Create automations with Tasks

Tasks are designed to automate actions (organised as subtasks).
For more information on tasks, refer to the Tasks manual page

Task Panel

In the top menu View make sure the Tasks panel is enabled. You can move it to any part of your interface by drag & dropping it’s title bar to any section of the interface.

We will create a few tasks to quickly relocate the timeline’s locator to key moments of our Timeline.

This is how we are going to structure our tasks :

1. SUBTASK1 = Set the Timeline Grand Master at 0 with a fade of 1 second.
2. SUBTASK2 = 1 second after SUBTASK 1 : Relocate the Playback head somewhere in the timeline.
3. SUBTASK3 = At the same time as SUBTASK 2 : Set the Timeline Grand Master at 100 with a fade of 1 second.

Creating a task

In the Tasks panel click the button to create a Task.

Rename it Play Blue Loop and choose a color to identify it.

With this task selected, drag & drop the Timeline from the Timeline List panel into the Subtask tab of the Tasks panel.

Select the subtask that was just created and in the Editor panel set the Action to GrandMaster value.

Set the Value to 0 with a duration of 1 second.

Copy & Paste this subtask two times (or drag & drop the Timeline again).

Click on the second subtask and set the Action to Play at time… and set the timecode to 00:00:12:00.

*Tip: At this point you can also select the Blue Loop layer in the timeline, press i to set the playback head at the start of the layer, select the timecode value, and copy it to paste it in the subtask value.

Select the third subtask and set the Action to GrandMaster value and set it to 100 with a duration of 1 second.

In the Tasks panel, set a delay on the second subtask of 1 second.

Right click the Task then click on Launch to see the result.

Make sure you have your Preview panel visible in the interface.

*Note: When a task is triggered, it blinks for a few seconds in the Tasks panel.

Repeat this process and create three other Tasks to Play Jingle1, Jingle2, Jingle3.

*Tip : You can use Copy/Paste to duplicate Subtasks but you can also use it to duplicate an entire Task.
This way you can duplicate your first task four times and only have to edit the Play at time… values in each subtasks.

Conclusion

We now have a first timeline to play our content on the Main Screen.

The Pause commands on the Command layer enable us to launch the different sequences of our timeline when required by using the SPACEBAR to play the timeline.

The Tasks we have created enable us to fade and launch any desired sequence of our timeline if the show requires.

In the next part, we’ll explore how to capture and display live content (SDI, NDI, HDMI, etc.) and use it to display on the Reminder and Speaker screens.