A Virtual Bank of Channels
Earlier this week Avid announced that the highly anticipated v2.8.1 software update for the Venue is available for all consoles. SC48 users have had access to v2.8 since the console’s release earlier this year, however, the rest of us have been patiently waiting for the Venue team’s refinement of the software to gain access to the new 2.8 features on our D-Shows and Profiles. I’ll probably have a full write-up on the new software at some point in January once I’ve spent some time on it, but in the meantime I have a trick formerly available only to SC48 users.
If you’re like me, laying out your channels is essential to a successful event. One of my main goals is to keep key faders within reach at all times. However, as a typical service or event progresses, the programming elements change and what was important to have within reach five minutes ago might now be worthless. To more easily deal with this, I’ve been hoping the Venue team would one day implement a way to customize channel layouts via snapshots. I think an approach to doing this is now here now thanks to the VCA Spill feature added to v2.8 of the D-Show software.
For those unfamiliar with VCA Spill, it allows you to double-click the “Select” button of a VCA and have the VCA’s members spill across your input faders so you get instant access to the channels assigned to that VCA without having to go searching across multiple banks. By coupling snapshots with VCA spill, you can easily create a virtual customized Bank of channels you can modify with each snapshot:
To access your custom bank, you just activate VCA spill on your Bank E VCA. Now as you recall different snapshots, your custom bank of input faders will change as the VCA members in your spilled VCA change.
If you try this out, please let me know how it works for you.
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I was recently out with the SC48, using all 48 channels and I couldn’t have done it without VCA spill. I just named one VCA “stuff” and made a snapshot for every song.. The “stuff” VCA had all of the most important faders for that particular song (solos, FX, etc..)
I think it’s one of the greatest digital console features ever.
I can’t wait to get my 2.8.1 update so I can start using this on my D-Show. Brilliant. Thanks for posting this.
That sounds like an AWESOME idea! I would suggest that you post that on the DUC as well. I have the software on order and looking forward to the upgrade as well.
A great feature, glad to see that it will live on past its original genesis from the minds at Innovason.
You could do essentially this spill feature, or have the console automatically push the first 8/16 channels of a VCA to a fader bank(s) on an Innovason SYxx back in ’06.