Scene Scheduler

Let’s talk about scenes and scheduling on the MP-M Series mixers.

These are helpful if you have specific settings for given times of the days,

like a lunchtime setting vs. a dinnertime setting.

Or maybe you have a specific preset for Game time,

or when you have live bands plugging into your system.

You can create scenes for these scenarios and if you want,

you can schedule them to automatically deploy at certain times or days.

Let’s start by checking out scenes first by going to the Menu and selecting Scenes.

This page should look pretty familiar,

as you’ve seen something like this in several other places in the app.

Scenes may be saved on your device where you’re running the MP-M app,

or internally on the MP-M device, or on a USB drive,

and you can copy your scenes from any of these devices to the other.

Once you select a Scene, use the Recall button to apply it.

A Scene records the values for all settings for input channels, output channels, and the mixer selection.

So be careful,

because you might override a lot of the decisions you’ve made in your system if you use Scenes carelessly.

With that in mind, there are certain input and output channels that you might want to write-protect,

to make sure they are never changed when you recall a scene.

You can do this by navigating to that channel’s Setup screen and engaging the “Channel Safe” option.

When Channel Safe is on, a Scene recall will have no effect on this channel’s settings.

Another safeguard you have is choosing which aspects of the Scene you want to apply when you Recall it,

with these switches here.

Notice that these are labeled as “Omit” switches,

which means that by default every aspect of your inputs and outputs will be included in the Scene,

unless you choose to omit something.

You can choose to omit your input Levels & Sources from the Scene by engaging this button,

or you could choose to omit all outputs or not by engaging this one.

Again – if these are off, that means the described element is included in the Scene Recall.

Perhaps you have a Happy Hour in your bar

which will automatically recall a particular audio source to your zones,

but you don’t want this action to change the output level that your bartender has already set at the time -

—in this case, you would exclude the outputs.

On the other hand,

your coffee shop might have different presets to extend the mix of your live performer to the outside patio zones,

but you obviously don’t want to change anything about the inputs when you do this…

… in this case, you would build a scene that excludes the input levels.

Let’s create a few scenes right now for Patrick’s Diner.

Let’s create a lunchtime scene which has our gains set at a fairly low level.

We’ll simply select Save,

and give this scene a name of Lunch Scene, and specify which inputs and outputs it applies to.

Then we’ll go in and adjust those gains a bit higher for dinnertime

(because Patrick’s Diner is awesome at night),

and save that as a different scene.

Once both scenes are built,

all you have to do to recall one or the other is to select one from the Scenes page and press the Recall button.

However, there are several other ways to recall a scene, too.

When you’re setting up an MP-MFC,

you can select which scenes can be recalled from that device by enabling them in this column.

Then, on the device, simply double-tap the Select button to see your list of available Scenes.

You can also recall and save scenes on a smartphone running the MP-Manage app,

provided that the user in question has been granted the permissions to do so.

The final way is to Schedule your scene recalls, which you can do with the Scheduler.

This is available in both the MP-Install app and in the MP-Manage app, to users with that permission.

From the menu, select Scheduling, to see this screen.

Here, a scheduled recall is called an Event.

You’ll see your upcoming events listed in the left pane,

and the ability to create new Events in the middle section.

If you want to make an adjustment to an event you can select it and change its settings,

but let’s create a New Event first.

Choose a name for your event, and whether or not this event is currently active.

This is a useful feature – if you want to de-activate an event temporarily,

you can turn off this switch rather than deleting the event entirely.

Then, select the date and time that you want this Scene recall to activate,

and, of course, which Scene should be recalled.

The Scheduling depends on the internal clock of the MP-M – if the MP-M is connected to the internet,

then its internal clock will be automatically updated.

If it is not connected to the internet,

the clock may be set to match the time of a connected device from the Settings screen.

Just go to Menu > Settings > Sync MP-M to App Time.

Back in the Scheduler…

If you want this scene to repeat, you could choose its repeating behavior from daily,

weekly, monthly, weekdays, or weekends, and then the end date.

If this is just a one-time event, then select “No Repeat,” and then don’t worry about that End Date.

There’s not much more to it than that.

You can use the Scheduler to automate your venue for all your regular events,

or manually recall Scenes from your control devices.

Thanks for watching.