Working with Actions (Secondary Events) in OnTheAir Video 4.1 or earlier

!! IMPORTANT NOTES - read me

• This feature requires "Actions", which are only available in OnTheAir Video, not in OnTheAir Video Express.
• This article pertains to OnTheAir Video 4.1 or earlier, if you are using version 4.2 or later, check this article.

What are actions?

An Action in OnTheAir Video is a what is sometimes called "Secondary Event". The secondary event can be happening in OnTheAir Video itself, or outside of OnTheAir Video This is what allows you to, for example:

• in OnTheAir Video:
  • Control a project of the Dynamic Graphics Overlay (Requires the DGO option): start/stop a ticker, lower third, clock. Or modify a text item, image or video link... etc... Read more...
  • Control a video router: change crosspoints on a Blackmagic-Design VideoHub or Ross router. Read more...
  • Output a SCTE trigger (Requires the CC option): send a SCTE35 trigger an the SDI output. Read more...
• Outside of OnTheAir Video:
  • Control a project in OnTheAir CG Server: start/stop a ticker, lower third, clock. Or modify a text item, image or video link... etc... Read more...
  • Change the status of the outputs of GPICommander
  • Start/stop recording in MovieRecorder
  • And many more things. As an action is an AppleScript, you can basically control any application that is AppleScriptable... even send an email for example.

An Action can be triggered at any moment of a video file using the inspector of OnTheAir Video.

How to create the AppleScripts?

Actions are in fact AppleScripts. You'll first have to create the AppleScripts. They must be formatted in a certain way. Basically all you have to do, is to add an "On Action" at the beginning, and "End Action" at the end of the script, so it would look like this (to play a DGO project in OnTheAir Video):

on action(parameter)
    tell application "OnTheAir Video"
        tell project "LowerThird"
            play
        end tell
    end tell
end action

Using Parameters

Note that the "Parameter" variable is what can be sent from OnTheAir Video. So you can write one AppleScript, and include in a portion of the script the "Parameter" variable:

on action(Parameter)
    tell application "OnTheAir Video"
        tell project "LowerThird"
            tell graphic "Title" to set textString to Parameter 
            play 
        end tell
    end tell
end action

You can then define that "Parameter" variable in the "Parameter" field in the OnTheAir Video inspector. For example, in the AppleScript above, the "parameter" variable is placed in the script where we should normally indicate the value of the text field "Title". Now that we have used the "parameter" variable, we will select a clip in OnTheAir Video, go in the "Timeline section", and in the Parameter column:

Now the CG project will start playing and display "This is my Title".

Where should I save these AppleScripts?

Actions should be placed in the following folder (if using OnTheAir Video): 

/Library/Application Support/Softron/OnTheAir Video/OnTheAir Video/Actions

If you are using the "multi" version of OnTheAir Video, there will be one folder per "channel":

/Library/Application Support/Softron/OnTheAir Video/OnTheAir Video 1/Actions
/Library/Application Support/Softron/OnTheAir Video/OnTheAir Video 2/Actions
....

 

Sample AppleScripts

We have sample AppleScripts that you can download, and you should start from there. Check the articles above which provide you some sample AppleScripts. Don't hesitate to contact us if you have questions. While we won't be able to write all the AppleScripts for you, we can give you some recommendations.

About the AppleScript authorisation

When working with AppleScripts, and controlling other software, macOS sometimes requires you to authorise the script to control the software, for obvious security reasons. If you don't authorise it beforehand, macOS will show a warning the first time the script is executed. As this can cause issues during production, we have added a way to force the authorisation. 

For this, go in "OnTheAir Video > Settings > Actions", you will see the list of Actions that you have saved in the Actions folder explained above. And a "Authorise" button next to it. What this will do is that it will execute the script, so you may want to be careful with this, and maybe have one "authorisation" script that will not actually do anything...

Using the Action in OnTheAir Video

When the action is imported in the correct folder, go in the clip inspector > Timeline and scrub in the timeline to select when you want to CG project to start playing and click on the + icon to add a new action at that position. 

You can then select wether you want that action to be relative to:

• Before Start: this action happens when clips are chained and we prepare the next one. This allows to control video routers in a clean way. It usually happens 8 seconds before the next clip.
• Start: is the beginning of the clip, whatever in/out points are set. This is the kind of action that will never move. So it means that if your in point is after the action, it won't be triggered. A Red Cross will show up in such cases.
• In Point: this action will move depending on the in point that you set. If no in point is set, it will be the start of the clip.
• Out Point: this action will move depending on the in point that you set. If no out point is set, it will be the end of the file.
• End: this action will not move either, except if the clip is replaced with a new one with a different duration. 

You can also of course select the action that you want to use, and add the parameters to change the attributes that can be modified.