A few Improvement ideas in LIVE

[goodtimepro]

I've started using ShowExpress about 2 months ago and I love it! You all have done a wonderful job in creating a light program. As i've learned the program more in depth there is some ideas that I would like to share. As being a video-editor I have the concept of timeline editing. Now in "LIVE" under the timeline section here are some thoughts and ideas;

1. It would be awesome if you could view the "music track" that you import in WAVEFORM. It would allow easy syncing to the light scenes and the beat of the music.

2. In timeline, even though you create all your scenes in the best order, sometimes you still forget what they all look like. My thought would be, to the right of the timeline, have a dialogue box with all the scenes and have a preview monitor above. When you are searching for your scenes you want, instead of importing them to the timeline and previewing, just simply click the scene in the preview box and a preview of that scene will show in the monitor. Then when you find the scene you like, drag it over to the timeline.

3. When you are editing in timeline, it would be nice to have the title of the scenes scroll with you as your progressing down. Instead of having to go back and remember which scene is which.

Thanks so much for your time!

Darren

[support]

1 - this is in the TODO list
2 - nice idea, but too big job for now ; noted anyway.
3 - we do not understand

[dkumpula]

I like Idea #2, but to compensate for my lack of a photographic memory, I started breaking up all portions of a scene into components or layers that address a specific action (device position, color, flash rate, etc.) and then adopted a standard scene naming convention so I would know what it does simply by the title. Note that this became much easier several years ago when we were allowed to have scenes that were more than 8 characters long.

I'm sure we all have our preferences for scene naming, but my approach for naming conventions generally follow "Device-Action-Speed-Color-Brightness".

For example, a scene named MinSpotAllFIFONC2BPS tells me that it is going to control the brightness of all MinSpot devices by Fading In Fading Out (FIFO) without defining any color (NC=No Color levels set), and accomplish this all twice per second by default (unless I change the scene speed after adding the scene to a Timeline). I then layer in two more layers to control device movement and device color. For example combining with a scene called MinSpotAllRandomDown means these same devices are going to move in a generally random set of movements pointing towards the floor. The lack of speed information in my world means that each step would be 1.6 seconds for moving head changes (and 0.4 seconds for anything else) as these timings make it easy to increase / decrease in Timeline between their limits of 25% to 400%. Finally adding color, (e.g. MSAllSmoothBlueDim) would achieve smooth color changes in the blue palette at half brightness. There is likely a better way to handle the naming conventions, but this approach seems to work for my somewhat damaged mind.

-David

[goodtimepro]

1 - this is in the TODO list
2 - nice idea, but too big job for now ; noted anyway.
3 - we do not understand

I'm glad you guys are working on number 1.
number 2. Even if the separate preview monitor is a big job, what if, when you click "import scene" into timeline, scene dialogue box opens up and when you selected your scene, it sends the signal to the already existing 3d view which will show the scene? hmmm...

3. let me try to make sense on this one, when your in timeline, as you import the different scenes into the different layers. the title of each scene stays at the front of the clip of the scene. Now when you move to 2 min mark on timeline, at full zoom in, all you see is the scene layers and not the title of the scene. Now you dont know what layer is which. So you have to zoom back out until you find the beginning of scene to view the name of it. It would be nice to have the title of each scene track along with the editor as he is editing his show. Hopefully I made myself clear...

Thanks so much for showing interest to my idea!

you guys rock!!

Darren

[support]

Regarding #3, would a tooltip showing the name of the scene (when the mouse is over the scene) help ?

[goodtimepro]

Regarding #3, would a tooltip showing the name of the scene (when the mouse is over the scene) help ?

ya that would work as well!!

Also, another idea, not sure if possible... In the generator, If you have more then one light fixtures you are able to "shift" the position,color, dimmer, shutter, etc. My question is, is it difficult to create a shift bar that randomizes the lighting fixtures?

Darren

[support]

#3 is noted in the TODO list.

Regarding "randomize fixtures in Generator", not sure very useful for many users. We will wait for more feedback.

[goodtimepro]

#3 is noted in the TODO list.

Regarding "randomize fixtures in Generator", not sure very useful for many users. We will wait for more feedback.

note. Not randomizing the fixtures themselves but the characteristics. ex. when you have 12 led rgb fixtures, you bring them into generator, you set the red channel to strobe. You then shift the fixtures so the strobe will fan through the fixtures. Now if you had a randomizer, then the red strobe won't fan through the fixtures chronologically but at a random playback. ... hope it makes sense...

Darren

[Razorback]

Regarding #3, would a tooltip showing the name of the scene (when the mouse is over the scene) help ?

Yes! Good call. With the time markers that the specific scene is on it too...