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MIDI Outputs

The primary use-case for configuring MIDI Outputs in Arcane is to send Note or Control Change MIDI messages while operating the Spell Casting interface, taking into account what parts of a track you have linked to which Output Groups, the current Timecode Signals and timing information from Spell files.

This allows you to strike a balance between traditional busking workflows and full timecoding, controlling only the MIDI messages that require precise timing.

From the MIDI Settings page:

1. Go to Settings -> MIDI
2. Click Add MIDI Output
3. Configure the output as desired, specifying:
   • The device to send MIDI messages to.
   • Whether there should be any delay applied before sending the messages to this device.
   • And how many FPS messages should be sent at.
4. Configure the bindings (messages) you want to send to this device (see below).

MIDI Output Bindings

For each message you would like to send, click Add binding, which will add a row to the table allowing you to configure that specific message.

It's important to note the difference in how Notes & CC messages behave:

• Note messages act like on/off triggers, only sending messages when a layer has just encountered an event or CUE.

• Control Change messages are only sent for layer events with envelopes, and don't send messages for CUEs.

  They will continuously send new messages at the configured FPS while they are encountering envelopes whose values are changing, messages aren't sent for adjacent frames where the value remains the same.

While configuring your bindings, we recommend clicking Monitor Messages to watch which messages are being sent in real-time.

You will need to configure a specific Output Group for each message you configure, and can optionally also choose to configure a Segment. If no segment is configured, messages will be sent for every CUE / event encountered by the configured output group.

Screenshot of the MIDI output device configuration

Testing your binding

There are 2 ways you can test to ensure that a binding is configured properly:

• Toggling Lock to Max Value for the assigned Output Group from the Spell Casting interface.
• Clicking Test Binding build to open a dialog window to test sending specific values for this message.

Note, while Test Binding build is active, the connected Output Group is ignored.

Screenshot of the dialog for testing a MIDI CC message

Screenshot of the dialog for testing a MIDI Note message