fade out audio on demand

[dirkV]

Hello,

I'm new to QLCplus. I sometimes do light and sound in theatre circumstances and up until now I was using Freestyler dmx for light and Multiplay for sound. In this setup multiplay is the actual cue player which controls sound and sends midi control changes to Freestyler to control the lights as well (through LoopBe). So in fact I need three different programs to accomplish what I want
Lately I started to look at QLCPlus because it has the great advantage of controlling lights and playing sound (and video) in just one program.
My question is : is there any way in QLC+ to fade out an audio track on demand ? It often happens that you play a song at the beginning of a theatre show and you want to be able to press on a key or click a button so the song fades out on the moment the actors appear on the stage.
I already tried to put an audio in a chaser with a fade out time but when the next step of the chaser starts the audio is simply cut off without taking in account the fadeout time. When you do the same thing with light scenes the fadeout of a light scene is nicely executed from the moment the next step starts. With audio that does not seem to work or am I doing something wrong ?
I also had a look at scripts but there is only the possibility to stop a function not to fade out a function.
Being able to fade out an audio track on demand is really a functionality that is essential in theatre circumstances.
Is anyone able to help me with this ?

DirkV.

PS : I hope my English is understandable cause my native language is Dutch

[sbenejam]

Hello,

I'm new to QLCplus. I sometimes do light and sound in theatre circumstances and up until now I was using Freestyler dmx for light and Multiplay for sound. In this setup multiplay is the actual cue player which controls sound and sends midi control changes to Freestyler to control the lights as well (through LoopBe). So in fact I need three different programs to accomplish what I want
Lately I started to look at QLCPlus because it has the great advantage of controlling lights and playing sound (and video) in just one program.
My question is : is there any way in QLC+ to fade out an audio track on demand ? It often happens that you play a song at the beginning of a theatre show and you want to be able to press on a key or click a button so the song fades out on the moment the actors appear on the stage.
I already tried to put an audio in a chaser with a fade out time but when the next step of the chaser starts the audio is simply cut off without taking in account the fadeout time. When you do the same thing with light scenes the fadeout of a light scene is nicely executed from the moment the next step starts. With audio that does not seem to work or am I doing something wrong ?
I also had a look at scripts but there is only the possibility to stop a function not to fade out a function.
Being able to fade out an audio track on demand is really a functionality that is essential in theatre circumstances.
Is anyone able to help me with this ?

DirkV.

PS : I hope my English is understandable cause my native language is Dutch

Take a look to Loopback input/output plugin. With Loopback you can control VC widgets from a scene. For example put a button to play audio and a slider in submaster mode in a frame. Put a button with a scene controlling a channel through loopback. Assign external input in submaster slider to get controlled from loopback channel.

[dirkV]

Thanks Santiago, for your reaction. In the meantime I found that article in the forum. I player around a little bit and this is a nice workaround. I found a loopbackfadeout example in the forum and was able to transform it so I can make a chase with a song fading in together with a light scene. In the second step I can fade out a song and the light anywhere in the song. In the third and fourth step I repeat that with another song. Afterall I have 512 channels on my loopback universes so thearitically I can control 512 VC widgets with it.
I have put the result in attachment.
Disadvantage is that it takes a bit of work. It would be easier if you could put the audio file in the chase with an infini hold and simply determin the fadeaout time (like with a light scene). I hope it might be one of the features that will be added (supposing it is not possible allready and that I'm doing something wrong.

DirkV

[kenact]

DirkV,

I copied your file, and I can get it to work on my laptop, but I can't replicate what you did. It seems, no matter what I do, I can't set the Input Universe on my Slider. If I try to modify your slider, I can't set the Input Universe.

[GGGss]

The 'trick' is to remember the channel of the universe to use as an input to your fader

(on your slider-properties in VC) External input - Choose -> select universe 2 & then double click on the input bar beneath it. Simply enter 1
(The thing is that the creator didn't make an input profile, so can't 'select' an option here... - making a input profile is not that hard ... but hey - for ONLY 1 channel?)

What it does:
When you click 'play music' audio starts, (and <undocumented I might say> apparently VC slider in playback-mode sets audio-levels to 255)
now, and this is also <undocumented> starting the cue 'loopback fade-out' the first action is to send out a 255 value to the feedback channel ... {hmm why? to overrule with I'm in control NOW?'}
fading out, a tick later the feedback-output of 254 is read as feedback-input and sets the slider to 254 <- these are the magics behind the feedback possibilities and this goes on and on... till 0 is reached (and things are reset magically)

Anyway - the fade out of the cue-stack is read and sets the slider to the new value.

The poster made it a little bit more difficult to understand using 2 universes feedback-out & feedback-in ... you simply can use 1 universe as in & out
Have a look to the adopted example of feedback beneath...

• universe 3 is now the sole feedback channel (in & out)
• it includes an input profile (copy to your folder) (restart QLC after saving the custom input profile)
• pressing the button 'play music' it already (for better understanding) sets the feedback value to 255 no more magic thru to the slider - ergo 1st step in the play-audio stack
• with input profile, you can now easily select in the VC - slider - properties - external input - choose - universe 3: GGGss example-audio-fade-out - input channel 1: audio-level

I hope you understand the powerful feedback feature better now.

[Martin]

What is the qxi file