I have two mics at 90 degrees and I’ve about decided I want a 2nd monitor so I can run the laptop by one mic and the other monitor by the other for, basically, a teleprompter. But, I also plan to have a backup machine on stage live and ready to swap, so it seems I could just use that. Now, I know there is software that can use a 2nd laptop as a remote screen if they are networked. But what I’m wondering is, if I have two machines going, and they are networked anyway, is there conceivably a way maybe to get Cantabile running on each but synced so that if a machine goes down the other is ready to hotswap right then- it’s already got the set loaded, it’s in the same place, you just have to swap the audio interface from one to the other. And they’d both be displaying the right song lyrics at the same time.
What do you think Brad- is it remotely possible to create a master/slave implementation via networking? Would I really be better off just getting a little 7" monitor or something…
I had some success with getting Cantabile to trigger Show Cue Systems 11 (Video software) on another laptop using rtpMIDI to send MIDI data over a simple network connection to do the triggering, when the Cantabile transport started and stopped. So I guess the same could be done to get Cantabile triggering Cantabile, or some other teleprompting software on another computer
Wow, I should have thought of that… yeah, a virtual MIDI port would do the trick! I don’t even need real sync; just for them to stay in the same general place. I’d just need changes in states/songs on the master to advance the same one on the slave. Surely that’s easy.
I don’t know your specific software, but if it can respond to MIDI - even something like note or CC data, then you can program a MIDI sequence to play back in Cantabile with the audio, and it will send cues to your software at the right time.
As I said, I set the video triggers to work off Cantabile Transport start and stop, but I was also using a MIDI track in Cantabile to trigger cue changes in DMXIS, which was a VST that talked to DMX hardware and responded to MIDI notes to change the lighting cues. So that was done as a programmed sequence in Cantabile and it works perfectly. That could have been extended to triggering programs on another PC using a virtual MIDI port.
It’s well worth checking out rtpMIDI for things like this, and best of all it is free!
One thing to note though is that when I had laptops connected direct using a single network lead, the connect was 98% reliable, but occasionally the link would not be made (I thin kit was when I started the laptops without the connection in place). In the last month, I gave in and got a £20 NetGear 5 port hub, and that made the connection rock solid.
