Showtime improvements / feature requests

Hi,

some ideas...

1. When programming a show I often watch my result in the preview window unsing the playback function. This window is program modal while playing back. I MUST press the exit button or ESC to switch back in order to change my show. This behaviour sucks, because it costs workingtime. What about an "edit playback checkbox option" in the playback window? As long as this new function is active, playback stops as soon as the preview window loses focus and playback starts from the laser scrolling time marker (red vertical line) when playback window gets back the focus. With this option it would be possible tos switch between preview and edit very fast using the mouse.

2. There should by an optional function the syncs the laser scrolling time marker (red vertical line) while playing back. This would help to see where I am in the show. Function should be optional, because I often set the marker to a point of beginning and repeat starting from there with the space button.

3. A function to delete beatmarks in a selected range would be fine. Right now, it is not possible to delete wrong beatmarks without deleting all beatmarks.

4. Keyboard shortcuts for timeline navigation do not work with a notebook keyboard. +/- do not change the zoom level. It would be a good idea to give the scrollwheel a function like timeline scrolling or zoom or perhaps both depending on mouse button state.

5. Effectlist preview. I have a long list of self defined effects and I try do give them good names and descriptions to know their function after some months. But a preview would be better. What about this:
Display a small preview window which shows the effect animating the selected frame from the framelist as long as the mousebutton is down on an effect in the effectlist. Can not be as hard, because ST ist doing excactly the same preview in effect editor window.

6. Make it easier to set and delete a user definied playback time area. Going into the menu wastes time. Put three buttons into the toolbar right next to the playback area button like: set start, set end, clear selection.

Ok, thats all for today. I think, most of my suggestions are not hard to programm but would really help to make working with ST easier.

Best regards,

John
 
The 1st suggestion is great. If it can be done, certainly would be a time saver.
The 2nd suggestion would be very helpful also. And as one who is building up a library of effects, the effect list preview would be great. But alas, I am shut down until after the New Year. Blew out one axis of my last good g120 scan set. Time to get 6210's from LSDI !
 
One more thing, for setting the user definied playback area, the keyboard shortcuts work great for me!
But John mentioned timeline keyboard shortcuts dont work with a notebook keyboard?
 
Assigning different zones to every track in a scene is now a painful job to do. About a hundred clicks do have a job done for a single scene.
This button "assign to all tracks" is good, but it changes <u>all</u> tracks at once.
I miss very much a button with similar behavior, but to change assignments just for tracks <u>from current to last</u>.
Because if working with 3 or 4 projectors, I need at least 5 equal tracks for every projector (zone).

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&gt;&gt;Total Blackout&lt;&lt; "switch" in Showtime and LD would be useful too.
Sometimes a customer comes just before his event or even in the middle and wants to change, for example, a part of text. Because everything is up and running, I have to disconnect power-supplies to projectors, so nothing is visible to the audience.
Dimming function in Zone setting dialog is not useful, because it also dimms preview window.
This "switch" could just hold all color and intensity outputs at off-level.

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When playing a show in Showtime I sometimes find "a bug" in my show. At that moment I have to remember approximate timecode when error appeared and then find it in manually.
Because I am also working with video and audio editing software, I can tell you how they have this done. Space button starts playback. Again pressing spacebar stops playback at current location and time-cursor stops at new location. Also, my finger is alrady on this button and stopping can be very quick (ex. error found). When pressing Esc button, time-cursor returns to initial, starting position.

Best regards,
Aljaz.
 
HI,

I have got some more idea, which would save time.

- Checkbox for "Automatic place a RESET TRACK with Frame=Blank and Length=Null" after every new timeline main event
- Checkbos for "Always use RESET TRACK with Frame=Blank" on placing a new Reset track on the timeline if length of the Reset track is Null. You typically do this to clear the track and prepare it for the next events.

If you forget a reaset track, this can cause very unexpected effects.
If you use Reset track with a frame different to BLANK and length = Null, this will cause little flashing frames during the show.

Function filtering out unused frames out of framefile to clean up a show before distributing

Projection Zone Setup window: Copy all values from currectly selected zone to an other zone (exept name and scanner).

John
 
Hi!
I would also be very happy to have those last two features (that John mentioned) implemented.

And maybe scroller on the mouse to scroll up and down thru all of the tracks in Showtime.

Regards,
Aljaz.
 
At the last Pangolin User Meeting, we discussed these things. I agree that the various options for track events would be handy. These will be implemented in the next version of Showtime (perhaps version 3.50, since we are currently up to 3.30).

Best regards,

William Benner
 
When saving a show and frames, SW automatically generates backup files (.LD1 and .SH1). This would be useful when saving zone files (.LDZ).

Also auto-backup could be done for .INI file.

Aly.
 
When using Live!, there is no way to see elapsed and remaining time when show is playing on screen.
But this information can be seen on Performer console. Can you add this to Live! window?

At this time I'm using DMX output that tells me elapsed time in show.... Too complicated.

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Another thing - show exporting...
I have problems when porting show from LD2000 to FB3 system.
Some ready-made animations have security-tag that prevents exporting to another format. And I can not export to ilda format for importing into FB3.
Will there be a function for exporting in LDS format, so the format and security can stil be written to the resulted file?

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And a bug by the way ... When exporting to ilda file - if there is selected option "Points with palette color" the resulted file has red color instead of black. It fades into red color. If there is selected "Trained color", it works ok.
 
Hi Aly,

We will add your suggestions to our "to-do" list. They won't be in the upcoming 4.50 release however...

And what you reported about ILDA export is not a bug. Palette means "fixed number of colors". So, things fading through red happen because, there are no "faded versions" of various colors. The system does the best it can, given the limitation of palettes. If you don't like the limitations, use "true color" format which has no such limitaitons...

Bill
 
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