Digidesign Venue Events Manager

The Events Manager came in handy yesterday. I found a couple of uses for it that I’ll probably use again in the future.

The first thing I used it for was to reset the console for the next service. Our services and snapshot lists feature iTunes at the front and at the end for pre- and post-service music. One of the things I’ve found myself forgetting is to reload the first iTunes snapshot at the end of a service. This has bitten me a couple of times when I’ve pounded the “next” button and gotten no response since I’m on the last snapshot for the service instead of the first. Yesterday I set up a very simple event to cover me so that whenever I recall the last snapshot of the service it automatically recalls the very first snapshot. So I basically set up the Venue so that the snapshots would loop. Very simple. Very effective for repeating programs.

The second use was a very simple function that I had been asking for as a feature and got in a roundabout sort of way. First a little background: I use mute groups sparingly and primarily to control channels I’m going to turn on and off within a cue. For example, I typically assign all my vox FX sends to a mute group so that I can turn them off easily if someone decides they want to talk instead of sing. One of the songs yesterday had a specific vocal delay effect that needed a little more setup than riding a fader was going to allow based on my setup; I typically ride the delay return instead of the send–some guys do it the other way, but it’s just a personal preference. At any rate for this song I needed precise control of the delay send to get the effect on specific words. The trouble I have in approaching songs like this where I need precise control of FX sends is that I’m just not used to banking to the aux sends to hit them. That’s why I typically opt for mute groups; they’re always right in front of me leaving the master faders for VCA’s or groups. I originally set the snapshot up for the song to mute the delay send, but during rehearsal in the morning I screwed up and overwrote it. Consequently in the first service when I recalled the snapshot for the song and the worship leader decided to talk before the band kicked in, I wasn’t able to remember in time to turn on my mute group and it was delay city. I’ve been burned by this in the past so I started trying to figure out a better way of tackling these types of songs in the future because the Venue won’t scope mute groups in snapshots. Since I was already playing around with the events manager, I decided to look at it and rediscovered that it will let you program mute groups in events. I quickly set up an event to turn on my delay send mute group when the snapshot for the particular song was recalled. It worked perfectly in the next service.

I’m definitely hoping for them to beef up the events manager in the future, but there is definitely some stuff there I can work with now. Of course the big question for me now is do our volunteers need to learn this and how quickly will they pick it up?