This page covers tracks: the six channels sound is mixed into, and which one your output takes. On a machine that only runs playouts you set this once and forget it. On a machine that does more, this page is the one that prevents an unpleasant surprise.
What a track is
There are six audio tracks. Every source is on all six by default, and an output picks one.
A playout is put on the track you choose, automatically. So the setting is not “which sound goes in” but “which track the output listens to”.
The setting
Settings → Outputs → Audio track, per playout.
A DeckLink output carries exactly one track. So does a stream. Two playouts on one machine normally use two different tracks, so that each output carries its own line.
Reserving a track
Reserve this track for the playout takes every other source off that track.
Without it, a source that somebody added outside the playout — a microphone, a capture card, a media file — is on all six tracks, and therefore also on the one your SDI feed is carrying. It arrives on air underneath your playout and nobody in the control room hears it, because the desk is monitoring the same output.
With it on, the card carries the playout and nothing else.
On a machine that does nothing but playout, leave it on. It costs nothing and removes a category of surprise.
Leave it off only when something outside the playout genuinely has to reach that output as well — and then know exactly what that something is.
A worked example
Two playouts, two DeckLink ports:
| Playout 1 | Playout 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Track | 6 | 5 |
| Reserved | yes | yes |
| Result | Port 1 carries line 1 only | Port 2 carries line 2 only |
Those two tracks are also the defaults. Anything else on the machine sits on tracks 1–4 and reaches neither port.
Where else the track shows up
Recording and streaming take the same track as that playout’s output, so what you record is what you sent.
A playout used as a source in another scene is heard on the watching playout for as long as that scene is on air. So a video on playout 1, shown in a corner of playout 2, is heard on playout 2 as well — and stops being heard there the moment that scene comes off.
A scene cue works the same way: a camera in a scene cue is heard when the scene is on air and not at any other time.
Reserving and your own scenes
Reserving does not take the sources inside your own scene cues off the track. Everything else on the machine is still taken off.
Loudness and dynamics on the output
Settings → Outputs, in the playout’s tab under Audio: Loudness and dynamics on the output. Per playout, and off by default.
It levels that playout’s mix to a target loudness in LUFS, with a gate, a compressor and a limiter around it.
Set up… beside it opens the Dynamics window, but only while the processing is running: tick the box, click OK, and open the settings again. The window has the stages Expander / Gate, Leveller, Compressor and Limiter, each with its own switch and all of them off at first, plus Make-up gain. Every knob works while you listen; OK keeps the settings, Cancel puts back what was there.
It has two costs:
- A second audio track. The processed sound is put on a track of its own: the first track no playout is using, and every other source is taken off it. With no track free, the processing stays off.
- One block of delay, 21 ms.