/ Panic
Panic
Panic is the emergency stop. One keystroke or one click stops LTCast and sends a set of "go quiet" messages to the equipment downstream, so you do not have to hunt through the interface when something goes wrong on stage.
How to trigger it
- Press
Ctrl+Shift+P(Cmd+Shift+Pon macOS). It works even while you are typing in a text box, or have an input method open. - Click the red !! button at the right end of the transport buttons, after "Go to end". Its tooltip lists what it does.
- If the NDI editor window is in front,
Ctrl+Shift+Pthere triggers Panic in the main window.
What it does
- Stops playback immediately. It is a hard stop — no fade, even if the Esc fade is switched on — and the playhead returns to the start of the song. Because LTC only plays while a song plays, the LTC output goes silent with it.
- Clears the preselected song, so a stale STANDBY cannot be started by a later
Enter. - MIDI: sends All Notes Off and All Sound Off on all 16 channels, to both the MTC port and the trigger MIDI port, whichever are connected; stops MIDI Clock if it was running; and sends a zero MTC position (a full-frame message of 00:00:00:00) so MTC receivers reset.
- OSC: sends
/transport/stopto the OSC targets (when OSC output is on). - Art-Net: nothing is sent. Art-Net has no stop message, and LTCast sends no Art-Net packets while stopped, so receivers simply stop getting frames and hold the last one.
- Writes a PANIC line to the Show Log.
What it does not do
- It does not tell the crew. For that, use HOLD or a push alert — a HOLD message never stops audio or timecode, and Panic never messages the crew.
- It does not send the zero MTC position, or any other timecode, when the session is not Pro (a licence or an active trial is needed to send MTC, Art-Net and OSC), when LTCast is in viewer mode, or while the active song is an Empty Song. The MIDI All Notes Off / All Sound Off messages are not timecode and are still sent for an Empty Song.
- It does not close the show or unload the song. Press Play again to carry on.
Panic is faster than Esc because it needs no focus and has no fade, but it is a heavier hammer: it also resets MTC and silences every MIDI channel. For an ordinary stop use Esc or the Stop button.