Lesson Description
Part B: Zones, Commands, Priority
5m 58s
Learn to establish paging Zones and build custom Commands. Complete walk-through of Priority protocols.
Video Transcript
Part B: Zones, Commands, Priority
5m 58s
0:08
Your attention please – part two of the public address tutorial is starting now.
0:14
Welcome back. Once you have at least one Page Station, real or virtual, properly wired to your PA Router,
0:22
you can start to configure your PA settings.
0:24
Now most of this is going to take place in the Q-Sys Administrator, so if you haven’t done so already
0:29
you need to take the Administrator tutorial before you proceed with this.
0:32
You’re going to have to be familiar with creating Commands, Users, loading Audio Files to the Core,
0:38
those sorts of things. Now we’ve already loaded our design to the Core, so let’s launch the Administrator.
0:44
The top three tabs are all dedicated to your PA system – you have PA Global Settings, Page Stations,
0:50
and PA Zones. Let’s start on PA Zones.
0:53
A zone is simply the destination area where you want to send your page or message.
0:57
You’ll remember that we set up two Zones in our PA Router, and they’re listed right here.
1:01
You can rename them something more accurate than Zone 1 and Zone 2
1:04
maybe this will be Lobby, Dining Room, Gate 59 – for me I’m going to label them
1:09
Left Ear and Right Ear, and yes I’m talking about your ears.
1:16
Hopefully you’re listening to this with some stereo loudspeakers or headphones,
1:19
so that you’ll be able to tell the difference when I send a Page to Zone 1 or Zone 2.
1:25
Make sense? Alright, so like other areas of the Administrator,
1:29
you can create Tags that can be used to associate different Zones…
1:33
…together. That’ll come in useful when you create your Commands,
1:36
which we could do right now so we have something to work with.
1:40
Let’s go down to our Commands tab, and you’ll see that when you have a PA system set up,
1:44
you have two new options when creating Commands
1:47
Add PA Page Command and Add PA Play Message Command.
1:51
Let’s create a couple of Play Message commands – you can give it a name,
1:57
choose a numeric code that will launch it, and select which audio file it will play.
2:02
I loaded some messages to the Core earlier so I’m selecting one of those.
2:05
You can select its Priority, which we’ll discuss in just a minute,
2:08
and you can add or subtract Gain to the message, and then you select where it should be sent to
2:13
using the Zones you’ve created or one of the Tags to quickly select multiple Zones.
2:17
Once you’re done, hit OK. So I’ve got one message that will play to your Left Ear,
2:21
and I’m going to make another one that’s going to play to your Right Ear.
2:31
If I hit the update button in the Administrator these changes will go live,
2:34
and I can activate my Commands from a Page Station like this …
2:39
Left Ear. .. or like this. Right Ear.
2:45
Creating a Page Command is very similar, click Add PA Page Command,
2:50
most of the options are the same, except you can choose its Queuing Mode,
2:53
which we’ll talk about in the next section, and you can select a Preamble,
2:56
which is usually some sort of musical tone to announce the beginning of a page –
3:01
you know what I’m talking about - doo doo doo, attention please – that sort of thing.
3:05
You’ll remember that you can upload your Preambles to the Preambles folder
3:08
in the Core using the Audio Files tab, and here you can audition it to listen over your computer loudspeakers.
3:14
Doo doo doo, Attention Please.
3:17
Yup that one’s mine.
3:19
Alright, let’s hop up to the PA Global Settings tab and talk about Priority.
3:24
Now priority is a number that determines which page or message is most important if
3:29
multiple are being played simultaneously. Now by default there are five Priority levels
3:34
with some pretty generic titles, with 1 being the most important.
3:37
You can rename them to suit your purposes, you can create as many levels
3:41
of Priority as you like by hitting the plus button, you can re-order them by dragging them around
3:46
or by nudging them up and down with these arrows,
3:49
and you can delete them by selecting one and pressing the delete key.
3:53
You can then assign a Priority level to…
3:55
…every Page Station, every User, as well as every Command in your design.
4:00
But what if you have a Priority 1 User that issues a Priority 3 Command from a Priority 5 Station?
4:08
Which priority is going to be used?
4:10
Well the priority that is recognized in any given situation is determined…
4:13
…by the global Priority Mode. There are two options – Station/User Priority, or Command Priority.
4:21
If you use Station/User Priority, then a Command receives the same priority as the Page Station it is sent from,
4:26
so if you send a Low Priority 5 Command from a High Priority 1 Station, it will be treated as Priority 1.
4:34
Now in Command Mode, it is the Command’s priority that is recognized, so it would be treated as Priority 5.
4:39
However, in either Mode, you can set up a Station, User, or Command to have Override authority.
4:46
So, we’re in Command Mode,
4:47
you could have any Page Station set to Override Command Priority Level – we’ll change that to yes
4:54
and then you determine what its Priority Level will be.
4:57
So now even though the system is on Command Mode, any Command sent from this Page Station
5:02
will take on the Priority of the Page Station.
5:05
You could also set up a User to have Override Page Station settings turned to Yes,
5:11
and then you could override the command priority level aswell, and choose this user’s priority level.
5:17
That way a particular User could always have a high Priority regardless of what Station or Command he’s using.
5:23
You’ll notice that you can also limit which Commands a User has access to
5:27
if you select Yes you can select which of these messages they’re available to announce.
5:31
Finally, if the system is in Station/User Priority Mode,
5:36
then you can configure a Command to have Override Source Priority set to Yes
5:41
…letting that Command always keep its own Priority.
5:44
Let’s take a short break here, and when we come back we’ll talk about Queuing,
5:48
which is what happens to all those lower priority messages that have to wait to be played.
5:52
Feel free to move on to the next section whenever you’re ready.
Tips and Definitions
Part B: Zones, Commands, Priority
5m 58s
Priority: Level of importance of a Page, User, or Station
Downloads and Links
Part B: Zones, Commands, Priority
5m 58s