Transport controls

The transport controls manage playback position and state. All protocol outputs — LTC, MTC, MIDI Clock, Art-Net, and OSC — respond to transport changes simultaneously. There is no secondary sync configuration; everything follows the same internal clock.

Play and pause

• Play — press Space or click the Play button; playback begins from the current position; all outputs start streaming immediately
• Pause — press Space again or click Pause; playback halts at the current position and every timecode output stops: LTC goes silent, and MTC, Art-Net and OSC send no new frames
• Pressing Play again after Pause resumes from the same position

Stop

• The Stop button is an immediate hard stop: playback stops at once and returns to the start of the current song, and the big timecode display clears to dashes
• Esc is the fade-out stop. If Esc fade-out is on in Settings → Outputs (or the song has its own fade-out time), Esc fades the music before stopping; pressing Esc a second time cuts immediately. With no fade set, Esc stops at once, like the Stop button. See ESC fade-out
• Esc always stops, even when a setlist row, a marker or a cue is selected, and it also clears that selection. (In the fullscreen view or the lyric Timeline mode, the first Esc leaves that view instead.)
• While stopped, LTC is silent and MTC, Art-Net and OSC send no timecode

Loop

• Set Loop A — press [ or click the A button at the desired loop start point
• Set Loop B — press ] or click the B button at the desired loop end point
• When both A and B are set, playback loops continuously between them; all protocol outputs loop in sync
• The loop region appears as a highlighted band on the waveform
• Clear loop — click the ✕ (Clear Loop) button that appears beside A and B once both are set; it removes both points. Clicking the A or B button again removes just that point
• The loop button next to A and B repeats the whole song instead

Loop points are cleared when the song changes. See A/B Loop for the details.

Protocol behavior during transport

• LTC — plays while the song plays; silent when paused or stopped, and also during the gap between songs when auto-advance is on
• MTC — sends quarter-frame messages while playing; a Full Frame message when playback starts and after a seek; nothing while paused or stopped
• MIDI Clock — when switched on, sends Start when playback starts or resumes (there is no Continue message), 24 PPQ clock pulses during playback, and Stop when it pauses or stops
• Art-Net — sends one OpTimeCode packet per timecode frame during playback to each enabled target; nothing while paused or stopped
• OSC — sends one timecode message per frame during playback (the rate follows the frame rate and is not configurable). The Play, Pause and Stop buttons also send /transport/play, /transport/pause and /transport/stop, and a /song message goes out when a song is loaded

Chase mode

While Chase is on and receiving an external signal, LTCast follows that clock instead of its own transport. The setlist is locked and shows Chase locked, and Enter, ↑/↓ and the arrow-key scrub are disabled. Turn Chase off by clicking the CHASE pill in the status bar, with Ctrl+Shift+C, or in Settings → Timecode In → Chase. See Chasing external LTC.