What are Safeties and Countdown Bars?

What are Safeties and Countdown Bars?

If you are creating your own content and want to drive it with our Muséik software then you will need to understand about Safeties and Countdown Bars.

The basic idea behind these tools is that Muséik follows the tempo of the live event, no matter what the performers decide to do in real time. There are some spots where anticipating what the live performers will do is very difficult. A musical fermata (hold) is a good example. Some performances may take a long hold, others may skip it entirely. The files we build need to be able to accommodate either artistic decision - and everything in between.

To do this we use Safeties and Count Down Bars. Each serves a different purpose.

SAFTIES

A Safety is an area in Stage Sync™ file where the scrolling score has a shaded grey box overlaid on it. They commonly occur at a fermata, a grand pause, or between sections of music. In the image below there is a fermata in bar 119. A Safety has been inserted during beat two and three in that measure. The Safety ends just before beat one in measure 120. In the live performance the software operator cannot know how long the fermata will last, but needs to be ready to deliver the critical sync point on the downbeat in bar 120 no matter what.

To accomplish this we will remove a bit of material from the source audio file between beat two and three, shortening the sync audio heard in the Stage Sync™ file. By cutting that material the Muséik file will likely arrive at the downbeat in bar 120 before the live performers do.  The operator will pause the Show File just before the downbeat in bar 120 and wait for the live performance to catch up. When the next downbeat arrives the operator simply hits play and the critical sync point on the downbeat is perfectly synchronized.



Here's what that means to you as the film maker: 

Any time a grey Safety appears in the stage Sync™ file you know that the software operator will likely hit pause on the Show File. That means that your audio and video materials must be static during that time. Video should fade to black, white or some other color, or be a still image. Audio should be silent during a Safety. That way when the file is paused the audience's attention will not be draw to an awkward pause in the digital media.

You do not NEED to follow this rule. With practice the operator will discover that the film or audio play through the Safety which means they cannot pause the file at that spot. But we encourage you to be nice to the operator if at all possible. It is very difficult to sync a fermata or grand pause without hitting pause and we think a Safety is a pretty easy compromise between your needs as the film maker and the operator's needs in live performance.

COUNTDOWN BARS

Countdown Bars fill a different purpose in Muséik.  They are green bars that appear in the stage Sync™ file outside of the scrolling score. As the file plays the green bar shrinks until it disappears. It appears at places where there is time-based action on stage that is not related to the music. Examples might be the time between musical movements, spoken dialog, or other stage actions. While a Safety tells an operator to pause the file, a green Countdown Bar tells them to let the file play. You are welcome to add motion or audio to your digital media files during a Countdown Bar.

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