The Administrator
| Site: | QSC |
| Course: | Q-SYS Level 1 Cinema Training |
| Book: | The Administrator |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Tuesday, 3 December 2024, 9:28 AM |
Description
Video Transcript
00:07
Welcome back.
00:09
Q-SYS Administrator provides certain features that can be configured offline without the Core itself
00:14
which are often critical to build during the commissioning stage of your system.
00:18
Specifically – scheduling events, and the management of your paging system.
00:23
You can access the Administrator by selecting the bullhorn icon in the top bar,
00:28
or by going to File Menu > Tools > Show Administrator.
00:35
There’s actually a third way to access Administrator – when you install your Q-SYS Designer software,
00:40
you probably noticed that there are two other installation files that came with it: UCI Viewer, and Administrator.
00:48
The UCI Viewer is the program that allows someone to access a UCI on the network
00:53
without having access to your design file, and the Administrator follows the same idea.
00:59
There are user-friendly functions in Administrator that allow your venue manager access to
01:05
things without forcing them to get into Q-SYS Designer software.
01:08
You can give them this program,
01:10
and then they can access this screen without getting into the Q-SYS design file itself.
01:15
Much like Core Manager, you’ll see tabs on the left of features you can access.
01:20
You’ll only see a few for now, but if you have any Public Address components like a PA Router in your design,
01:26
you’ll also see several additional tabs for managing your PA system.
01:30
Those tabs will be covered in the Public Address videos you can find in our Quickstarts section,
01:34
so we’re just going to focus on the Commands and Command Schedule tabs for now.
01:39
Let’s start with Commands.
01:41
This tab allows you to create specific actions called commands,
01:45
which you can then automate using the Command Schedule tab.
01:49
Commands can also be activated from page stations.
01:52
To create a command, click the plus icon at the top of the center section:
01:56
there are four types of commands, though you will only be presented with options available to you.
02:01
There are PA Page Commands, PA Play Message Commands,
02:05
Control Change Commands, and Snapshot Load Commands.
02:09
The PA commands will both be covered in the Paging Tutorial with the other public address features,
02:14
so let’s look at the other two.
02:16
A Control Change Command does exactly what it implies: it will change a control of your choice.
02:22
In order to make a control available for this feature, you’ll need to add it to your Named Controls bin.
02:28
Let’s show you how:
02:29
We’ll drag a few controls from an Audio Player in the design into the Named Controls Bin.
02:36
Now, this doesn’t remove the controls from the component,
02:39
it simply makes them accessible for control outside of the Schematic
02:44
by things like the Administrator or third party control systems.
02:48
If you don’t have any controls in this bin,
02:50
then you won’t have the option to add a Control Change Command in the Administrator.
02:55
So let’s save our design to the Core and run it again to gain access to the Administrator,
03:00
and then we’ll add a Control Change Command.
03:02
This settings menu will let us configure our new command.
03:05
You can name the command anything that you want like,
03:09
let’s name this one “Gain to Full” – we’ll use it to put the gain all the way up.
03:15
You can also give it a numeric code of your choice.
03:18
This code is a sequence that can be entered at a page station to remotely launch the command.
03:24
Next, you’ll want to select which Control will be changed.
03:28
We’ll select the Gain, and then select the Value that it will be changed to.
03:33
For a Gain knob like this one, you can also select the Ramp Time,
03:37
which is how many seconds it will take to reach the new value.
03:41
Certain controls don’t require a value or ramp time, because they are one-time actions.
03:47
These are known as triggers.
03:49
For instance, if you target a Pause Button instead,
03:53
you’ll see that it states the control “will be triggered” when the Command is engaged.
03:59
Once you’ve configured your command, select the OK button and you’ll see it added to your Commands list.
04:05
The next type of Command is the Snapshot Load Command.
04:08
Now, a Snapshot Load Command will load a saved Snapshot that you have in one of your Snapshot Banks.
04:15
You’ll learn more about creating Snapshots in our Control Overview section;
04:19
but for now, know that a snapshot can essentially be used
04:23
to change a lot of controls to a predetermined state at the same time.
04:28
In this settings menu,
04:29
simply select the name of your Snapshot Bank – we’ll use the Global one—which Snapshot number you would like to recall,
04:37
and then the ramp time.
04:39
However, be aware that Snapshots cannot activate trigger buttons – since they don’t have a “state” of on or off
04:48
so the Control Change command is critical if you want to schedule things like, say, starting an Audio Player.
04:55
When you have a lot of commands,
04:57
you can arrange them in ascending or descending order by each of these columns,
05:01
you can adjust the column sizes, or edit their settings once again by double-clicking them.
05:07
You might also find it useful to assign them Tags.
05:11
Tags are a convenient way to group associated commands together,
05:15
similar to using hashtags on social media.
05:19
Create a tag by clicking on the Plus icon here, and then give it a name. I’ll call these “Audio Controls”.
05:29
You can then drag this tag onto any command.
05:33
You can also add a tag by highlighting one or more commands first and then creating a new tag;
05:39
we’ll name this one “Snapshot”.
05:43
Each command can have multiple tags,
05:45
and you can quickly filter your list to find commands associated with a specific function.
05:51
Next let’s go to the Command Schedule tab,
05:53
to schedule these commands to occur at a predetermined time or day. This is known as an Event.
06:00
To create an Event, simply double-click in a blank area.
06:03
First we’ll give the Event a name, like “Staff Meeting... Ok, fine, “Party,”.
06:13
Then select the Command that you have created – we’ll use the Gain to Full.
06:18
By default, all Events start enabled, but you could select No to disable this event,
06:24
allowing you to engage it again later without deleting it entirely.
06:28
You must also decide how often your event occurs, whether that be a one-time event,
06:34
you can select Once and then specify the date and time, and then you’re done.
06:39
If you select Daily then it will happen every day at a specific time;
06:44
if you select Weekly then you can choose which day of the week it will occur on;
06:48
and if you select Monthly then you can choose which day of the month it will occur on.
06:53
Note that if you select Monthly,
06:55
then select the 29th, 30th, or 31st, it will only occur on months that have those dates.
07:03
For certain events, you might want the command to Loop, which is different than a reoccurring Event.
07:09
A Loop means the Command will be triggered multiple times within the same Event,
07:14
at an interval of your choosing.
07:16
For instance, two minutes before showtime, you might want to send a command to your lighting console
07:22
that dips the lights momentarily to signal to the audience that it's time to to take their seats.
07:26
You can repeat this every thirty seconds until the show is scheduled to begin.
07:31
And once the loop has terminated, then the event is complete.
07:35
If you’re playing something like a short announcement from an audio player component,
07:40
be sure to use this Loop command rather than the Loop button in the Audio Player.
07:45
If an Audio Player is set to Loop it will keep playing endlessly until something tells it to stop,
07:50
whereas the Loop controls here in Administrator let you be very specific
07:54
about how many times you want to launch the command,
07:57
and allows for time to pass in between those intervals.
08:01
You can also expose these advanced settings,
08:03
which allow you to decide when this Event begins going into effect, and also the ending date if you’d like.
08:10
If you want it to occur every other day, or every three weeks, etc., you can adjust this field here.
08:17
Once you’re satisfied with your Event,
08:19
select the OK button and your event will populate in your calendar view.
08:24
There it is: every two days, it’s a party!
08:28
You can also swap this Calendar View from monthly to weekly, or daily, or back to monthly.
08:35
If you don’t like the Calendar View, you can choose the List View to just see the upcoming events.
08:41
Or you can do away with the calendar entirely and switch to “Show Events” mode
08:46
which simply lists all of your events as single items, regardless of how often they repeat.
08:52
Using Commands in conjunction with the Command Schedule feature
08:55
can help you automate your system in a variety of ways.
08:59
For instance, you could create a global Snapshot of your design in a safe, neutral state,
09:04
and then build a Command that fires a snapshot,
09:08
and use the Scheduler to recall that Command every day at 8:00am in the morning.
09:13
That way, no matter who has adjusted the system the night before,
09:17
your design will start off every day exactly the way you want it.
09:21
You may have noticed a warning bar at the top of the screen.
09:24
Be sure to select “Update” to apply any changes you have made in the Administrator
09:29
to your current design in order to activate them.
09:32
Last but not least, there’s another User category in Administrator,
09:37
that is separate from the User profiles and PINs you established in Core Manager.
09:41
These Users are specific to three areas:
09:45
PA system users (which you can learn about in our Public Address training videos),
09:50
External Control Protocol users (which you can learn about in our External Control Protocol training videos),
09:58
and Audio File Management (which would be used if you are using an FTP client or something similar to manage the Core’s audio files).
10:05
Creating Users for any of these types of access is pretty self-explanatory:
10:10
you just press the Plus button to create a User, then give that user a name and PIN.
10:19
If you want to restrict a user from having access to one of these protocols,
10:23
then be sure to disable the Guest account’s ability to use those protocols first,
10:28
and then you can restrict them from your custom users as well.
10:32
So now you should have a clear understanding of how to operate each of the areas of the Administrator
10:37
and are ready to take the assessment.
10:39
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time.
Lesson Description
Build and schedule specific events and commands using the Administrator tool