Appendices > Appendix A: External Control > External Control Commands

Notes on the External Controls help page

•Commands are not case sensitive, and individual commands are activated by Carriage Return (Hex 0D, decimal 13)

•If paths are used the character \ must be escaped with a second \, e.g.: path="Images\\foldername".

•To specify a timeline for a command, add TL=X in the command, X=Timeline number or R for Reserve timeline.

•If you have named the timelines, you can also use TL=myname (note that timeline naming enforces unique names)

•Some commands (marked !) : are non-realtime which could interrupt playback if playing, or will stop playback as part of the command.

•Non-realtime commands (marked with an additional *) : if Seamless Loop mode is enabled will not interrupt playback.

•Non Sequence commands (marked E) : Some commands are external control commands only, not sequence commands .

•Sequence Only commands (marked S) : Some commands are sequence commands only, not external control commands .

•Optional parameters or choices between parameters are enclosed in [ ].

For the complete list available to your version of Delta, go to DeltaGUI menu, Help > External Control.

➢To see the latest Help file online go here.

This is a set of built-in English-language commands, allowing an external serial or Telnet controller to control the timeline. You can also add custom events to the timeline which output strings on the external control COM port / Telnet port.

To specify a timeline for a command, add TL=X where X is the timeline in the range 1-32 or use R to specify the Reserve timeline. You can also use TL=ALL to specify all timelines.

In addition, by using View > Timeline Names, you can give a unique name to each timeline, this shows in DeltaGUI and you can also use TL=myname to address a specific timeline.

Note: File names or marker names must be enclosed in double quotes if there is a space in the name.

Some commands only work with a Master server, since Slave units receive these commands from the Master:

PLAY	Play the show (instant start if cue already done)
CUE	Cue the show and wait for the Play command
STOP	Stop the show
ADVANCE n	Step forward n frames
STEPBACK n	Step back n frames
REWIND	Rewind the show to frame zero
RATE n	Set the framerate to n frames per second
RATESCALE factor	Change the rate of the timeline by a multiple (1.3, 0.75 etc.)
LOADALL "file name"	Load the filename on all servers
MERGEALL "file name"	Merge the filename on all servers
SEQUENCEALL sequencename	Run the sequence on all servers
LAYERFADEALL [layer /name] opacity	Set the transparency of this layer/resource
DISPLAYALL [fullscreen/windowed/minimized]	Set all server’s playback windows
GOTOMARKER "marker name" [play]	Move to a named marker on timeline, and optionally start playing from there.
GOTOFRAME framenumber [play]	Move to the framenumber specified and optionally start playing from there
GOTOTIME timecode framerate [play]	Move to a timecode at a specific framerate, optionally play. So "Gototime 0:1:0:15 30.00" will move to 1hour and 15 frames for a framerate of 30 fps, if your timeline is set to 24 fps, the same command will move to 1 hour and 12 frames (12 frames is 50% of 24 fps).
MARKERSEARCH direction=[next / previous] play=[true / false]	Stop, search for the next or previous marker in the timeline, move to that marker and optionally play
CLIPSEARCH clip=[next / previous] [play=true/false] [currentstart=true/false]	Search for the start of the next or previous clip (any visual resource such as movies, images, videocapture), optionally play immediately if currentstart is true, it will find the start frame of the current visual resource. By default, currentstart is false, meaning it will find the start of the clip prior to the visual resource which is currently in scope and also loop round to the first or last resource.