ProPresenter Timecoding With Vista

How do I set ProPresenter 7 to automatically start a cue when a video is played and send timcode to vista 3. I would prefer wireless but if there is no free wireless way please show the wired way.

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ProPresenter 7 does not support LTC timecode. However, you can send MIDI messages over a network to control Vista from Pro7. I can explain how to do so on Mac, however I am unaware of how to do so using windows computers or a mix of mac and windows.

If you are using the same computer for ProPresenter and Vista:
Open the app Audio Midi Setup, then choose Window > Show MIDI Studio. In the MIDI studio window, click on the little item named “IAC Driver”. In the window that pops up, ensure that the checkbox that says “Device is online” is checked.

If you are using separate computers for ProPresenter and Vista
Open the app Audio Midi Setup, then choose Window > Show MIDI Studio. Next, click on the little globe icon in the toolbar. In the pop up window, click the plus icon under My Sessions to create a new session. Click the check mark next to the session to enable it. Rename the session to something useful like “MIDI Between Macs”. Under Directory, click on the name of the other Mac you want to connect to. Then click on the Connect button. After about 30-60 seconds, if the connection fails then a pop up will come up that says “computer name refused the connection request” or something like that. Assuming that doesn’t happen, then it’s connected.

Note that this requires both computers to be on the same network. So a WIFI network is fine. But a hardwired Ethernet connection between the two is better.

If you’re having trouble with getting the two computers to talk to each other, look it up on YouTube. There’s some great tutorial videos on how to do this (better than my explanation).

Next steps for either option:
Open Vista. Go to File > User Preferences, go to the MIDI tab, and under External Midi Ports check the checkbox next to “IAC Driver Bus 1” if you are on the same computer or “MIDI Between Macs” if you are using different computers.

Open ProPresenter. Go to ProPresenter > Preferences > Devices, click the plus icon at the bottom to create a new device, and select MIDI. You can add a name for this device if you’d like. Under Destinations, click the check mark next to “Bus 1” if you are on the same computer or “MIDI Between Macs” if you are using different computers. Then click back. Now click Connect next to the device you just created.

Now Vista and ProPresenter are connected via MIDI!

To send a trigger from Pro7 to Vista, right click on the slide you’d like the MIDI message to trigger from, then click Add Action > Communication > MIDI (or whatever your device name is) > Midi Note On. In the pop up menu, set the note to whatever you’d like.

In Vista, open a cuelist. Open cuelist properties for that cuelist, go to the MIDI tab, and then for the Play MIDI note, select the same note as you did in Pro7. Or you can use the learn function to record the note.

Using this method, you can automate your lighting to match Pro Presenter! One example use for this in a church would be to create cuelists for each motion background that you use, program the lights to match the background, then use this method to automate those cuelists to play whenever the lyrics operator clicks on the background for that song.

Hope that helps!
Drew

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Awesome answer @drewTheTechy :slight_smile: !

Just a quick note to say that if your Vista PC is a Windows machine. You can still do midi over network, you just need to install and run this RTP driver:

https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi.html

This Windows application looks and works exactly the same as what is native to the MacOS.

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Wow, thank you so much drew! I will try and see if this works. A little side question is: am i able to stop pro presenter from sending anything to vista. Sometimes i rather have myself busk the show instead of ProPresenter sending things to vista.

I think you could do this from within Vista:

“tools > midi show control”. This basically mutes and unmutes all midi coming into the console.
You can assign this button to a Fkey if you use it regularly.

image

Thanks Jack, even I didn’t know about this one!

Drew

how do i assign that to the Fkey

Right Click on any one of the softkeys in the toolbar (image from Jack) and select what you want from the dropdown menu.