VENUE Link and MADI of limited value?

[jasenj1]

I just had a very frustrating evening with our new D-Show and Pro Tools (HD 8.1) rig. We have two MADI cards in the VENUE feeding two HD MADI interfaces. Just like this.

The FOH guys that run the D-Show spent time configuring the inputs and labeling channels. e.g. Stage Rack 1, Analog Card A, Input 1 is mapped to input "WM-1" and assigned to fader 1.

On the Pro Tools rig, I tried to use VENUE Link to pull over all of this configuration. Unfortunately, it did not work. The only channels that came over were a couple explicitly mapped to some of the MADI "assignable" channels - e.g. FOH Rack, Input 1 labeled "iPod" and assigned to output MADI 1 49.

I really hope we're doing something wrong and this is supposed to all work like magic like I think it should. Otherwise, I will need to map the Pro Tools I/O setup to the Stage Rack inputs manually, and then configure all the tracks/channels by hand. Which is not the end of the world - the FOH guys are having to do it, but I was expecting VENUE Link to take care of this for us.

Any tips on what we might be doing wrong?

- Jasen.