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Actions and Pad Mode

A fusor automates a transition. An action is the other kind of automation: a short list of control changes that runs when you ask for it, not on a curve. Reset an EQ, engage crossfader pass-through, arm a set of FX — the things you'd otherwise do by hand and would rather do in one press.

Pad Mode turns the player into eight of those presses.

In this tutorial you'll write a two-line action, put it on a pad, and fire it. The next two tutorials go deeper — Author Your First Action builds a real one in the structured editor. Here the action is deliberately trivial, because the subject is the pad.

Fifteen minutes.

Before you start

  • Fusor Studio set up and talking to your DJ app (Setup).
  • Two tracks loaded, so you can hear the action do something.

You do not need a fusor loaded. Actions run on their own.

1. Create the action

  1. Click the Library menu in the player's menubar.
  2. In the Library window's header, click Actions. Two sub-tabs appear: Packs and Actions.
  3. Click the Actions sub-tab.
  4. Click the blue + in the list header (tooltip New Action).
  5. Type the name Reset EQ Lows and confirm.

The file is written straight into your library's actions/ folder and its detail view opens. There's no file dialog to fill in — you name the action, Fusor Studio names the file.

2. Describe it

The detail view has two tabs: Notes and Code.

On Notes, fill in Description: Returns both decks' EQ low bands to unity. Click outside the field to commit — this surface autosaves on blur, so there's no Save button to look for.

Leave Apps empty. App tags are informational; they filter the list and nothing else. EQ works everywhere, so there's nothing to declare.

3. Write the steps

Click the Code tab. It's a single text area, empty for a new action, and it holds the action's steps as one statement per line.

Type these two lines:

SET deck.a.eq.low UNITY
SET deck.b.eq.low UNITY

Click outside the text area. That's the save — the Code tab commits on blur, same as the fields on the Notes tab.

If you typo something, the border turns red and the errors appear underneath as Line N: <message>. Fix the line and click out again.

Two lines, two decisions in them:

  • UNITY rather than a number. UNITY is the EQ's centre position. Writing the name instead of the number says what you meant, and it survives changes to the mapping underneath. The full set for an EQ band is CUT, UNITY and BOOST_MAX.
  • deck.a and deck.b rather than outgoing and incoming. Fusor Studio has role addresses, and for anything inside a transition they're the right choice — they follow the role, so they keep working after decks swap. But a role only resolves while a transition is loaded, and a pad is something you might hit at any moment. So a pad-bound action names the physical deck. If your deck pair isn't A and B, use yours.

If you're not on the default deck pair, substitute your two decks in both lines. The address is literal: deck.c.eq.low drives Deck C's low band and nothing else.

4. Make a pack

Pads don't reference actions directly. An Action Pack does — a fixed set of eight slots that maps actions onto pads. Pad Mode renders whichever pack is active.

  1. In the Library window's header, still under Actions, click the Packs sub-tab.
  2. Click the blue + in the list header (tooltip New Pack).
  3. Name it Tutorial and confirm.

An empty pack file lands in your library's Packs/ folder.

5. Put the action on a pad

  1. Right-click the Tutorial row and choose Edit Pad Slots.
  2. The slot editor opens with two columns: eight numbered slots down the left, and a filterable list of unassigned actions down the right.
  3. Drag Reset EQ Lows from the right column onto slot 1. The drop target outlines in dashed blue as you hover it.
  4. The slot now shows the action's name, with an X to clear it. The counter at the top-right reads 1/8.

Slot edits write to disk as you make them — no Save.

  1. Click the back arrow at the top-left to return to the Packs list.

6. Make it the active pack

Right-click the Tutorial row again and choose Set Active. The row goes bold blue.

Only one pack is active at a time, and the choice survives a restart. This is how you switch pad layouts between a warm-up and a closing set: build several packs, and make the one you want active.

7. Turn on Pad Mode

In the menubar, right of the thin vertical divider, is a grid icon. Click it. It turns blue.

The picker row and the progress strip are replaced by eight pads, laid out as two 2×2 blocks with a gap between them:

[ 1 ] [ 2 ]     [ 5 ] [ 6 ]
[ 3 ] [ 4 ]     [ 7 ] [ 8 ]

The split matches the left-deck / right-deck layout of a hardware controller. Pad 1 carries your action's name. Pads 2 to 8 show their slot number in large grey type and do nothing.

The window doesn't change size. Pad Mode reshapes the contents instead of growing.

8. Fire it

  1. In your DJ app, twist both decks' EQ low knobs well away from centre. Leave them there.
  2. Click pad 1.

Both knobs snap back to centre. The pad's border flashes blue as it fires.

That's the whole loop. Everything else about actions is a longer list of steps inside the same mechanism.

9. Two behaviors to know

Only one action runs at a time. While one is running its pad shows a spinner and the other pads dim and refuse clicks.

Hold to abort. To stop a running action, press and hold its pad. A red fill sweeps across the pad from left to right; when it reaches the far edge, a bit under half a second later, the action is aborted. Release before then and nothing happens. Your two-line action finishes far too fast to catch this way; it matters for actions with waits in them, which is what the next tutorials build.

Empty pads are inert. Clicking one does nothing. Hovering it tells you why.

10. Get the transport back

Click the grid icon again. Pad Mode turns off and the picker row and progress strip come back.

Worth knowing before you use this live: turning Pad Mode on does not disturb a transition that's already running — but it hides the transport, so while you're in Pad Mode you can't abort, press End, or watch the progress meter. Toggle back to reach them.

Pad Mode's on/off state survives a restart, so if you quit with it on, that's how the app opens.

What you learned

  • That an action is a list of control changes, written one statement per line in the Code tab, and that the Code tab saves on blur.
  • That symbolic values like UNITY are the idiom, not raw numbers.
  • Why a pad-bound action names a physical deck instead of a role.
  • That packs hold pad assignments, one pack is active at a time, and Pad Mode renders it.
  • That one action runs at a time, and hold-to-abort is how you stop one.

Where to next

  • Author Your First Action — a real action in the structured Step Editor, with timing.
  • Pad Mode — the runtime reference for the grid.
  • Pack Authoring — packs in full: the metadata form, slot swapping, several packs at once.
  • Hardware Controller — bind pads 1 to 8 to real buttons so you're not clicking with a mouse mid-set.
  • Pre-run Actions — the other place actions run: automatically, before or after a transition.