I am looking for a way to control the start and stop buttons on the touch designer bar with Midi. It would be best if I could map them directly, but if not, I think I can manage to find an operator or something that can control the start and stop. Does anyone know how to do this?
If you already have your midi as CHOP channels, you can filter out your desired channel with a Select CHOP, then use a CHOP Execute DAT to run the commands in the link below to control the timeline.
Another approach is to use a Midi Event DAT or Midi In DAT and use the callbacks in there to run the appropriate line of Python code. See examples in Help->Operator Snippets.
having said that, be aware that pausing the TD timeline pauses all operators (!), which is often not desired. Depending on your needs it could be more useful to only pause/rewind/start your content playback, independent of the TD timeline.
Thank you very much! I will try!
Hello nettoyeur.
I am new to TD and the forum … i want to do exactly what this post is about. I followed every step you wrote here and in that linked other post, but i don´t get it work. The CHOP Exec is receveiving the MIDI Signal and changes the value from 0 to 1. But the TD timeline doesn´t react. What am i missing? Thanks in advance.
Just worked it out myself. To make Ableton start and stop the TouchDesigner timeline:
Dive into the TDAbleton network and use a Select CHOP to select just the MIDI transport channel called ‘song/info/play’ (this is the only channel that is 0/OFF or 1/ON when you press play/stop in Ableton or on your MIDI controller. Add the Chop Execute node, and add the python transport controls that nettoyeur posted underneath each function.
We want While On to switch TD to the Play state and While Off to switch TD to the Stop play state AND rewind to zero (maybe). So we edit the Chop Execute like so:
come out of text editing mode on the Chop Execute and look - there are editable channels for those playstates we just added Python to. If we just trigger them with our Select CHOP, then we can trigger TD to start playing. Click Edit (star) on the Select CHOP and drag that ‘song/info/play’ channel on to “Off to On” “While On” and “While Off” (CHOP reference obviously)
Hit Play in Ableton and TD will start playing, but it doesn’t stop. For this, you need the CHOP Reference on “While Off” to be negative (the opposite of Play):
Use 1- in front of the chop reference like so:
1-op(‘select1’)[‘song/info/play’].eval()
One last thing - if the “song/info/play” signal is dead when you reload the set and ableton project, I think giving the TD play/pause buttons a click while the song is playing somehow jumpstarts it and it picks up the play signal again