The following is a set of articles explaining how to set up and use the MIDI communication protocol to send or receive commands with ProPresenter. They cover two portions of this setup: the system level setup, and the ProPresenter level setup.
This article is going to cover the System Level Setup for both Mac and Windows Users. To jump to the ProPresenter level setup, click below:
Devices:MIDI: ProPresenter Setup
If you are on a Mac, you will use the Audio MIDI Setup. If you are on Windows, you will need to install additional software to be able to use MIDI. rtpMIDI by Tobias Erichson (Free) is nearly identical to the MIDI controls of Audio MIDI Setup on Mac. If you are needing to control another program on the same Windows computer, Tobias Erichson has another program called loopMIDI that you can install.
We will look at the Mac setup first.
Launch Audio MIDI Setup using Spotlight (cmd+space bar and type in Audio MIDI). You will need to use MIDI Studio, shown below. Depending on whether you have ever opened Audio MIDI Setup before or not, you may see the Audio Devices window initially. Click on the Window menu and select Show MIDI Studio. You can close the Audio Devices window.
When you see this window, click on the globe icon in the toolbar. This will open the MIDI Network Setup window.
After you have MIDI Network Setup open, you will need to add a new session under My Sessions. Click the + button. The default session will be called Session 1. If you are running a MIDI session from another computer, it will show up under Directory. You will need to create a session and enable it first and then you can connect to the computer listed under Directory. Once connected, the session details on the right will be filled in. There is nothing else you need to configure. You can close Audio MIDI Setup now and finish configuring your other MIDI-enabled software or hardware.
You can also use MIDI to control another program on the same Mac. You would do this if you were wanting to trigger slides in ProPresenter from another program on the same Mac. You will not be creating a MIDI session for this. Instead, you will use the IAC Driver option that you saw on the first screenshot above.
Double-click on the IAC Driver icon. After the IAC Driver Properties window opens, click on Ports. Verify that you have Bus 1 or click the + to add a port. You can change the port name if you want it to be more recognizable. Check the Device is online box. Click Apply if the option is available. You can close Audio MIDI Setup.
After you have configured the session or IAC Driver, you will see it appear in ProPresenter under Sources and Destinations. If you don't see the settings right away in the MIDI Device settings, restart ProPresenter.
If you are using Windows, you will need to open rtpMIDI to setup your session before you can using MIDI in ProPresenter. As you can see, this program is nearly identical to MIDI Network Setup on Mac. You will need to create and enable a session first and then you can connect to another computer in the directory. There are no other settings that you will need to configure
You will need to install loopMIDI on Windows to control another program on the same computer. Open loopMIDI and click the + in the lower left corner. That's it! This program will continue to run in the background and launch at startup. You can right-click on the loopMIDI icon in the system track and uncheck the Autostart loopMIDI option to disable this.
After you enable rtpMIDI or loopMIDI, you can select the correct session information in ProPresenter. This interface is slightly different on Windows, but it works the same way as the Mac version.