Lessons

Lesson Info

Show Folders and Snapshots

Okay, so we want to talk just a little bit about show folders and show files this is super simple. One of the cool things about the venue software is that you can save your entire show is a file and then create entire folders and shows that you can recall later at any point all this has done in the filing tab s o if I want to go ahead and load up shows or save shows or pull a previous shows I can create each of those is new files and it's really, really simple you can store those files on flash drives and then take them to other venues so a lot of times they'll be a situation where you could get your mix on your your counsel at home and then jump on a plane and fly to with the band to a new city with your show file saved and if long as they have a venue s c forty eight or venue council or a d show profile you could pop in your usb drive and load up your show file on dh use your plug ins exactly how you would mixed it back at your at your venue or on your console so it saves the time of...

having to have bands tour with the consul they could just tour with a flash drive and then just requested that then you have whatever console that you're using so the way that you go about using those there's the load tab, the save tab transfer and history transfer tab is how you would use how you would move files back and forth from a flash drive to the council itself, either using you khun transfer settings like presets or channel strips, you could transfer entire show folders or entire preset folders for a whole plug in eso right now, there's no usb drive plugged in, but if I did, you would show up here under the venue and I could transfer those show files to the show folders on dh. Then when I pulled up the show folders that would show up each of my shows here, and I could put notes in for each show and info about how the system was set up. How it's different than the current system on any time I want to click this, I would just glowed each of these folders you'd click a show and click load on it would show you exactly the details of what that show was set up as, and they would love the show file when I'm done saving a show it's important to know that you don't really have to save necessarily the council set ups or every time you power it down or get shut off when it powers back up again that powers to the exact settings it was that when it was turned off so it sort of auto saving at all times but it does help sometimes if you want to save a show let's say this was going to be ah we'll create a new folder called creative live and let's say this was going to be the s c forty eight uh fast start so now this is saved is that's all I have to do when I'm done getting all the settings how I want them I can even right click and say over right and that will overwrite whatever current settings I have to update to the newest show file um on and then I can transfer that to flash drives and take it reverend one with me and pull up everything exactly how I had it. Um what does a show file include? Show file includes pretty much everything, including the system settings about the entire council so that's important to remember that it's it's loading and saving everything about a council it's also important remember what it's not going to keep from previous sessions. So if I show up to a venue and I have they've set up the council to be routed for their speaker set up with their specific outputs and monitor mixes and stage inputs when I load my show file it's not going to keep their channel settings it's going to load whatever channel settings I had saved so the first thing that he's usually done when you're popping in the u s b drive and loading up a show file at a venue you haven't been in before is to go to the patch bay, see how they have their outputs and inputs labeled either save those which you can do by going to the upper right hand corner and exporting those osteo usb disc or to just meant manually write them down and remember how they have the output set up and their input set up and then when you load your show file, you'll need to load in there I owe set up to batch whatever they have setting up their venue it's just important thing to keep in mind and remember. Okay, so this next section is pretty beefy there's a lot of stuff to cover when it comes to snapshots. One of the coolest things about the sd forty eight about the then you software is that it has the ability within each show file to create basically snapshots that you can scroll between live in real time without switching the council or turning it off and back on again like you would for a show file. The way that this is all managed is in the snapshots page pretty much any parameter on the entire console for the most part can be assigned to a snapshot eso aiken set up the entire mix how I want a band on stage and then for every single individual song I can create a new snapshot that has specific fader levels has specific e q curves or compression curves or even different plug ins that I'm using. I can have it be assigned to have different tempos. Every song can have its own monitor mix. If I want different monitor mixes for the band for each song, pretty much anything I can do, I can customize and make an entire list of songs within the within the show file, and then, while the show is live in this section, right up here on the consular, says snapshots, I can literally just go through and click next as long as I have them in sequential order and scroll through and recall each next song from whatever save snapshot I have and the advantage of that, obviously, is that you confined to each song in advance and not be adjusting on the fly and trying to remember exactly what every song entailed, so we're gonna walk through really quick how to use the snapshots paid. So the snapshots page here has to major tabs. The first is the main tab, and the second is what's called a recall safe, so the main tab is where you're going to create and move and order and edit and load snapshots. On the recall, safe tab is really cool that basically allows you to lock down any specific parameter of any specific channel to be immune from any snapshot change. This is really helpful if you want to for example, you know that the drums were going to be consistent across all the songs and so you want to make sure that the drums don't get changed or you want to make sure that, um the vocal level or the vocal reverb does not change with the snapshot no matter what. Now you can make sure in the main page to change the scope of each of your snapshots to not include any of those features or any of those changes but it's helpful just to be able to lock down those to make sure that you can't accidentally change something that you don't want changed s o in the recall safe tab the way this works you can see all of your input tabs down here on the air all your input channels down here on the left and then across the top is every sort of value that you could adjust specifically with that channel. So if I wanted to make sure that from channels one through eight the fader uh, preempt high past delay e q um gait compression doesn't change let's say I want to lock those down I could sort of dragged these all across for channels one through eight and now every single one of those parameters on those specific channels cannot be affected by snapshots um so I'm gonna undo well don't undo this but um you could do that with any input channel any parameter of the input channel it's listed up here or any of the effects returns or any of the outputs and it's really helpful this way because what it allows you to do is make sure to lock down like I'm not gonna let any of my snapshots accidentally change something that should not ever be changed in the middle of the show I would suggest doing that with the outputs unless there's something very specific you're going to do I would lock down the main routing maybe just even the main fator well maybe not the main fader level but maybe the name the main output bus or the main e q you don't want to change drastically change those for each song um depending on how you're using snapshots I'm going back to the main snapshot page there's sort of a couple different ways to use this like I said you could use it so that every song has its own snapshot if you are front of house engineer for a band for example and you know their music really well and you've been rehearsing with them maybe you want to create a separate snapshot for every single song that has a specific mix or maybe you want to use it if you're just a house engineer and you're not with a specific band on dure going makes four bands that night you can create snapshots for each band so that as your sound checking each band you save the settings and then you just recall the default settings before moving on so let's, look at some of this really quick let's go through just some of the basic features here you so you've got your snapshot list, which is right here. You can add news snapshots or delete snapshots within here you can advance between those with plus and minus this lists all of your snapshots. So if I'm gonna create a new snapshot here let's title this, um council restart we'll just call this the basic council set up and let's go back and your input tabs and just reset pretty much everything. So all of our settings or equal let's make sure oliver gains or set equal let's. Go ahead and pull off all of our e q and compression and actually we're gonna do is easy. Way to do this too is just to re select major banks of the console and hit reset section way set compressor section way said gates section and of those air all, um completely reset black to plug ins make sure I plug ins, air reset and we'll keep the patch may the same because we want the patch to be the same thing that we're using okay so now we have our basic blank consul and we want to go ahead and create a new console or a new snapshot called console restart so now this is like our bare bones cut bare bones council this is absolutely nothing now let's say we start mixing a ban the first thing they don't want to do on actually I don't even have to do this at the beginning a band comes on stage will say in the house engineer and I start mixing and getting everything set up the first thing that I want to do is make sure that the scope of whatever I'm changing identifying so right now the only thing that's set for the scope for this snapshot is the fader in the mute if you notice that everything else is outside of the scope so there's sort of two things two statuses of of any individual parameter there's inside the scope or scope or not scoped so right now fader and newt is the only thing that air scoped if I wanted to scope e q dynamics input and output assignment pre ab um um game paid gained pad and phase and phantom power adjustments and remember those air overridden by the preset sections what we set when we're looking at the options page in the very beginning the channel name the matrix feeds the channel delay plug in settings, panning the bus assignment all this stuff could be scoped andi just kind of depends on knowing what am I going to change for each band? So if I'm standing up for a band coming on stage, maybe I know that I'm probably going to change the fate of the meat panning the bussing, the dynamics, the name um the v c a and, uh plug ins so those are going to the main things that I'm probably going to adjust now, just a reminder if you notice there's two aug settings there's august monitor and dogs effects and the reason they've done this is to allow you to sort of like separate all of the og sends in tow dogs that are used for monitors and odds is that air used for effects that way. If I want to adjust, I want to scope the odds is that I'm using for effects, but our monitors, but I don't want to scope them using for effects on aiken switch those back and forth that would be really helpful to if, like, I know that the band doesn't want their monitor mix to change, but I have different effects for each aug send for each song, then I could make changes I can identify those aug sends used for effects and make changes to those for each snapshot and have the rest of the aug sends that he used for monitors not affected by those snapshot changes and if you remember and options, you just go to snapshots and you can identify which dog sends you want to use for monitors and which ones you want to use for effects? Um okay, so we'll go back to the snapshots let's say I start mixing the band, we'll go ahead and just pull up here uh, something I start bringing up different levels of the failures, we change the gain of some things ah, let's say we start panning something's left and right let's say, for certain channels we want to bring in some q and again, I'm just sort of like it doing this to identify certain things, these air not actually specifically what I'd be doing if you put a high pass on that, maybe on the snare we also want to bring up a compressor and you could go through and makes this whole session so once I've made all those changes, when I go back to snapshots, you'll see that in orange down here it's showing that the snapshot that I have targeted, which is the one highlighted is different than the what the council senate right now so it's saying this snapshot should be like this and if you recall, this is going to reset to this well, I don't necessarily want to recall this right away, so I'm gonna go ahead and click knew, and I'm gonna call this band one and let's say, ban one now finished sound checking, and I want to go back to ban to I can go to select snapshot one on I can do two things I can either target it, which by just clicking on it, targets that and shows an orange. The changes that will be made to all of the effects are all the channels that are being affected or I can preview the changes, which this is a really important point. The preview mode shows physically what will happen on the console but doesn't actually make the change until I take it out of preview mode so the changes don't actually get affected with the mix in the audio, it just changes visually on the board to show you what the changes would be made, which is why there's a giant previous sign. So I'm gonna go ahead and recall, um, mix one or snapshot one shows me all the changes that were made, but if you notice it says preview and the changes that haven't actually been made yet, so when I go back to snapshots and I take it out of preview mode. It's going to recall back to where I was that if I decide yeah that's I definitely want to restart we start back to whatever that or we call that specific um uh snapshot then I click recall and now that specific ones were called everything is reset exactly how it was supposed to be and I can now go back and start mixing band too and then obviously after band too I would create a new um a new snapshot for ban too and I could do that for four bands that are playing that night. And then when the first band comes back up on stage, I get the mikes back to where they were supposed to be at and I can recall their snapshot and will bring up everything back about their mix including their monitor sends their effects ends that accuse I used everything s so it's an easy way for house engineers to be able to create scenes in the same way that it's an easy way for front of house bands that are touring with bands to create a separate scene for every song. So a couple of the other commands we've got a preview we looked at recall store would be instead of creating a new ah a new snapshot without that splits within with the separate name if I wanted to store all of the current settings as that specific preset or that specific snapshot I could click store and it's going to tell me are you sure that you want to overwrite the current settings of that snapshot with the current settings of your counsel and if you know yes I'm overriding it you quick store and it would override everything there's a couple other ones that are really cool edit mode allows you to go back into a specific snapshot and make changes to it without actually recalling so I could go in and let's say um that's gonna be a hard one to do let's do ah um let's make some changes to band one so let's say scenario real world scenario here we finished sound checking and right before the first band goes on, the band comes up to you and says, hey, can I can you actually turn the guitars up a little bit? My girlfriend in the crowd said that you know the guitars were too quiet my band's not until third you're probably not going to remember by that time so you can go and choose their band snapshot click um edit and then find the guitar track and turn it up and then there's two different options there's absolute change and relative change so an absolute change would mean that whatever I set the fader at it's going to change it to that specific level a relative change would mean that if I'm changing both an e q a compressor and the actual fader level of that specific channel then as soon as I make that change it will adjust the fader output to be relative to the total change that's being applied on dyken just click on whether or not the changes I'm making you're going to be absolute relative something quick absolute and now banned ones um ben one specific uh snapshot has a change being made to it propagate is one of the coolest features to me so let's say that you have mixed the entire show you've got all twelve songs the band's going to play that night and you decide that you want to change the kick drum sound just slightly on every single song instead of having to recall every single snapshot and edit every single instance of that q on that kick drum you can create one change and then propagate that change of that one parameter across multiple snapshots eso let's say that I want to change the snare compression so I'm going to go ahead and call band one and then I'm going to take the snare and I'm gonna turn down the cue and change the threshold of the compressor a little bit now when I go back to snapshots I want to propagate that change across both of these or if I have like you know twelve songs here I want to propagate that change that one on ly change that I've made across all of these snapshots and likely propagate on now that change is made on every one of those snapshots, so it allows me to make one change, then apply it to every snapshot within a certain, um list. Ok, so we've covered creating snapshots you can rearrange snapshots, so if you want to put them in order, a lot of bands will have like if you do every song like you'll build, you know, twelve songs, this is our set, and every night the band has a different set list in order you can rearrange them just by dragging them around, so you know, you could rearrange and dragged them into different positions in this show, and then while you're actually mixing, you never have to look at the snapshots page. You can reach up to here where it says snapshots, and you could just recall the next snapshot on dh switch between them. You can also manually choose with the scroll button. If you see on the screen it shows underneath which snapshot you're on and above, it shows you what's next or what you're selecting so I can scroll between snapshots and choose the one I want to jump too, and then say we call that and now it's jumping to whatever snapshot I just shows so I can do all of that just within here on the actual snapshots page without having to like manually go over with the mouse and do that and that really helps as the show's flowing and you're mixing and you don't have time to like be looking you could just quickly move between shows and sort of like speed up your work for that way um let's see the cross fade setting is pretty cool so the cross fades setting basically over here in the upper right corner allows every single snapshot you make you can adjust the time it takes for the council to switch to that new setting so maybe you know the band's going to finish and there's going to be a slight transition between song one and song too and if you just jump really quick the whole tone changes and it's too much of an abrupt change and there's not enough time to sort of figure out how to make that transition smooth I could set the cross fade to be like three seconds and then when I recall that it slowly moves every single parameter over the course of three seconds to that new snapshot so it's not an extreme jump and change but you sort of slowly transition to whatever changes that have whether it's fate er's or e q settings or whatever it's a slight change so it's not so abrupt that's really helpful um you can also lock snapped snapshots so if I know that you know the base set up I don't ever want to get changed because that's my main set up the council restart for example I can click lock and now I can't accidentally ever override that, so if I'm working really fast and I got override something and I don't realize I have that one selected I can never override my base set up I'd really recommend that especially for house engineers once you have your sort of like basic blank consul set up with your correct routing, go ahead and create a snapshot that says council restart and lock it so that at the end of the night there's nothing you can do to reset that you can always go back to your reset point without ever having to worry about like manually going through in clearing out the council um would see um you can create scope sets, which are really cool, eh? So let's say that you want to have, um, a set of certain scopes that you always want to use within a specific within a specific group, you can create scope sets by basically saying ok, I know I'm always going to want to adjust the fainter e q dynamics name pan mute bus and v c a like this set it is kind of what I'm always going to do I could sort of say that as a scope set by by saving those and then be able to recall those and use them across multiple multiple snapshots. Let's say that you want to add tempo data. I'm going to show you in the next section how to create a tap tempo for a time delay like a reverb or an echo. So let's say that you knew the songs, tempos of every every single song has its own specific tempo and the band's playing with a click track. And so instead of having to tap out the tempo, you wantto program the council to lock into whatever tempo they're playing so that the effects match the temple of the song, you can actually assign these, so the first thing you do is an options you have to go over to miscellaneous and make sure that the tempo is turned on, and once temples turned on, then all of your effects that air time based I'll just quickly bring up a stereo delay. Now, all the time based ones have this little tempo meter, which means that the timing of this of the delay is actually going to follow the tempo of the entire five show file or of the snapshot in this case, so once that's enabled aiken, right, click on any of the snapshots in the snapshot list and say, show tempo. And now I can change the tempo of anyone that those individuals snapshots so I could actually go in and put in the temple of every single song on dh sink. That so that whenever I switched to the news session or sorry, the new snapshot, it would automatically recall that temple from that specific session. Um, so snapshots could be super useful. There's. Great ways that you can go about saving those and storing them, editing them. Any time you undo something, you can go back and redo it. There's always an option, too. If you accidentally overwrite uh, uh, a snapshot. You can undo it. You can clear out and delete snapshots on and change the scope. It's definitely one of the more powerful parts of the whole menu system.