Current Version 1.9
October 25, 2018
This project grew out of a dissatisfaction with the on-board programming workflow of the X32/M32. I wanted a way to create cues for controlling the assignment of channels to DCAs, with labeling of the DCAs, and automatic muting and un-muting of channels, without touching any other parameter on the board.
The workflow presented here solves that problem, although in a rather technical way.
The user creates the DCA assignments in a spreadsheet. I used OpenOffice on a Mac, but I have had people successfully modify this script to read other formats of spreadsheet on other operating systems.
The Python script then reads the spreadsheet file and spits out a set of X32/M32 "Snippet" files, plus a parent "Show" file, which can be transferred to the board on a USB stick. You set the board to "Cues" automation mode, turn off the prompt pref for scene recall, import the "show" file, and then just hit the GO button.
Channels assigned to a DCA on any given cue (snippet) will be un-muted. Channels not assigned to a DCA will be muted. The DCA faders scribble strips will light up with the arbitrary text entered in the spreadsheet.
Other features allow the DCA control of bus masters and aux inputs.
Additional custom functionality requested by users is described later in this document.
You will need a working Python installation on your computer, along with the pyexcel_ods module. I used Homebrew on my Mac to install a separate modifiable Python, then installed the required module with pip. The script should work fine on Windows and Linux too, but I'll have to leave it to you to get it running.
The files here are the Python script itself, a Bash script to run it with a certain set of parameters, an example spreadsheet (from the production of COMPANY that I'm opening this week) and example output snippet files.
The spreadsheet has to be in a certain format, and you have to edit the Python script to tell it which parts of the spreadsheet to look at.
NOTE: Row numbers are as in the spreadsheet (starting from 1). Column numbers are also 1-based (A = 1, B = 2, Z = 26, AA = 27 etc.)
SHEET_NAME This is the default name of an OpenOffice spreadsheet document, as displayed in the tabs at the bottom. Change this string if you've changed the name of the sheet which contains the DCA data. Note that this does not have to be the first sheet, and other sheets will be ignored.
SKIP_ROWS How many rows from the top to skip before attempting to interpret the spreadsheet contents.
CUE_NUM_COL / CUE_LABEL_COL The column numbers of the columns from which to pull the cue number and the cue label string.
PATH_NUM_ROW The row containing the physical path (channel/bus/aux-in) number of each logical path. This data is mandatory. By default just enter a 1:1 mapping (starting with 1), but if your channels are not a contiguous block then you can use this to skip gaps or reorder them.
FIRST_CHAN_COL FIRST_BUS_COL FIRST_AUXIN_COL The column number of the first logical channel/bus/aux-in data in the spreadsheet
NUM_CHANS NUM_BUSES NUM_AUXINS The number of logical channels/buses/aux-ins to control
FIRST_DCA_COL The column number of the first DCA's data in the spreadsheet (it is assumed starting from DCA 1)
NUM_DCAS The number of DCAs to generate data for (must be 8 or less)
DCA_COLOR
The desired backlight color for the DCA labels (when active) (can be RD, GN, YE, BL, MG, CY, WH, RDi, GNi, YEi, BLi, MGi, CYi, WHi)
NAME_CHANS Enabling this feature will cause the channel labels to be updated as well as the DCA labels. This requires an additional set of columns in the spreadsheet, starting at FIRST_CHAN_NAME_COL. If a cell in those columns is non-empty, the channel name will be changed to that value on that cue.
DCA_ALT_LABEL_COLORS Enabling this feature will cause DCA labels which match any of the strings in DCA_ALT_LABELS to be colored as DCA_ALT_LABEL_COLOR instead of DCA_COLOR.
DCA_ACTIVE_ON_NEXT_CUE Enabling this feature will cause DCA faders which will be active on the next cue to be illuminated with the color specified in DCA_ACTIVE_ON_NEXT_CUE_COLOR (value options same as above) to indicate that they might be allowed to stay up. (NOTE: this code only checks the next spreadsheet row, so will not detect the next active DCA if there are row gaps between cues, and is mutually exclusive with DCA_SAME_ON_NEXT_CUE)
DCA_SAME_ON_NEXT_CUE Enabling this feature will cause DCA faders which will be active on the next cue with the same contents to be illuminated with the color specified in DCA_SAME_ON_NEXT_CUE_COLOR (value options same as above) to indicate that they might be allowed to stay up. (that this code only checks the next spreadsheet row, so will not detect the next active DCA if there are row gaps between cues, and is mutually exclusive with DCA_ACTIVE_ON_NEXT_CUE)
FX_UNMUTE Enabling this feature will additionally control the bus send mute for any given channel to the single FX bus specified by FX_UNMUTE_BUS. If the DCA number in the channel column is negative, the channel will still be assigned to the DCA of the positive value, but the bus send for that channel will also be un-muted. This allows, for example, reverb to be selectively applied to channels in a given cue, and not in others.
OTHER_MUTES Enabling this feature will additionally control the mutes of another contiguous range of channels (perhaps the band channels) defined by OTHER_MUTES_FIRST_CHAN and OTHER_MUTES_NUM_CHANS. One of more of those channels can be muted on any given cue by entering that channel number in any of the spreadsheet columns defined by the array OTHER_MUTES_COLS. For example, if OTHER_MUTES_FIRST_CHAN is set to 17, OTHER_MUTES_NUM_CHANS is set to 11, and OTHER_MUTES_COLS is set to [31, 32, 33], then entering a channel number between 17 and 27 into any of columns 31-33 will cause that channel to be muted on that cue, for example, if you know that acoustic instrument will not be played during that cue (to mute handling noise).
Download these files, edit the ./runit.sh script appropriately, make it executable (this script will only work on Mac or Linux), and run it.
Copy the resulting files (.snp and .shw) to a USB stick, and insert into the console. Then press Scenes -> Utility -> Import Show, and pick the .shw file from the USB. Note that the entire Snippets library on the console will be overwritten, even those with higher numbers than the script generates.
In Settings -> Global, ensure that Confirm Pop-Ups: Scene Load is turned OFF, and Show Control is set to Cues.
NOTE: The resulting files have only been tested to load successfully on a console running firmware 3.07 and later.