Cantabile Development Blog

Media Groups

Today I was looking into some faults to do with assigning MIDI controller assignments to multiple media players and realised configuring such assignments can be tedious work. So I've added the ability to define groups of media players.

Extracted from the user guide:

Media files can be grouped into one of ten groups (numbered from 0 to 9).

Each group can be an exclusive or non-exclusive group. An exclusive group only allows one of its contained files to be loaded. A non-exclusive group allows multiple files to be loaded.

Groups are mostly used in association with MIDI Controller Assignments which allow a controller to be assigned to play/stop or pause all the loaded files in the group.

For example, suppose you have a set of media files, each which is used in a different song. Rather than assign a MIDI controller to play each one, you can put all these media files in an exclusive group, use sub-sessions to load a different one for each song and use the one MIDI controller button to play the group - resulting in just the loaded file in that group being played.

To do this: 1. Load the media file for each song. 1. Set all the media files to belong to a single group (say group 1) by clicking the group selector drop-down and selecting the group number 1. Make the group exclusive by clicking the same drop down and ensuring the Exclusive option is checked. 1. All of the media files should now be unloaded except one. 1. You activate a different media file by clicking it's load button - the currently loaded one will be unloaded and the new one loaded. 1. Now create a sub-session for each song and load a different song in each. 1. Open MIDI Controller Assignments. 1. Press the MIDI button you want to use to play the group - it should be displayed in the Controller field. 1. From the Assign To drop down choose Transport - Play Media Group. 1. From the Group field, choose the group number you used in step 2 above. 1. Press the MIDI button again to confirm it starts playback of the loaded file in the group.

Some other notes on using Media Player Groups:

• By using a non-exclusive group you can control multiple media files from one button (eg: play an audio and MIDI file at the same time).
• You can create assignments for Group Play, Pause, Stop, toggle Play/Stop and toggle Play/Pause.
• You can also create a MIDI controller assignment to all groups - select (All) in the Group field. This is especially useful for the stop media group assignment as it allows all media file players to be stopped from a single button.
• By default group 0 is non-exclusive and all other groups are exclusive.
• By creating global controller assignments for the group commands, you can avoid having to create the same set of assignments in each session.

It sounds more complicated than it is, but greatly simplifies these types of arrangements

Posted on March 9, 2009

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