I'll PayPal $20 to the 1st who can provide a solution...

ybrband

Member
Posted a thread in the Beyond and Pangoscript forums about this. Hoping someone can chime in...sorry, but time is of the essence.

I need to be able to hit the Esc key on a Macbook Pro running Qlab (for audio/video playback) and have it send a MIDI message to a PC running Beyond to initiate blackout.

In other words, I want the Mac to tell the PC to hit the ESC function simultaneously.

As an alternative to "blackout", if it could generate a MIDI note to a blank cell in Beyond, that would also do the trick, but it has to be via the ESC key on the Mac.

Or perhaps there's another solution...

I know nothing about Pangoscript, so if this doesn't already exist, I need someone who can write it.

Thanks!
 
Hi this is possible using the free program glovepie.
Please download it here: http://glovepie.org/GlovePIE045Free.zip

Open it and type in the following in the text field for instance:
midi1.a0 = key.escape

Then press run and keep it running in the background.

What this does is trigger midi1 and press note a0 when you press escape on your keyboard!
If you want to see what else you can send just type in midi1.
and a list of commands possible will appear for you to pick from

You might need to mess with the midi1 like change it to midi2 or midi3
as it's a little bit fiddly to figure out which midi device is which.

Since the key isn't swallowed (which is also possible with this program) it should still send the escape key too hence this code is very simple.
If it doesn't work reach me at: everest.pieter (at) gmail (dot) com
 
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Thank you for your suggestion.

But from what I can tell, this is a PC application (.exe). So if I read you correctly, you're suggesting that it will translate the PC's ESC key command to send a MIDI note value. Unfortunately that isn't what I need....I would need the MAC computer (my master playback device) to translate its ESC key to a MIDI note, and then the PC would have to receive that MIDI note, and translate it back to the ESC function to trigger blackout.

Am I correct?

Currently the workaround I came up with is this:

On the Mac I set up another key (the ` key beneath the ESC key) as a hotkey trigger, which sends a MIDI note value (note 60)....then on the PC in Beyond, I have cell #60 set up as a blank frame cue. So in a sense it works as a blackout.

The only real drag here is that I now have to press two keys to stop both machines....ESC (which stops the audio/video playback on the Mac) and `(triggers blank cue #60 in Beyond).

What baffles me is that neither Qlab (MAC) or Beyond (PC) seem to allow their Panic/ALL-OFF or BLACKOUT functions to be assignable to anything but the ESC keys.
 
You can also try Bome MIDI Translator, is available for MAC and PC.

This little program can convert key events to MIDI messages and opposite, as well many other things.

You can convert Esc key to a Midi note on the MAC, and then converting the received Midi note to the Esc key again on the PC, using the same software.

https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator/overview/classic

I think there are many others little programs that can do this, but if you want to try....
 
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