column, labeled "Shows". Click the "New" button under the center column. Type "First Walkthrough" and hit Enter.
Take a look at the right column. D-Show automatically shows you some technical details about the setup in the "Info" box. Underneath is a space for your notes. Let's add a note. Double-click the "Notes" box. Type "This is the result of those awesome walkthroughs I've been doing. Double-check all settings, as Aaron was quite distracting."
Good work! You just saved what's called a "Show" file. Show files contain pretty much everything: input/output/patch settings, snapshots (we'll talk about those someday, but not today), and events (we may talk about those someday, but definitely not today).
Snapshots and events both have me excited. In short, they're ways to automate work. A snapshot is a very flexible way of loading a new set of settings. It's, well, a snapshot of the board. Events are even more flexible--they're a set of actions triggered by something happening. Both are very cool, and will be great to experiment with once basic competence is reached.
So that was a Show file. Last time, we worked with Preset files. You may be wondering, what other kinds of files do you need to worry about?
Kinds of Files
There are three basic kinds of files you need to worry about: console settings, Shows, and Presets.
Console settings is just that, the settings for the console. It's very hardware-centric. Stage racks, number of sidecar units, Aviom cards, and all the other things that tell the software what its world looks like. This is something that will not change much, so you really won't need to worry too much about it.
Show files are created based on the console settings. By that I mean, if you have two stage racks, you can have inputs from two stage racks. If you only have one, you only get one rack's worth of inputs. Once the Show file is created, it contains everything you need for a performance: input channels (including gain, fade, EQ, compression, plugins, bus assignments, mute groups, etc), output channels, patching, and snapshots.
Preset files are basically a library of settings. You can think of them as rubber stamps. They're bits of settings, as you learned from the last walkthrough:
- Complete input channel settings
- EQ settings
- Compressor settings
- EQ/Gate settings
- Plug-in settings
- Scope Sets (until you learn about "Recall Safe", you don't need to know about these)
For example, you could load your "Rock Mandolin" Preset into a channel, change the channel settings all you want, save the Show, and your Rock Mandolin Preset would not have changed. If you wanted to "undo" all the changes you'd made to your channel, you could re-load the Rock Mandolin Preset.
So console settings, Shows, and Presets are all you have to worry about. Congratulations! You now know about all the file types you'll be dealing with.
Transferring Files
One of the nice things about files is that they can be moved. One of the really nice things about D-Show is that you can set up your Show files on your computer at home if you need to, then load them onto the console to run.
Click the "Transfer" tab. Once again, three columns. On the left is the VENUE console (if you're on your home computer, it's the working directory for D-Show--same effect). The center is file selection. The right is available locations.
Do you have a USB stick? Good! You can use that to move files back and forth. You can transfer everything at once, or you can go file-by-file.
For now, I'll keep things simple and just walk you through copying the Show you created to your USB stick.
Start by plugging your USB stick into your computer. Once it's recognized, select it in the drop-down in the upper right-hand side.
Now in the center column, click "Shows". It's almost exactly in the middle of the window.
Look in the upper left-hand corner. There is a button that says "VENUE". Below that, there is a drop-down. Select "Walkthrough". Look! There's our Show!
Now look at the bottom of the center column again. The left-most button says "Transfer" with an arrow pointing to the right. Click that button. You should see "First Walkthrough" show up in the right-hand column. Hooray!
Now, I'm not going to get into a lot of detail about transferring files back and forth, but be a bit careful about stomping on existing files on the console. You can do that, if you try. So at first, especially, be careful when transferring files from your USB stick back to the console. Make sure you know what you're copying, why you're copying it, and then double-check that you're copying the right thing in the right direction.
File Organization and Management
I haven't given a lot of thought to what makes sense for managing files for NCBC. Now, I've probably given it as much thought as anyone else, but I haven't come to any solid conclusions. I think there are a few general principles we should follow, but specifics will probably come with time.- Sunday Shows should be in a folder named [4-digit-year] Sunday, e.g. 2011-Sunday. Each individual Show should be named YYYY-MM-DD Sunday, e.g. "2011-08-28 Sunday". This has a few benefits:
- Keeps the number of files in the folder manageable
- Keeps the files ordered by date
- Lets us use the Notes field (rather than the filename) to describe what the Sunday was like (brass line, orchestra, heavy guitars, etc)
- Off-Sunday events should be in a folder named for the purpose, such as Wedding, Funeral, Worship Concert. (Possibly in the future we'll want to re-organize, but for now we don't have a lot of off-Sunday events in any given category.) Each individual Show should be named YYYY-MM-DD [Event Type] [Operator], e.g. "2011-09-09 Worship Concert Matt".
- Once again, use the Notes field to describe the event.
- This gives us a good starting point for future similar events. Weddings and funerals usually aren't complicated, but something like the Voices of Hope concert is.
- Presets are something I'm wrestling with a bit. Right now, I think the way to go is to put presets--especially presets for individuals--into folders by type or class of instrument: Guitar-Acoustic, Guitar-Electric, Piano, Brass, Orchestra, Vocal, Drum. Within the folder, we will have:
- Generic Presets named starting with "Generic", e.g. "Generic Female BGV". The generic Presets will give us a general starting place when dealing with a new or not-unusual worship team member.
- Specific Presets named with the name of the musician, e.g. "Aaron" for Aaron's vocal Preset. If necessary, the name can also include more detail after the name. If Aaron plays two acoustic guitars, we might have "Aaron - Red" and "Aaron - Blue" in the "Guitar-Acoustic" folder. (Some people might argue for naming the Presets according to brand or model of the guitar--but if there's a very distinctive feature that doesn't require the sound guy to be able to recognize guitar brands from the booth, use that!)
- Generic Presets named starting with "Generic", e.g. "Generic Female BGV". The generic Presets will give us a general starting place when dealing with a new or not-unusual worship team member.
What's next?
Training! Wednesday, 6PM. Oh, you knew that? Way to be on top of things! (I'll actually be late to the training, due to family obligations, and I apologize for that.) Bring a USB stick if you want a copy of the console settings to take home.In terms of the series, I am planning to add some "reminder" material after Wednesday. Some of those posts may include pictures, like pictures of the stage racks with helpful arrows showing where to plug things in. But first, I need to find out for myself where to plug things in.
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