Grid Pro Manual - Getting Started
From VidvoxWiki
| Grid Pro Manual |
|---|
| Getting Started |
| The Basics |
| Advanced Features |
| Optimizing Grid Pro |
This is a quick overview of how to load movies into GRID Pro, organize the thumbnails, and use the other basic components of the software such as the mixer, the sequencer, the gesture slider and effects processing.
This document will only skim the surface of what GRID Pro can do. Read The Basics and Advanced Features from the table of contents on the left to learn each feature in depth.
Contents |
Loading & Playing
Loading Movies
Playing Movies
There are three ways to trigger movie files once they have been loaded into the GRID area.
- Click on any thumbnail.
- The QWERTY row (top row) of the keyboard can be used to trigger movies on the selected row. To move the currently selected row up or down, simply use the up and down arrow keys. The 1-5 keys can be used to jump to a specific row immediately.
- MIDI notes can be used to trigger cells in GRID. By default, a note value of 0 will trigger the first cell on the current page. However, you can adjust the note transpose to the lowest note on your keyboard in the MIDI setup part of the Preferences (File Menu).
Below the GRID area is an arrow that indicates into which playback bus the movie will be loaded. Depending on which mixer mode you are using (blend, transition, manual), GRID Pro may automatically switch this arrow when you trigger movies. You can also manually change bus via the menu (or cmd+L). Once a movie is playing in a bus, you can use the transport controls for that bus to adjust playback speed, volume, balance and loop-mode; or to pause the movie and change the current position within the movie. If you wish to store these settings with a movie, click the SAVE button for that particular parameter (arranged vertically along the side of the transport controls); otherwise a movie will use the current transport settings when loaded.
Selecting, Moving, and Copying Cells
For organizational purposes, it is very handy to change the order in which the thumbnails are arranged in the GRID area. From the toolbar, you can use the Select tool to highlight multiple cells, then using the Move or Copy tool (also accessible from the toolbar), you can Move or Copy the selected cells to another part of the GRID.
Instead of having to use the toolbar to change tools, you can use the following keyboard short-cuts:
- Select - hold down shift
- Copy - hold down option while dragging
- Move - hold down on control while dragging
Changing transition modes
In the Mixer area of GRID Pro, there is a list of available transitions. You can edit the parameters of a transition without making the transition active. To edit a transition, click on it's name in list "show" list on the left side of the mixer. To switch the active transition, click on it's name in the "use" list on the right side of the mixer.
FX
Loading effect (FX)
To load an effect, just click on the name of the desired effect in the Add FX tab underneath the slider inspector (next to Copy Waves). The effect will automatically be added to the end of the targeted FX chain - A, Mix, or B. Many effects have multiple parameters (sliders). Once loaded, an effect can be deleted by clicking on the "x" in the title bar of the effect. FX can be defaulted to load on or off, settable in preferences. The order of FX can be changed by clicking and holding on the name of an FX, and then dragging it above or below the name of another FX (sorry, no visual feedback during the dragging stage right now).
FX Presets
Once you have a set of FX parameters that you like, you may want to save those settings to use in the future. Inside each FX panel will be a Preset Panel that can be used to store and load saved presets. To store your current settings in an FX preset, hold shift while clicking a Preset Cirlce in the Preset Panel. To load a preset, simply click on one of the Preset Circles in the Preset Panel.
Preview Window
The Preview Screen can be used to view any video stream in GRID Pro without having any effect on the main video output. You can switch between four modes - bus a, bus b, mixer or quad mode - using the source picker below the preview screen. To toggle each source between previewing pre or post FX, click anywhere on the preview screen.
The Gesture Slider
One of the standard interface objects in GRID Pro is the Gesture Slider. Using the Gesture Slider, control of any parameter in Grid Pro can instantly syncronized with real-time analysis data and hardware devices such as MIDI instruments and digital turntable systems. Gesture Sliders can be controlled using the Slider inspector.
Assigning MIDI controllers to sliders
Before assigning MIDI, you may want to go to the MIDI setup pane in Preferences.
The long way:
- Click on the slider to which you wish to assign MIDI
- In the inspector (top right of the GP window), click on the 2nd tab called "sync" (you can also do this with the keyboard short-cut cmd+2)
- In the hardware section of the Sync inspector, select midi_detect
- Move the slider/knob/note/etc. you wish to assign to that slider
The quick way:
- Click on the slider to which you wish to assign MIDI
- Use the keyboard shortcut cmd+0
- Move the slider/knob/note/etc. you wish to assign to that slider
That's it!
If you want to assign the slider to another controller, such as the horizontal or vertical mouse position, or an analysis module, just pick the desired controller from the Sync Tab. You won't need to do any detection like with MIDI.
Changing the range of a slider
The range of values given off by a slider can be adjusted by moving the left and right handles available in every slider. This is particularly useful when in sync mode to map that data to a useful range. In the inspector, you can pick between scaling the incoming data to fit within the range, or clipping the data at the low/high points. Keyboard short-cuts for setting the low / high handles are option (set low) and cmd (set high).
Recording a gesture into a slider
By default gestures will be recorded using the horizontal mouse position. If you wish to use a controller other than the horizontal mouse position, first Sync the slider using the instructions in the previous section.
Click on the slider you wish to target for recording a gesture. Next, click on the Record tab of the inspector (or keyboard shortcut cmd+3). The slider will immediately start recording data from the desired controller. To stop recording, simply click in the area of the inspector that says "Done", or press the tab key on the keyboard - don't worry if you get some bogus data at the beginning or end of your gesture, you can edit the gesture once it is done being recorded.
Once the gesture is done being recorded, the inspector will automatically switch to the Wave tab. In this mode, you can perform the following operations on the recorded gesture.
- change the playback speed of your gesture
- sync the playback speed to the measure clock
- edit the wave (to undo changes made to the current wave just type cmd+z or click the undo button in the Wave tab)
- save the wave for later use
- copy the wave to paste into another slider
- invert the recorded data
- more!
Loading a saved gesture into a slider
To load a saved gesture, simply click on the thumbnail of the desired gesture in the Copy Waves panel below the inspector. Then click on the target slider, switch the Inspector to Wave tab (cmd+4) and click on the paste wave option (cmd+v).
Using the Sequencer
To switch to the sequencer view, select "Sequencer View" from the Transport menu (keyboard short-cut cmd+h).
To add movies to the current sequence, simply select the desired movies in the Media GRID using the selection tool and then use the copy tool to copy them into the current sequence (you can shift+opt+drag). Once movies are loaded into the current sequence, you can modify the duration, speed, in/out points, movie position, volume, balance, and fade time for each step of the sequence. Using the control panel on the left side of the sequencer, you can hide/show the levels of each parameters and change which parameter you are editing (left and right columns respectively).
The duration setting for each step controls how many 'counts' to stay on that particular step. The length of a 'count' is user set-able in the upper right section of the sequencer. There are four 'count' modes - movie loop, controller sync (useful for using audio analysis to step through the sequencer), clock, and manual.
To switch back to the regular transport controls, you can select Mixer View from the Transport menu (or cmd+G on the keyboard).
Setting playback preferences
Selecting Preferences from the File menu will bring up a window that contains many useful settings for GRID Pro.
Here are some tips to get the best performance:
- If you are not using the audio from your movies, you may want to try Frame Drive mode, also accessible in General Settings (you can also change this via the Playback Settings menu).
- For best performance, you'll want to set the playback resolution and aspect ratio to the resolution and aspect ratio of the movies you have loaded. You can do this under the Resolution tab.
- Under Display settings (and the Displays menu) you can pick which screen (if any) you wish to have your mix outputted to. If you are using a fullscreen mode, it is generally best to set the preview screen at low priority, or turn it off completely. In the Displays settings you can also change your graphics mode for display - the optimal setting for this will vary by graphics card, No Acceleration is usually the slowest.
If you are not using a Digital Turntable system, it is best to have this optional disabled.
Using GRID Pro as a MIDI clock slave
To activate MIDI Slave, first you'll need to set GRID Pro to listen for MIDI clock information. In the GRID Pro preferences under the MIDI tab will be a list of available MIDI sources available to your computer. Some of these options may be CoreMIDI devices, meaning that they are virtual MIDI devices on your computer. For example, you may see an option that says "To GRID Pro 1". Make sure you have any external MIDI devices hooked up before launching GRID Pro.
Next you need to start sending the MIDI clock to GRID Pro from clock source (the master, such as Ableton Live). Most MIDI clock devices send a 'start' message when you start their clocks. GRID Pro is designed to listen for this message and automatically switch into slave mode when it is received. However, if your clock source does not support 'start' messages, you can manually activate slave mode by clicking on the slave button in the clock.
If you are using MIDI clock to syncronize GRID Pro with another program on your computer, you may need to open GRID Pro before opening and configuring the other application to send MIDI clock.