Autopilot
The Autopilot allows us to create automated sequences of clips.
You define the behaviour of the auto-pilot and from there on it's… well.. Automatic!
Autopilot is useful in many different applications.
Maybe you are a lighting technician who needs to run some visuals on the side.
Or you need to cue up a series of ads in-between shows.
Or you just need to take a break during a night of club visuals.
In all these scenarios the autopilot will have you covered!
Getting Started
Before we can enable our magic Autopilot friend, we need to make sure we can find them.
Under the View tab, make sure that "Show Autopilot" is enabled.
This will make sure the Autopilot tab appears in the Composition, Group, Layer and Clip panels.
To enable the Autopilot we navigate to the Composition Panel.
Here we find the Autopilot tab with all its majestic settings.
For now we hit the play forward button to enable the Autopilot.
In order to get it playing, we trigger a column.
From here the Autopilot will take the wheel for you, playing back all columns one by one.
Autopilot
Autopilot Settings
After getting fired from that previous gig for "doing nothing all night", you might want to upgrade your autopilot game. Time to dive into the Autopilot settings kids!
Direction
The direction setting allows you to set the direction of the Autopilot for each given group and layer, as well as for the entire composition. This is also where we disable the Autopilot to take back the power from the machines.
The Autopilot can play forward and backwards using the two arrow buttons.
Additionally we can set the Autopilot to fly into random directions.
This would be horrifying in aviation, but pretty amazing when VJ'ing.
Random
Random direction has three options: Any, Other and Bag.
Other is the default setting and will jump to another clip or column, but won't retrigger the current one.
Any is similar, but it is possible to retrigger the current clip or column.
Bag is a unique setting that will try to play every available clip or column once before reshuffling the "bag" of clips/columns and repeating.
Duration
The duration setting sets when the next clip will be triggered.
Seconds
This duration setting allows you to set a custom time in seconds.
Once the time is up the Autopilot will move to the next clip.
The timer starts counting upon the column being triggered.
This setting is available in the Composition, Groups, Layers and Clips panels.
Beats
With the beats duration setting you can move to the next clip after a given number of beats.
The Autopilot will listen to the global BPM for this.
This allows you to create BPM-synced Autopilot programming which is a super easy way to create some club shows without paying too much attention.
This setting is available in the Composition, Groups, Layers and Clips panels.
All layers running Autopilots at different beat settings
Clip Transport
This setting will simply trigger the next clip once the current clip has ended.
Clip transport is the default setting for the Layer panel.
This setting is also available to the Clip panel.
The Group and Composition panels only have this setting when using a Master Layer.
Longest & Shortest Clip
The Autopilot will look at either the longest or shortest clip in the current column for its duration.
When in longest mode, the shorter clips will loop until the longest clip is finished. This can be circumvented by setting the playback mode of those clips to "play once and clear".
To determine which clip is the longest, the Autopilot will look at the duration of each clip.
This setting is available in the Composition and Groups panels.
"Layer 1" is used for the Shortest Clip Duration in the active column
Top & Bottom Clip
With this duration setting, the Autopilot will look at either the top or bottom clip in the current column, ignoring empty clips.
This setting is available in the Composition and Groups panels.
Using "Layer 2" for the Top Clip Duration since "Layer 3" has no clips in the active column.
Looping
By default Group and Composition Autopilots will loop once it finishes the final column that has clips loaded.
Looping can be disabled in the Autopilot tab.
When disabled, the last column will simply be repeated indefinitely.
If you require a more timeline-style autopilot you can set the clips in the last column to the "play once and clear" playback mode. Alternatively, you could use the Blank source for the final column.
Layers
Looping works a bit differently for the layer Autopilot.
Enabling looping here will loop the entire layer just like with the Group and Composition Autopilot settings. But we can set the amount of loops when using the Layer Autopilot. The "loops" setting sets how many times clips should repeat before moving to the next clip.
Clip Actions
Clips are obedient in nature and by default they will listen to the layer settings.
However, clips can have a custom autopilot duration as well as an action assigned to them.
An autopilot action is performed when the layer Autopilot wants to move to the next clip.
By default a clip will perform the "Layer Determined" action.
This action simply looks at what the layer wants (forward, backward, random) and does just that.
But, once we dig into this we can see a whole plethora of custom actions.
We can trigger the previous, next, random, first, last or specific clip.
Alternatively we can wholeheartedly ignore Autopilot by using the "Do Nothing" action.
Using Clip Actions we can do some crazy sequencing like jumping ahead, looping shorter sections of a bigger deck or having an oddball randomiser clip.
Clip Actions
Column Actions
Just like clips, actions can be assigned to columns too.
To edit column actions, make sure that the column panel is visible.
The column panel can be found under View > Column Panel.
Note that column actions only affect the Composition and Group Autopilots
Column actions can be used to decided what needs to be done when the Autopilot advances.
Just like with clips, you can tell the autopilot to jump to a selected, next, previous, first, last or random column. Additionally you can tell the column to do nothing, which is nice action for when you want to stop the autopilot after a given column.
The column duration can be used to create an alternate duration to the Composition or Group Autopilot duration.
Column actions are ignored when using a Master Layer.
Column Actions
Master Layer
The Group and Composition Autopilots have the ability to follow a master layer.
You choose which layer to use as a Master Layer and the autopilot will follow that layer.
All changes made on the Master Layer will affect all Autopilots following that layer.
By using Clip Actions with a Master Layer you can create advanced sequences which are great for controlling pre-programmed shows and presentations. Essentially you are creating a single layer to drive your entire show!
Using the top "Master"-layer as a Master Layer for the Composition Autopilot
Priority
Having multiple Autopilot settings at the same time can get quite confusing quite fast.
If the Layer Autopilot plays forward, but the Group Autopilot plays backwards, to whom do we listen? Which pilot has the biggest aviators and wins the dogfight?
You are going to like the answer, it's you!
You are the boss, if you trigger a column or clip, then that's what happens.
After that we move the priority from "small to big".
The clip overrules the layer, the layer overrules the group and the group overrules the composition.
Keep in mind that this is only true if all of this stuff happens on the same frame.
If you make some kind of Autopilot freak where the Composition moves at 1.3 second intervals, A group moves at 2 beats and the layer within that group moves at 0.5 seconds, you're bound to have some twitchy movement going on.