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MIDI Designer in Video Production with Sonic State
It’s a huge honor to feature Sonic State as MIDI Designer Pro users. Sonic State found us one morning in May, 2012 with a short email, which started, “Hi, we’ve just awarded MIDI Designer Pro our first Sonic Touch Gold award. Do you have some graphics…”
That email resulted in our first appearance on their videocast, and the first ever Sonic Touch Gold Award. Their viewers are very smart, technical, and artistic bunch with an amazing eye for quality. And if you watch Sonic State even just for a bit, you’ll understand why: they get deep into everything they present.
MIDI Designer is still an integral part of Sonic Touch production, and we’re mentioned again in Episode 23! ‘
Nick Batt was kind enough to answer some questions about his use of MIDI Designer. Here’s the breakdown:
Questions and Answers with Nick Batt of Sonic State
What are you controlling with your layout(s) in MIDI Designer?
I am mainly using this to control our camera-switching system, with MIDI commands being turned into key commands and mouse clicks via Bome’s MIDI Translator — across sever machines — things like Camera Switching, Digital desk control, recording and application switching.
I also have been experimenting with using a footswitch via the Alesis Studio Dock to change shots so I can run the production system solo without leaving the studio area too much. Runs great on the iPad Classic—seems to be more stable Wifi connection than on the iPad 4.
How is your rig organized? How are you connecting?
We use the MIDI and send it over RTP MIDI to several machines (Mac and PC) that all have various jobs within the system. On PC you can use rtpMidi and Bonjour
How many banks and pages are you using? On how many and which devices are you using MIDI Designer?
At present one bank, four pages. We use two iPads. We also have plans to run some Tally lights on iPod touches above key cameras running MIDI Designer to illuminate a button. That way, a performer can see which camera is live — much cheaper than a tally system and wireless! [what’s a Tally Light?]
How do you connect to your MIDI targets?
Wi-Fi, RTP Midi and USB
Is MIDI Designer replacing some other hardware or software? If so, what?
Expensive dedicated video switching control panel, costs like $5k
Any features you love about MIDI Designer?
Subcontrols, the ability to email setups to another iPad and click to load is awesome.
Any features you hate about MIDI Designer?
Not hate, but would like X/Y pad that tracks position instead of drawing a box (I may have missed something) [Editor’s Note: message received! It seems that we’re talking about the visual representation of the XY.]
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