Shows

At the top of the Show window, above any Tracks that you have added to it, is a header that allows you to configure the default Enabled filter (explained below), and to filter which Tracks are currently visible, which is helpful when you have added a lot of them to the Show.

If you type any text in the Filter box, only tracks that match that text will be visible. Similarly, if you check the Loaded Only checkbox, only tracks that are currently loaded on a player on the network will be visible. This is a great way to narrow down your focus to watch what is going on with tracks the DJ is currently playing.

The Show window has its own menu bar with commands that apply to the Show as a whole.

Beat Link Trigger automatically saves the Show when you exit normally, but if you are concerned that your computer might crash and want to avoid the risk of losing data, you can manually save it by choosing File  Save. You can also save a copy to a different file at any time using File  Save a Copy.

If you want to stop working with a show, and don’t want Beat Link Trigger to automatically open it the next time you launch the program, choose File  Close.

The Tracks Menu allows you to add tracks to the show, as discussed in the next section, and to edit expressions that customize the show as a whole, as described in the Expressions section.

The Inspect Expression Locals option allows you to explore any values that have been set up by expressions to share across the entire Show. See Inspecting Locals and Globals for more details.

The Help Menu is the same as in the Triggers window, providing a variety of helpful information and shortcuts for getting support.

Shows don’t do anything until they include at least one Track. There are a number of different ways you can add Tracks to your Show. Most of them can be found by choosing Tracks  Import Track in the Show window menu bar:

If you are currently Online, and there are any players on the network that have rekordbox tracks loaded that are not already part of the Show, you will see them as options in the menu. Choosing Tracks  Import Track  from Player 2 (for example) will download that track from the player, and add everthing needed to work with the it to the Show file (the elements of a Track row are explained below, after the other ways of adding them to a Show).

To help avoid confusion, rather than simply having the player disappear from the list of import choices if the track it has loaded is already part of the Show, the menu option is disabled and an explanation is added:

To make it possible to set up your Show even when you don’t have access to your player network, you can also import Tracks directly from rekordbod USB or SD media. To do that, mount the media on your computer, and choose Tracks  Import Track  from Offline Media. An Choose Media dialog will appear, from which you can navigate to the media:

Once you click Choose Media, the exported database is parsed, and a Choose Track window is presented, which is very similar to the Loading and Playing Tracks interface offered by the Player Status window (see that section for details about how to navigate the interface and use the Search feature):

Once you have found the Track you are looking for, click Choose Track to add it to the Show.

The final way to add a Track to a Show is to copy it from another Show. When you have multiple Show windows open, you can copy Tracks from one to another by finding the Track in the open Show that already contains it, then choosing Copy to Show “<name>” in the Track’s context menu:

The comment field starts out holding whatever comment the DJ entered about the track in rekordbox, but you are free to edit it however you like, to help you remember things about the track or to make it easy to find using the Filter field.

The waveform preview section shows the overall intensity and dominant frequencies of the track from beginning to end. As in the Player Status window, you can see the locations of hot cues and memory points in the waveform preview, and if any players have the track loaded, you can see their playback position markers. (Unlike in the Player Status window, you may see more than one player position on a single track, because the same track might be loaded in more than one player.) The tick marks along the bottom each represent one minute of playback time.

Along the bottom of the track row you find the controls that let you configure how you want the Show to respond to the track.

This allows you to access the track Context Menu with a regular mouse click. The gear inside the button will be filled in if there have been any Cues or Expressions added to the Track, and hollow otherwise. The contents of the menu itself are described below.

The MIDI Output Menu lets you choose the MIDI device to which the trigger will send messages when you configure it to send MIDI messages for particular events. It will show all MIDI outputs currently available on your system.

The chosen MIDI output will be used for all messages that the Track is configured to send, including those belonging to any Cues created in the Track. But each Track can have its own MIDI output, in case you have a large show with many cues.

To the right of the MIDI Output menu there is a Loaded Status indicator which has two parts. The outer ring indicates whether the Track is currently enabled (a green circle) or disabled (a red circle with a slash). If any player currently has the Track loaded, there is a filled circle inside the enabled indicator ring:

The Loaded Message Menu determines what kind of MIDI message is sent when the Track first becomes loaded by any player (as long as the Track is Enabled, as described below), or when the track is unloaded by the last player that had loaded it.

To the right of the Loaded Message section there is a Playing Status indicator. As with the Loaded Status indicator, it has an outer ring which shows whether the Track is currently enabled (a green circle) or disabled (a red circle with a slash). If any player is currently playing the Track, there is a filled circle inside the enabled indicator ring:

The Playing Message Menu determines what kind of MIDI message is sent when the first player starts playing the Track (as long as the Track is Enabled, as described below), or when the last player that was playing the track stops.

The Enabled menu controls whether the Show will react to players doing things with the Track.

Each Track row has a context menu attached to it, which can be accessed by right-clicking (or control-clicking) anywhere on the row’s background, but you can also open the context menu with a regular mouse click on the button with a gear icon in it. Most of the menu is devoted to editing various expressions to customize the Track, as described in the Expressions section. The gear icon next to an expression will be filled in if that expression has a value, and the gear in the button will be filled in if any expression associated with the Track has a value, or if there are any Cues in the Track.

The first option in the menu, Edit Track Cues, opens the Cues window for the Track, which is how you can create Cues that respond to particular beat ranges in the Track, as discussed in the next section.

Below that come the expression-related options, allowing you to open editors to create or edit Clojure code that runs at well-defined moments to customize the behavior of the Track. These are followed by the Simulate submenu, which allows you to test your MIDI mappings and custom expressions as described in the next section.

The Inspect Expression Locals option allows you to explore any values that have been set up by expressions in the Track to re-use or share with each other. See Inspecting Locals and Globals for more details.

As mentioned at the end of the Adding Tracks section, if you have more than one Show window open, and you bring up the context menu for a Track that does not exist in one of the other Shows, you will see an option to copy it to that Show.

Finally, the Delete Track option does just what it sounds like, after confirming that you want to discard any expressions and Cues you have set up for that Track.

The Simulate submenu allows you to pretend that a Loaded, Unloaded, Playing, Stopped, Beat or Tracked Update event has occurred, and send the corresponding MIDI messages and/or run the custom Expressions you have configured for those situations.

The corresponding option will be disabled if there is no MIDI message or Expression configured for that event.

At the top of the Cues window, above any Cues that you have added to it, is a header that shows a scrollable and zoomable view of the track waveform and beat grid, much like the one that appears in the Player Status Window, except that you can manually scroll this one to the section you want to see regardless of whether any players are currently playing it. If any are, you will see their playback position(s) marked on the waveform as illustrated above, but they will not cause the waveform to scroll to follow them unless you check the Auto-Scroll checkbox. Although you won’t want to do that when you are editing cues, it can be nice when running a show, as it makes it easy to follow along as Cues approach and run.

The New Cue button creates a new cue on the first beat of the Track, unless you have selected a beat range first as described below.

As with the Show window, if you type any text in the Filter box, only Cues that match that text will be visible. Similarly, if you check the Entered Only checkbox, only Cues that currently have a player positioned inside them will be visible. This is a great way to narrow down your focus to watch what is going on with cues the DJ is currently playing.

The Cues window doesn’t do much until you add at least one Cue. As mentioned above, you can use the New Cue button to do this, and then edit the cue to position it where you want it, but it is easier to specify where you want it on the beat grid first. To do that, you can click and drag in the waveform view to highlight the beats that you want the Cue to run for. Dragging over the eight beats past where the player was cued in the above example sets up a selection like this:

If your aim was slightly off, you can drag the edges of the selection to adjust them, as suggested by the cursor in the image above, or you can shift-click to grow or shrink the cue, perhaps after scrolling the wavform to a different section. Also remember that you can adjust the Zoom slider to make it easier to position your cue.

Alternately, you can click to select a single beat, then shift-click another to specify the entire range without dragging. If you created a beat selection by accident and want to get rid of it, you can either drag it back down to nothing, or click a single beat outside the selection and then shift-click it to deselect it.

Regardless of how you do it, once you have the right beats selected, clicking the New Cue button will create a new cue covering the chosen beats:

You can see and adjust the beats on which the Cue starts and ends using these two fields, either by typing new values, or clicking the arrows. However, it is probably even more convenient to simply drag the edges of the cue in the waveform, which also works.

The End must always be at least one beat past the Start, and neither can extend outside the beat grid of the Track.

To help understand the purpose of the cue, you can give it a name. The default is Untitled (with a numeric suffix if needed to keep it distinct), but as soon as the cue is created, the Name field is selected and ready for you to type something more meaningful. For this example, we’ll type "First two measures", since we placed the cue at the point where this track begins playback after being loaded.

The cue name also appears as a tool tip when you hover the mouse pointer over the cue in the waveform:

Cues are assigned distinct hues when they are created to help you tell them apart (and to tie the cue in the waveform to the corresponding detail row below), but you can also assign each cue a specific hue if that helps organize your show by clicking the Hue swatch in the Cue row. That will bring up a color picker window wher you can choose the exact hue you want.

If cues overlap each other, Beat Link Trigger draws them in separate lanes to make it easier to tell where each begins and ends. It can handle even very complex sets of overlapping cues, adjusting them into a minimal set of lanes. Here’s an example of what it would look like if we added a second cue called “Video Clip 1” that overlaps part of our first cue:

Cues are also visible, and show their names as tool tips, in the waveform preview drawn in Track rows in the Show window, so you don’t even need to open the Cues Editor for a quick reminder of what cues are coming up:

In both waveforms, Entered Cues are whitened slightly and Started Cues are whitened even more as a visual indicator of their state.

Below the first row of cue configuration elements there is a gear button that allows you to access the cue’s Context Menu with a regular mouse click. The gear will be filled in if any Expressions have been added to the Cue, and hollow otherwise. The contents of the menu itself are described below.

To the right of the context menu button there is an Entered Status indicator which has two parts. The outer ring indicates whether the Cue’s Track is currently enabled (a green circle) or disabled (a red circle with a slash). If any player is currently positioned anywhere inside the Cue, there is a filled circle inside the enabled indicator ring:

The Entered Message Menu determines what kind of MIDI message is sent when the first player moves into the cue (as long as the Cue’s Track is Enabled), or when the last player that had been positioned inside the cue moves out of it.

Below the Entered Status indicator there is an Started Status indicator. Like the Entered Status indicator, it has two parts. The outer ring indicates whether the Cue’s Track is currently enabled (a green circle) or disabled (a red circle with a slash). If any player is currently playing inside the Cue, there is a filled circle inside the enabled indicator ring:

The Started On-Beat Message Menu determines what kind of MIDI message is sent when the first player begins playing the Cue, as long as it does so from the very first beat of the Cue (and as long as the Cue’s Track is enabled), or when the last player that had been playing inside the cue moves out of it or the Track becomes disabled, if it was started on its first beat.

The Started Late Message Menu determines what kind of MIDI message is sent when the first player begins playing the Cue, as long as it missed playing the very first beat of the Cue (and as long as the Cue’s Track is enabled), or when the last player that had been playing inside the cue moves out of it or the Track becomes disabled, if it was started somewhere after its first beat.

Each Cue row has a context menu attached to it, which can be accessed by right-clicking (or control-clicking) anywhere on the row’s background, but you can also open the context menu with a regular mouse click on the button with a gear icon in it. Most of the menu is devoted to editing various expressions to customize the Cue, as described in the Expressions section. The gear icon next to an expression will be filled in if that expression has a value, and the gear in the button will be filled in if any expression associated with the Cue has a value.

The menu starts with the expression-related options, allowing you to open editors to create or edit Clojure code that runs at well-defined moments to customize the behavior of the Cue. These are followed by the Simulate submenu, which allows you to test your MIDI mappings and custom expressions as described in the next section.

The Inspect Expression Locals option allows you to explore any values that have been set up by expressions in any Cue or the Track itself to re-use or share with each other. See Inspecting Locals and Globals for more details.

Choosing Scroll Waveform to This Cue does just what it sounds like, ensuring that the cue is visible in the waveform display at the top of the window. You can zoom the waveform out if you want to be able to see more cues and context, or in if you want to see more detail. See Navigating Cues below for more ways to find what you are looking for.

The Duplicate Cue option makes a copy of the chosen Cue, appending the word “Copy” (and possibly a number) to its name to keep it unique. You can use this if you need to create several cues that have common elements.

The Add Cue to Library option adds the cue contents to the show cue library, making it easy to create other cues in any track which send the same messages. See The Cue Library for more details.

Finally, the Delete Cue option does just what it sounds like, after confirming that you want to discard any expressions and settings you have configured for that Cue.

The Simulate submenu allows you to pretend that an Entered, Exited, Started, Ended, Beat or Tracked Update event has occurred, and send the corresponding MIDI messages and/or run the custom Expressions you have configured for those situations.

The corresponding option will be disabled if there is no MIDI message or Expression configured for that event.

If you already have a cue in the library, you can update its content by changing the cue that it was based on, and then using the cue context menu again. When there is already a cue with a particular name in the library, instead of seeing Add Cue to Library, the option will read Update Cue in Library. Choosing that will replace the cue template with the MIDI and Expression settings of the current cue. (This will not change any cues that you already created based on the template, but it will change any future cues you create from it.)

If the current cue has exactly the same content as the cue of the same name in the library (ignoring incidental details like its position in the track or displayed hue), the menu option will read Remove Cue from Library, and choosing it will do just that.

Remote Tea, used for communicating with the NFSv2 servers on players, is licensed under the GNU Library General Public License, version 2.

The Kaitai Struct Java runtime, used for parsing rekordbox exports and media analysis files, is licensed under the MIT License.