Using Google Sheets with VMIX - Part 2

On last week’s show we went over the process of connecting Google Sheets with vMix and using this data in titles with Data Sources Manager and vMix shortcuts. This provided a basic mechanism for leveraging data sets stored and managed on Sheets. On today’s show, we’ll be supercharging this capability by developing several Google Apps Scripts that will let you dynamically select lower thirds for different panels of participants.
We will also be staying Live after the show to answer any questions and talk with any callers.
Thanks for joining us for the show!

[@chriseschweiler9096]

Once again, thank you, John! This was a great scripting demo. I love parsing how you parse all this into mere-mortal-sized chunks.

[@StreamingAlchemy]

Thanks Chris - It's always fun trying to find the best way to deconstruct more complex topics. I know some show do better with that than others, so we appreciate that you take the time to join us!

[@benjones8046]

Hi John,
Is it possible to use a data source such as google sheets to reference a hex code to use the settextcolour function? unfortunately, vmix only allows to change an object's colour via the data management

[@StreamingAlchemy]

Hi @benjones8046 - You can do this with scripting in a bit of an indirect way. Using the standard vMix data mapping with Data Source Manager, you can map the data in your Google sheet into a GTTITLE. You can also map the text color VALUE into a filed in the TITLE and just keep it hidden. You can then use scripting to read the values inside that title (They are part of the vMix XML), pull out the color value, and call shortcuts to change text color attributes in the TITLE using that value. We did a series of shows building out a Quiz Show framework that leveraged this concept to pull data from viewer comments: ruclips.net/user/liveFlmJyuE9mes
Hope this helps.
Thanks for watching!
-j

[@benmark4191]

Thanks John. appreciate your reply. when you say "You can also map the text color VALUE into a in the TITLE and just keep it hidden" I'm not sure what you mean. Not sure if you can give any more context?

[@StreamingAlchemy]

Hi @benjones8046 ,
When vMix is running, it updates XML that contains the state of all of the inputs and other data associated with the active vMix Preset. You can access it here:
localhost:8088/api
This is what we read and parse from our standard scripts to get any state related to vMix. Here is a snippet of XML from a GT-TITLE input:
GBTitle-Guests
Frank Hawkins
Open Seat
521c5919-cc8b-4807-9c6c-4769ee889bf4\vMix Capture 29 September 2023 17-26-57.png
You can see from this that I can see the value of all of the named items in the template - In this title you can see two guest names and the values assigned to them. You can simply turn visibility off for any item inside of the GT-TITLE but still have access to the item. The image in the above XML is actually hidden - it's a background image we used to layout the text elements. This is how you would assign the color value - create a not visible item and map the color value to it in Data Source Manager, then use a script to read it and change the color of any other item in any title using that value.
I know there are a fair number of steps to execute this, but hopefully this clarifies a bit about what I was saying.
Best,
-j

[@aldoyh]

Thank you for the amazing show, where can we get a copy of those scripts?

[@StreamingAlchemy]

Hi Aldoyh - The scripts for all of the shows are in the GitHub repository here:
github.com/StreamingAlchemy/StreamingAlchemy
Hope you find this useful. Feel free to improve and share anything you do.
Thanks for watching!