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Welcome to Canvas!! Canvas is a new node-centric audio and control playback system for live performance.
We are currently in the Beta stage of development. During this stage the software is free; however, we do ask you join our discord community while you use Canvas. Once you join you will be DM’d the download links and they will also be available on the 📣 Welcome channel. Join at: https://avae.io/discord
Canvas is a robust and flexible software that can create complicated and powerful designs, but also excels at helping you get up and running quickly for several common tasks typically found in live playback situations. What follows is a walkthrough of three examples of common use cases to get you ready for your next show. Because this is designed simply to help you start a show file, explanations of concepts will be brief, so we encourage you to check out the rest of the documentation!
Quick Start #1: Playback from a Cue List
Quick Start #2: Panning Between Several Speakers
Quick Start #3: External Control Through MIDI & OSC
Canvas’ interface is built around windows that each provide specific functionality. Each window can be resized, adjusted, and manipulated in a variety of ways. For many, this provides the flexibility needed to craft their interface to the specific needs of their particular production. For others, getting up and running quickly is of more importance. To this end, Canvas includes two ‘primary’ views, Basic and Advanced. A brief overview of those follows before a more in-depth discussion of the possibilities that Canvas’ view system provides.
Tabs
Docking
A Word on view-dependent shortcuts (need to mention somewhere that keyboard shortcuts will only work on the actively selected view)
Elements are the core of what Canvas can do. Elements are what play back audio, manipulate control parameters or playback, and allow Canvas to communicate with machines. Elements can be added to a workspace in a variety of ways. Right clicking on the workspace will reveal a menu with an Add Element option at the top, or the same menu can be found in the menu bar under Elements. Shortcuts can also be modified to create hotkeys for adding elements, which can be found and changed in the Keyboard section of the preferences page.
Elements fall under 1 of 3 categories, Control, Audio, and External. Control elements are used to control various aspects of the workspace; things like creating triggers, generating XY values, or time-of-day triggers. Audio elements all manipulate audio in some way, such as playing back tracks or routing audio through a panner. External elements allow Canvas to interact with hardware and software outside of the Canvas workspace. This could be things like receiving MIDI control information from a keyboard controller, or sending timecode to a video playback device. When adding elements, you are presented with the 3 different categories first to help you navigate to your desired element quickly (rather than having to sift through all of them alphabetically.
Selecting an element will populate the Details view with information about that element. All elements share three common tabs in the details view, Basic, Actions, and Connections. While some specifics might change between elements (like default actions that are automatically populated), the tabs and general behavior are all the same, and are described here.
One of the powerful features of Canvas is its ability to run a distributed audio system across several computers, while all being able to be controlled and edited from one central place. It does this by abstracting out the Audio System from the User System. Think of the Audio Systems as virtual systems that reside within Canvas to create logical systems (side rooms, front fills, etc.) where User Systems are linked with physical computers (users) connected to an audio interface.
In summary, there are several steps that audio will take after leaving the final element in a workspace. It can be helpful to think of the signal flow in this order: The element connects to an Audio System (or its subsystem) which is patched to a User System, which interfaces with the physical output on the computer running Canvas.
The Keyboard section allows you to adjust any of the hotkeys that are built into Canvas. By pressing the x at the far right of the row, you can remove a hotkey to disable it. Double clicking the keystroke it has listed (or a blank space if you’ve removed the option) will allow you to type in whatever combination you’d like to use for that particular action.
The Plugins section simply provides a list of all the plugins that Canvas found on your computer. You have the option to re-scan or clear the list to help with troubleshooting.
##Should include something about these in the ‘Actions’ page
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Previous things