Two button & timeline issues

create pages with buttons to trigger scenes

Two button & timeline issues

Postby spielberger » 25 May 2015, 16:50

Dear support,

I'm working for little musical and stage productions and I really love the options this nice piece of software gives me, but I'm always a bit disappointed about how many workarounds I have to build to get an easy rundown for a show, that simply triggers scenes and timelines one after another with simple transitions.

There are two problems/bugs that might be fixable and would make my productions much easier:

TIMELINE LOADING TIME
If you trigger a timeline it takes a few moments to load – I do understand that, but this means that I can not use the “solo buttons” option as it is intended. The scene I used before cuts or fades off and I have to wait for the timeline to load. The worst case is a few moments of pitch black stage. And even if I use the “fade out”-option on the button before which might make it smoother: once the timeline is loaded the running fade-out is ignored and everything jumps hard to the start of the timeline.
Maybe it is possible to technically wait for the timeline to load in the background and then handle it like scenes that dissolve nicely with the corresponding channels.

NO MIDI OUT ON STOP
When a timeline runs into its STOP marker all associated buttons go off, but the MIDI out command of the button is not send. The LED on my launchpad stays on. With a scene-button that has a “number of loops”, the same thing works perfectly.

I think the same problem affects the “chase page”-feature as well: If you only use scene-buttons in a “chase play”-page it works like charm. But if you use timeline-buttons the software triggers the timeline, but crashes afterwards before it even reaches the STOP. I understand that it might be a problem for the software to get the end of a timeline, especially if it has no “STOP” - but I hope this is not a serious problem to solve.


And as we're talking about the chase-feature: I don't get it why it seems so hard to implement a cue-feature based on that chase-option. All there has to be added is a trigger to go on after a button has reached the existing “pause at end” option. It seems to me, that if I want to use a page as a rundown I can already do that for 95% - the only thing missing besides the problems described above is a GO-button and the internal logic to repeat loop-scenes and just trigger the next scene if the “number of loops” is set in the scene properties!


I know that most things aren't as easy as they seem from the outside ;-) but maybe some of the suggestion help to make the software even better!

Best regards from Germany!
spielberger
 
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby JohnRichards » 26 May 2015, 09:34

Hi Spielberger,
From my experience with timelines, is that the lag in loading is from having the "show waveform" on. I do all my programming with it on, but for the live show, I disable it, and my timeline buttons start immediately.
John
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby support » 26 May 2015, 13:50

@ spielberger
Problems noted.
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby spielberger » 27 May 2015, 10:58

Great, thank you very much, support ;-) ... looking forward!

@JohnRichards: Thanks for your reply! Yes the timelines load faster without the waveform but not "fast enough". There is always about half a second of delay. Which wouldn't be a problem if the scene I triggered before would dissolve to the first scene of the timeline nicely after that amount of time, but with "solo buttons" actived, the scene cuts or fades off, then there is the loading delay and finally the starting timeline cuts in.
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby Niffo » 27 May 2015, 16:04

- "NO MIDI OUT ON STOP" with TimeLine buttons fixed for next fix/release
- "TIMELINE LOADING TIME" : There can be only one instance of a TimeLine at a time in the software. So the stop of the previous one is mandatory before the start of the next one. To avoid the blackout, there is multiple solutions like leaving a button pressed with desired channels on before launching TimeLines ...
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby Lighter007 » 27 May 2015, 19:51

To Timeline loading time: You (developers) always tell us, that the software 'asks the OS' for playing audio/video, and I think, this is the point. I do not know much about developing such softwares, but isn't it just to introduce a file player (or something similar), which belongs to ScreenControl and works just like other audio players (Windows Media Player, iTunes, QLab, Etc)?
Greetings from Germany! :)
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby support » 28 May 2015, 21:18

The "timeline button off to midi out message" fix is available here: http://download.thelightingcontroller.c ... roller.zip
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Re: Two button & timeline issues

Postby spielberger » 29 May 2015, 08:00

Thanks a lot for the fast "Midi Out"-fix!

ABOUT THE TIMELINE ISSUE: I understand that there can only be one instance of a timeline and - as I wrote - this is not a problem at all if the previous scene doesn't go off until the timeline has been loaded. Or if I could just load (and pause) a timeline and start it with a second push of a button or best: a midi-trigger! I know I can do that by adding a pause marker at the start and press the timeline play button, but I need the possibility to trigger this remotely by MIDI (or keyboard) because everything is controlled by a MIDI network or controller. Sadly this is again about 99% ready, but the very vital last bit is missing to solve one of my biggest problems!

To summarize: Maybe the easiest (?) way is to add a MIDI-trigger for the timeline "PLAY" button. Hope this is as easy as it sounds.


Nevertheless, THANKS FOR THE GREAT AND FAST SUPPORT!
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