Hi Reinhardt,
I think Soforene's analogy is somewhat flawed, but still somewhat applicable if you set aside price. But let me come at this from a different angle.
My own feeling has never changed on this topic. I see Pangolin's role as providing tools. BUT -- no single tool can do every job for every customer. That's why Pangolin provides a number of software products, each one having its place in the toolbox.
If you purchased LD2000 in the past two years, or purchased BEYOND with a QM2000, then you actually received two separate tools for the price of one. What this means is that if you want to playback LD2000 shows, you already have a solution. That solution is called Showtime! It's if you want to do something different, something better, something more than Showtime can do, THEN you might turn to BEYOND for answers.
To answer the original question, we believe that the "frame list" concept embodied in Showtime was actually flawed all along. One problem with it is that you saw a single image on the screen for a single frame. So this means if you had an animation with 1000 frames, you would have to scroll through 1000 single images before finally getting to the end.
What BEYOND offers is a workspace. So you can load a single animation into a single cue. Now you have a single image on the computer screen that represents a whole animation. You can see the whole animation by only moving the mouse over the cue. And if you want to, you can edit the animation with only a few mouse clicks. This is far better and easier than it would have been with Showtime and LD2000.
So we believe that the workspace is a replacement for the framelist. Moreover, you can organize the workspace in any way you wish by merely dragging cues around on the screen. You can click on cues in the workspace to test out various animation scenarios BEFORE placing them on the timeline. Then, when you are ready, you drag and drop a cue onto the workspace -- that cue representing the entire animation.
Note that what I'm really talking about here is using a single workspace PER SHOW. You don't have to do it that way, but it would be the smartest way to go, and a way which has the strongest parallel to how shows were build in LD2000/Showtime.
So the process would look like this:
1. Click on the Grid button at the top/left
2. Click on File/New Workspace in the menu
3. Right-click on cues and use the file browser to locate individual frames and animations that you want to import into that particular cue. Note that if you have a single LD2000 frame file with many animations this still works, since you can choose the starting and ending frame WITHIN THE WHOLE FILE to be loaded into the cue.
3a. repeat step 2 as many times as you would like, building up a frame and animation library that will be used to make the show.
4. If you want to, you can also use the QuickTools, or more advanced tools to build up additional things in the workspace.
5. Click on Timeline view
6. Click on the Workspace tab on the bottom
7. Drag and drop from the workspace onto the timeline
Note that this process is really very similar to how it would be done in LD2000, but instead of needing to set the beginning and ending frame, and paging through thousands of individual frames, you drag and drop entire animations, entire sequences, and really entire "thoughts".
Also note the on the timeline itself, you can double-click anywhere, load brand new frames and animations directly, and even create dedicated content right then in there.
All of this is far more productive workflow than would ever be possible in LD2000 and Showtime, and frankly more productive than any other laser software we have ever seen.
Sure, it's different. But if you want to, you can create a workflow scenario that is similar to LD2000 and Showtime, or a workflow scenario that is far different as well. BEYOND offers much more freedom, and each show programmer will need to decide how to best use that freedom to match their own style.
Best regards,
William Benner
