Capture a desk you didn't build

Some desks are already set up, and nobody is going to rebuild them from an input list: a church’s weekly patch, a venue’s house desk, a show somebody else built. Capturing reads the desk as it is and turns it into a show you can watch and edit. It needs no AI model and writes nothing to the desk.

You need: the desk’s address saved, or typed in the bar (Set up Atoo).

1. Capture the desk

1. Run atoo ui.
2. In the bar at the top, press New show… and choose From a desk.
3. Choose The console to read the desk in the bar, or A .snap file to read a show file saved on the desk. A .snap doesn’t say which WING saved it, so you choose the model too.
4. Check Folder: it is where the new show goes, in your Atoo folder.
5. Press Capture this desk.

The new show opens on Build’s step 04, with its two sheets:

• Channels is the show’s input.csv: one row per input in use, with its channel, patch, name, DCA and mute groups.
• Busses and Mains and Matrix are its busses.csv: one row per bus, Main and Matrix, with what feeds it and where it goes.

Where the desk doesn’t state something a sheet has a column for, such as a channel’s category, Atoo makes a choice and tells you in a note in the Findings panel, so you can correct it.

2. Watch it

Click Watch, then Start watching. With the captured show open, Watch knows what the desk is meant to be: a deliberate split, such as a reverb bus, is a note rather than a warning, and a channel muted during a service is not a finding. A bus that reaches nothing or a stage box link that drops is still reported.

Already watching a desk with no show open? Press Make a show from this desk on the Watch page: the same capture, without stopping Watch.

3. Edit the sheets and apply them

Change a cell in step 04 and press Save: the sheet and the plan are updated together, with no model. A cell that can’t work on the desk turns red with the reason, and Save waits until it is fixed.

Nothing reaches the desk until you apply the plan. Applying a captured show writes only its patch, routing, names, DCAs, mute groups and widths. It leaves the mix alone: faders, mutes, send levels and EQ stay as the desk has them, and the desk is not reset. A send you took out of a sheet is switched off on the desk; its level is left as it was.

From the command line

atoo capture --console 192.0.2.148
atoo capture --snap CCC-20261024.snap --console-model wing-full

Capturing a desk has the full detail: every file a capture makes, what it decides and why, effects, splits and recording feeds, and the sheets’ columns.

Next

The command line: the same work, typed, and what the command line adds.